Wisconsin Congressman Tom Tiffany emerged from a sinking airplane Saturday night and swam through Lake Wausau after an engine failure turned a routine flight home into an emergency landing that left the aircraft submerged and two men headed to a hospital.
Tiffany, 68, escaped with a head injury requiring 12 stitches. Pilot Leonard Boltz, 73, suffered cuts requiring four stitches. Both men were treated at Aspirus Wausau Hospital and released, an outcome that left federal investigators with a submerged aircraft to examine and Wisconsin with a gubernatorial candidate recovering from an aviation accident less than two months before the general election.
The single-engine Beechcraft K35 Bonanza was approaching Wausau Downtown Airport at approximately 8:50 p.m. when it lost power. Tiffany had been returning from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner, with Wausau serving as the final destination of a Saturday evening flight across Wisconsin.
Boltz, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot, was suddenly faced with an aircraft without engine power during the final portion of the flight. Lake Wausau sits immediately west of the downtown airport, providing an emergency landing area when reaching the runway was no longer possible.
Tiffany later described receiving only seconds of warning before impact. He tightened his seat belt before the Bonanza struck the water, hitting his head during the landing and opening a wound above his right eye.
The airplane remained afloat long enough for Tiffany and Boltz to climb onto it and contact 911. The temporary refuge disappeared as water overtook the aircraft. With the Bonanza sinking beneath them, the two men entered the lake and swam an estimated 100 to 150 feet before reaching water shallow enough to stand.
The Marathon County Sheriff’s Office received the emergency call shortly before 9 p.m. A Wausau Fire Department airboat reached the men shortly afterward and transported them from the lake. Emergency communications indicated both were alert and conscious when rescuers brought them back toward shore.
What remained Sunday was an aircraft largely beneath Lake Wausau, its location marked to keep recreational boat traffic away while authorities prepared for its removal. The sheriff’s office established a no-wake area around the site, and Wisconsin state agencies assisted with the response.
The Federal Aviation Administration has taken responsibility for investigating the accident. The National Transportation Safety Board was awaiting an assessment of the aircraft’s damage before determining the extent of its involvement.
That investigation will be responsible for establishing what happened to the Bonanza before it went into the water. The loss of power has been confirmed in preliminary accounts, but federal authorities have not determined its cause. There has been no official finding attributing the failure to the engine itself, the fuel system, maintenance, pilot actions or any other specific condition.
Recovery of the aircraft could provide investigators with the physical evidence needed to reconstruct the failure. The airplane remained in the lake Sunday, leaving the central technical question surrounding the accident unanswered while Tiffany and Boltz recovered on shore.
The crash also placed an unexpected interruption into one of the nation’s 2026 gubernatorial campaigns. Tiffany represents Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House and won the Republican nomination for governor in August. He faces Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic nominee, in the Nov. 3 general election.
Crowley publicly expressed relief that Tiffany and Boltz survived and recognized the pilot’s actions during the emergency. Tiffany indicated Sunday that the accident would not suspend his campaign, although medical advice to avoid flying for several days is expected to keep him from Washington at the beginning of the week.
The political implications, however, were secondary Sunday to an aviation emergency that ended without a fatality despite an engine-power loss during approach, a nighttime water landing and the eventual sinking of the airplane.
Boltz’s experience as a retired Air Force pilot became a consequential element of the survival story. With the runway no longer reachable under normal power, he brought the Bonanza down on Lake Wausau with enough control for both occupants to survive the impact, escape the aircraft and remain capable of swimming toward safety.
For Tiffany, Saturday had begun as another day of political travel across Wisconsin. It ended at a Wausau hospital with stitches above his eye, his clothes soaked from Lake Wausau and the airplane that carried him home sitting beneath the water.
By Sunday, Tiffany was out of the hospital and speaking publicly about the crash. Boltz was also recovering outside the hospital. Neither man suffered the catastrophic injuries that can accompany an aviation accident.
The physical evidence, meanwhile, remained in the lake.
Federal investigators must now determine why an operating aircraft approaching Wausau Downtown Airport suddenly lost the power needed to complete its flight, and how a Saturday night trip carrying a sitting member of Congress ended in Lake Wausau with both men walking away alive.