Quick response to bay crash saves pilot
By: John Upton
January 30, 2009
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| Chilling experience: An unidentified San Francisco man, center, was piloting a small plane at about 2,000 feet Thursday when engine trouble forced him to land in Half Moon Bay. (Courtesy Photo) |
HALF MOON BAY — A San Francisco man is lucky to be alive after the rented single-engine plane he was piloting ditched into the chilly waters of Half Moon Bay on Thursday afternoon, leaving him with hypothermia and minor injuries, authorities say.
The 49-year old man, whose name was not released, had been flying solo around the Bay Area for about two hours when he encountered engine problems at an altitude of 2,000 feet, according to Zdravko Podolski, owner of AeroDynamic Aviation, which rented the plane to the man.
As the man piloted the 62-year-old single-engine Aeronca Champ into the sea about 10 miles offshore from Pillar Point, he sent out a distress signal that was picked up by the Coast Guard.
A four-engine C-130 Coast Guard plane had been flying in the area for a training exercise and reached the scene about 15 minutes after the crash, which occurred shortly before 3 p.m., according to Lt. Lane Steffenhagen.
Coast Guard officers dropped a life raft and flare close to the pilot after he was spotted standing on the wing of his plane just before it sank into the 49-degree water, according to Steffenhagen.
“He’s extremely lucky,” Steffenhagen said. “Had the Coast Guard aircraft not been out there while his plane was still floating, for the three or four minutes that it was still floating, we would have been looking for a head and a pair of arms, which makes for a much smaller target in a very wide expanse of water.”
An Air National Guard HH-60G Pavehawk helicopter, from the 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Air Field in Mountain View, was conducting a joint training exercise with the Coast Guard plane at the time of the crash, according to helicopter pilot Capt. Mary Jennings.
Jennings’ 11-person crew reached the scene of the crash shortly after the plane sank, she said.
“We saw the raft, and 50 feet from the raft was swimming the survivor,” Jennings said.
As the pilot clambered aboard the raft, dressed in jeans and an short-sleeved orange shirt, Jennings’ crew lowered a device, known as a strop, which he tied around himself before being raised into the helicopter, she said.
“He looked wet, very cold and very grateful,” Jennings said. “He had a cut on his hand and his eyes looked a little irritated, maybe from petrol or salt or something.”
When the pilot was loaded into an ambulance at a Coast Guard station near San Francisco International Airport, his body temperature was 92 degrees, according to Steffenhagen.
“He was severely hypothermic when he got here,” Steffenhagen said. “Eventually, they took him by ambulance to San Francisco General Hospital.”
The pilot had been released from the hospital by 6 p.m., according to Podolski, owner of San Jose-based flight school AeroDynamic Aviationa 48-year old company formerly known as Amelia Reid Aviation, which rented the plane to the man and taught him how to pilot it.
The pilot had about 300 hours and five years of flying experience, according to Podolski.
“What was really impressive was how the training kicked in,” he said. “He put the plane down correctly, he communicated correctly and stayed with the plane until it sank. Everything went pretty well.”
The company owns about a dozen planes and its last accident occurred about 10 years ago, when a pilot ran out of gas and landed on a San Jose golf course at Silver Creek Valley Country Club, according to Podolski, who bought the company four years ago.
Podolski said the plane passed a safety inspection in December, and he estimated that about four gallons of fuel was left in its tank when it crashed.
Pillar Point Harbor Master Dan Temko said he reached the scene of the accident shortly after the plane sank. He said there was no sign of pollution.
“There was no sheen and no debris when we got there,” Temko said. “There was just a smoke marker and a life raft.”
The Federal Aviation Authority and National Transportation Safety Board will conduct investigations into the accident, spokesmen for the agencies said.
