PILOT DIES, Passenger Lands King Air WORK
First of all, to get the facts straight, it was a King Air 200 with the new PW -52 engines. The pilot died about 15 minutes off of Marco Island. The plane was climbing thru around 5-6 thousand feet heading to an initial altitude of 10,000 and it was on auto pilot. The man in the co-pilot seat is a low time Cessna 172 single engine land pilot with no instrument rating. He also was not familiar with any auto pilot functions. It was his wife and 2 girls who were the passengers. (A total of 5 people on board) They were over a cloud layer. The passenger had no auto pilot experience. When the pilot died the passenger knew how to talk on the radio and told Ft. Myers approach that he had an emergency. The air traffic controllers were super! The King Air 200 blew through 10,000 and continued to climb and the passenger told the tower that he needed to stop the climb somehow. They talked him through turning off the auto pilot and the passenger the began to hand fly the King Air at approx. 16,000 feet. After vectors and assistance and 45-60 minutes later he landed the plane safely on runway 06 at Ft. Myers airport. If the media wants to erroneously report 6 souls on board, so be it, because #6 was the good Lord Himself. How do I know all of this? I was there.
PILOT DIES, Passenger Lands King Air
The pilot's name and cause of death were not available as of Sunday night, nor were the names of the four passengers on the Beechcraft King Air 200 twin-engine plane. Due to Federal Aviation Administration rules, the names of the air traffic controllers who helped bring the plane down have not been released, said FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen.
Eventually, another voice came on the radio from the twin-engine plane. One of four passengers on board said the pilot had passed out and that the plane was still climbing on auto-pilot. What followed was a dicey 15 or 20 minutes in which several controllers worked to continue directing the normal flow of Sunday afternoon air traffic, all while helping the passenger disengage auto pilot on the plane and begin descending to Southwest Florida International Airport, which was, by then, the nearest runway.
The passenger who took the controls and was in contact with the control tower in Miami, and subsequently in Fort Myers, has single-engine plane experience, said Bergen. He had been a pilot since at least 1990. However, he was not certified to fly a twin-engine plane like the King Air, which is a large luxury plane, said Wallace. To instruct him on how to maneuver the plane and bring it back to earth, one air traffic controller got on the phone with a friend in Connecticut who is rated to fly the King Air aircraft.
Wallace was quick to give kudos to everyone involved. He said no airplanes were delayed or redirected while air traffic controllers were helping land the King Air, and said the passenger-turned-pilot executed the landing like an old pro. It was a bitter moment, though, said Wallace, given the fact that FAA controllers recently shouldered a significant pay cut.
A passenger took the controls of a twin engine plane after the pilot died and managed to land it safely at a Florida airport with five people on board, the Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday.
"Shortly after departure the pilot became incapacitated," said Kathleen Bergen, speaking for the FAA. "A passenger was able to take control of the plane, communicate with the air traffic controllers and land the plane safely in Fort Myers (Florida)."
"Make sure you're buckled up back there!" Amazon has launched the official trailer for On a Wing and a Prayer, based on a true story about a scary flying incident. "Experience the inspirational true story this Easter weekend." It's only rated PG and of course involves a little bit of "prayer" making it the perfect Easter release in America. Though apparently it will be skipping theaters and showing directly on Prime Video for streaming throughout April. After their pilot dies unexpectedly mid-flight, Doug White has to safely land a small plane and save his entire family from insurmountable danger. They are flying in a tiny King Air 200 twin-turboprop plane, which is a different experience than most big commercial airliners. Dennis Quaid stars as Doug, with Heather Graham, Jesse Metcalfe, Jessi Case, and Abigail Rhyne. This film looks extremely cheesy and formulaic, but it's the kind of "believe in hope" true story thriller viewers will eat up.
A common Hollywood trope when dealing with commercial airline-centric plots is inevitably at some point the pilot or pilots will become incapacitated and the lead character, who may or may not have any piloting experience, will be forced to take over, lest they die a fiery death when gravity decides to establish dominance. But has this scenario ever actually played out in real life? And what is the likelihood a passenger with limited to no formal pilot training could actually land a commercial airliner safely if they were being talked through it as is often depicted in movies?
To begin with, as to the first question, when talking large commercial aircraft, yes, a passenger of sorts did once and only once, take over for the incapacitated pilots. This occurred aboard the Helios Airways Flight 522 in 2005. So how did both pilots become incapacitated and what happened after?
Moving on from there we have one of the more notable cases of a person with zero pilot experience flying in one of the aforementioned Cessna 172s in 2013. The passenger, a then 77 year old John Wildey, had been a member of the Royal Air Force for 24 years, but not as a pilot.
On that note, we did find one instance during a United Airlines flight when Air Force Captain Mike Gongol was requested to come help out when the captain of that flight had a heart attack. In this case, the flight attendants first requested that any doctor aboard please make themselves known. They later asked if any pilots aboard would push their call button to make themselves known- a sequence of requests not exactly geared towards keeping passengers worry free.
Mr. NORTON: Well, it was at the end of my shift and I was going out the front door to go home. And my supervisor caught me just before I got out to the parking lot and said we had an emergency and the pilot needed to talk to a controller with a pilot's license.
The Beechcraft King Air, with four passengers, left Marco Island, Fla., for Jackson, Miss., Sunday, but the pilot collapsed about 20 minutes into the flight. An air-traffic controller helped the passenger, who flies single-engine craft, land.
The answer is yes. One example was on April 2, 2012. Helen Collins, an 80-year old Grandmother was forced to take the controls of her husband's CE-414 and land it at Door Country Cherryland Airport (KSUE) after her husband had a massive heart attack at the controls and died. She managed to circle the airfield and call 911 on a cell phone. The emergency dispatcher contacted the FAA who got in touch with ATC. A KSUE based private pilot named Robert Yuksonavich took off and joined her in formation, talking her through what was about to happen and flew her wing on several practice approaches prior to the landing attempt. On landing the Cessna 414 skidded off the runway and came to a stop in the grass, breaking the nose gear off. Helen survived with only minor injuries; her husband was pronounced dead on the scene.
In 2009 the pilot of a Kingair 200 (Registration No. N559DW) fell unconscious and died during flight while flying over South Florida, and a passenger took control and landed at Fort Myers International Airport. There was another incident in the UK where a passenger landed a Cessna 172 after the pilot had a heart attack, but I do not have a source for that.
The chopper, piloted by Jude, 57, with co-pilot Painter, 52, went down in the ocean about one minute after taking off, records show. Their last utterance came at 1:53 a.m., nine seconds before the transcript stopped.
The search for a commercial aeroplane carrying 14 passengers and two crewmembers that disappeared near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast was suspended tonightuntil daylight, airline officials said. A self-activated, automatic emergencylocator transmission signal from the missing Cessna 208 Caravan had been pickedup by aircraft flying in the area where the aircraft was believed to havedisappeared, Alfredo Caballero, owner of the Nicaraguan airline La Costena tolda news conference attended by family members of missing passengers. Althoughofficials knew the general location of the transmission, rainy, windy weatherprevented military and other search aircraft from landing in the remote,forested region about 90 miles east of Managua, and the search was called offuntil morning, Caballero said. The La Costena flight left Managua at 10.00 hrsfor the coastal city of Bluefields, 180 miles east of the capital and was lastheard from an hour later about ten miles outside of Bluefields. The pilot didnot report any difficulties at that time, Caballero said. It was still uncleartonight whether the plane had crashed, he said. Airline officials said it wastoo dangerous for the two military helicopters and La Costena aeroplaneconducting the search to continue after dark.
All 18 passengers and crew on a domestic flight in the West African CapeVerde islands were feared dead today after their aircraft crashed in badweather, Portugal's Lusa news agency reported. The agency quoted Prime MinisterCarlos Veiga as saying that "at least 18 people may have died". Theaircraft, a Dornier 228 operated by TACV-Cabo Verde Airlines, came down on theisland of Santo Antao shortly after the pilot had radioed to say he was abortinga landing because of fog, the company said in a statement. TACV reported thepilot as saying that he was returning to the nearby island of Sao Vicente fromwhere the aircraft had left. The aircraft came down in an inaccessible part ofSanto Antao. TACV said it would take rescue workers some two hours to reach thesite on foot as there was no road. Lusa said most of those on board werebelieved to be Cape Verdian nationals. 041b061a72