I have often wondered if I would be able to do this. Most of us geeks have played enough video games, seen enough movies, and maybe logged many hours on Microsoft Flight Simulator, to understand the basic mechanics of flight. Todays moder planes with fly by wire, and auto pilots, with ground control supervision, might be easier to land than one might think. All that being said, I can only imagine the pressure, and intensity that must have been in the air when this passenger, turned pilot for a day, ultimately landed the plain. Imagine the scrambling between air traffic controllers, the manufacturer of the plane, and likely a pilot, on the radio, trying to talk this guy down. Wow, a news story that ended without a bang.
It could have ended so differently. Five people on board a plane that took off from Marco Island Executive Airport Sunday got back on the ground safely after the pilot of their private plane died mid-air. One passenger assisted by three air traffic controllers and a pilot relaying cockpit instructions from Connecticut worked together to avoid further tragedy.
The pilot’s name and cause of death were not available as of Sunday night, nor were the names of the five passengers on the Beechcraft King Air 55 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.
Steven Wallace, a representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association in Miami, said the flight turned harrowing soon after take-off, as the plane was in the process of climbing to 10,000 feet. The pilot checked in with the Miami air control tower once he left the air space monitored by the Marco controllers. “Our controller who was working the afternoon rush tried to acknowledge him and give him climbing instructions and he never responded to us,” said Wallace, who was present during the radio discussions and monitored the radar to watch the plane’s progress.
Eventually, another voice came on the radio from the twin-engine plane. One of five 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.
At one point, said Wallace, the man who took control of the aircraft said he believed the pilot was dead.
“It’s kind of like being the traffic policeman standing in the highway in the middle of rush hour,” said Wallace. “The traffic on the highway doesn’t stop. (The controller was) trying to work all of these other airplanes while this emergency was going on.”
Read the rest of the story @ Passenger lands plane after pilot dies | WFTS-TV.
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