Real Pilot Story: From Miscue to Rescue

started off in Lodi California it was a beautiful day there was some weather out there but that it was moving towards the east essentially that weather just stalled and we were completely socked in I couldn't I couldn't return I knew we were going to stall and I had enough time to tell my wife and daughter I'm sorry I don't think we're going to make it my Cantina 1-1 what is your emergency my ID I'm in an airplane and I crashed when I'm in the mountain my name is Brian Brown I've been a pilot since I was 16 years old I hold a single-engine land rating I have about about 300 hours as a profession I'm a professional fire captain I've been in the fire service for over 25 years on May 26 2012 November 4 6 4 0 Lima departed Lodi California carrying Brian his wife Jay Ann and daughter Heather with a plan stop in Susanville California the trip should have been an uneventful four hour flight to Mountain Home Idaho where Brian and Jay Ann's oldest daughter lived a private pilot with no instrument rating Brian had been watching the weather for days at the time of departure Brian noticed some weather moving over the Idaho mountains but felt confident it would be gone by the time they reached that point in their flight the first leg to Susanville was uneventful and Brian took this opportunity to once again check the weather he noticed it wasn't improving and hadn't moved out of his flight path as fast as he anticipated not willing to take any risks with his wife and daughter on board he decided to postpone his departure from Susanville several hours as they waited for the weather ahead of them to clear around 2:00 p.m. that afternoon Brian saw conditions improve enough to finish the flight and they departed for Mountain home the second leg of the flight was preceding his planned until they reached the Owyhee mountains with only about an hour of flight time to mountain home the conditions had deteriorated considerably essentially that weather just stalled it didn't didn't move my hopes was that again that I'd just be right behind it and we ended up pretty much hitting it and the weather the rain was so hard that I couldn't see through the windshield so I made a 180-degree turn and I was going to fly back to the next closest airport the closest airport was Rome State Oregon a remote gravel strip with no signs of civilization in any direction save for a few tied off the edge of the runway kinda was thinking you know got to be kidding me you know this this is not really at all what I anticipated or planned out of this flight of course Brian set for zero Lima down on the gravel and once again the Browns intended to sit out the weather constant rain forced the Browns to stay inside the only shelter they had for several hours and we were all you know bound up in my Cessna 172 which is pretty small for three adults and and cold it was cold and just everything was just kind of building up and the girls did ask me my wife and daughter asked you know what would it take to continue this flight and I said well I have to have clear visibility and I have to have daylight and and I really have to have no weather you know that to work I will feel comfortable continuing continuing on with this flight several hours went past during that time I was recalculating from Rome state to Mountain home so I could make sure we had adequate fuel and everything again and I was just doing all my planning and making sure that those answers that I gave the girls were going to hold true finally the weather started to clear and Brian once again saw conditions he felt comfortable dealing with with only an hour of daylight left enough time to reach their destination they departed the gravel strip and headed north they passed over several ridge lines hoping the weather ahead of them would continue moving east but it didn't weather truly just started forming right in front of us started seeing some towering cumulus to the north of us so I started to veer south and then as I started moving south I saw more start to form to the south and realized again that we couldn't continue this flight and so I turned around to look behind me to go back and we were completely socked in I couldn't I couldn't return at that point you know trying to keep my visual cues of the terrain and to stay out of the weather I was basically a point where I was scheduling I was just about a thousand feet above the the terrain and just under the cloud layer just so I could again stay out of the weather I did have one point where I had a cloud in front of me that I that I had to go through and when we did do that it you know I have we cleared the other side and sure enough there was a mountain right on the other side of it that we had to make an abrupt maneuver for so we maneuvered away from that and then continued the flight and I made it over a couple more Ridge lines and the last one right before our impact what I did notice was my air speed was at 110 and it instantly dropped to 40 I knew we were going to stall and I had enough time to tell my wife and daughter I'm sorry I don't think we're gonna make it told him I loved him and I put the nose of the plane down into the canyon to try and keep flying the aircraft right before we made impact to the bottom I felt flight control back and I abruptly pulled the nose up as steep as I could and was actually trying to fly back out of the canyon we hit to two trees and that took about three feet off of each wingtip and then we abruptly hit belly-first right into the next Mountain site the impact knocked both Brian and J an unconscious he was awakened surprised to still be alive by his daughter's voice the next thing I heard was my daughter screaming for her mother and when I looked over to to the passenger side I saw my wife Jane and hanging out of the plane like a rag doll the the seatbelt was holding her holding her in place the door was ripped off on her side from the impact and at that point you know I think my professional rescuer mode kind of kicked in and I reached over I grabbed Jane and pulled her back into the airplane and when I saw her face her eyes were rolled into the back of her head and she had deep snoring respirations and it's for people that aren't medically trained you know for me something I've seen many times over my career it's it's a sign of us pretty significant head injury and usually not really good outcome and so at that point I thought I'd killed my wife I pulled her back into the plane I got her head in line and opened her airway the best I could Heather was helping me hold on to her to her head and keep her in place right about in that minute's time her eyes kind of fluttered open and and she took a big gasp of air and and said I'm still here I'm still with us November 4 6 4 0 Lima was sitting on the side of a 60-degree slope despite his flight bag and everything else having slid into the tail cone of the plane Brian was able to find his handheld transceiver with the plane's avionics dead he used his transceiver to verify his ELT was activated at this point darkness was setting in and it started snowing heavily knowing they'd have to shelter in the airplane overnight Brian fastened the door back onto the passenger side and they waited we were we were really facing hypothermia too at that point and that was my biggest next fear was that we may not even though we survived the crash at this point and our injuries we may not survive the hypothermia of the evening fearing complications from their head injuries Heather called out to her parents every 15 minutes to verify they were still conscious this continued for several hours until around midnight when they were startled by the sound coming from the tail of the airplane one of our phones picked up enough of a signal to to receive the call that was from my oldest daughter the one that we were traveling to see she wanted to know why we hadn't made the destination yet they hadn't thought of using the phones immediately because they had gotten buried under a lot of debris in the back of the airplane scrambling to get the call Heather found two phones the phone that was ringing had a battery that was just barely still intact it was showing in the red and it had one tiny little inner intermittent borrow signal that would flutter in and out but Heather took the two phones and she waved him around in the backseat dialing 911 over and over again and finally got one to connect wait any 9-1-1 what is your emergency hi I play an airplane and I crash when I'm in the mountains where you are on in that 29 miles east west and Mountain Home Idaho I need you to send a search party please okay I want you to stay on the line with me okay I will fly my back put my own a guaranteed a little better left are you in Hawaii County don't I have no idea where we are my name is Heather i-i'm boiled on the pilot Brian Brown is the pilot did he file a flight plan Matt Heather yes if Brian file a flight plan plan so that we may be able to track him no where were you coming from rope roam of organs of a gravel runway in Rome okay where are you flying to Mountain Home Idaho home Idaho Brian is there a way you can give me GPS coordinates all them my GPS is down everything is down in the plane what are your injuries we have two head injuries and some back injuries Heather what I'm going to do is contact AT&T and we they contain that phone so keep it on as long as possible so that they and they will be able to get a GPS coordinates for me okay okay Joyce quick that was when our phone call dropped so we got just enough information out to start the search and and you know again the relief for me was Wow somebody knows we're out here we're in the middle of the mountains were were one step in the right direction we're still alive and somebody knows to come and start looking for us so we actually got another phone call out was 900 again 11911 Heather Heather I have your GPS coordinate your emergency transmitter is it working it is working yes okay I need to know how many people are on that plane you have three people I have had injuries and back injuries oh do we have any other injuries actually no uh what's the best I could have yes ma'am okay get up and walk around so if I had to split up and pretty good okay Brian I don't want you walking around too much I would like you to try to sit down what I'm going to do is I'm going to let you go I have officers headed up in that way they are going to have their overhead lights on as soon as you can see overhead lights when you call me that so I can let them know we'll try oh okay no can keep Thurman we have no way to signal of them are they flying you no they're coming in pick up no Amy I'm we're in the middle of the mountain we have four-wheelers and everything like that and I'm going to get a helicopter launch around two o'clock in the morning we can start to hear rescue helicopters flying overhead my first thought was again was oh I can talk to him so I picked up the portable radio again from from between my feet when I turned it on the cold had actually already killed the batteries in it the conditions were pretty close to whiteout so they couldn't actually see us and we couldn't see them we could only hear them we listened to that for about another half hour to 45 minutes and then the helicopter stopped and my biggest fear at that point was is you know shoot they've they stopped looking here and they're going to go look somewhere else you know so we're just going to have to bear down even longer what he didn't know is that the rescue team knew his approximate location but couldn't continue due to the intensity of the snowfall and had to call off the search and wait for better weather to arrived the next morning around 6:00 they heard the helicopter again Brian decided he would try to light a signal fire to catch the rescuers attention so as soon as I had stepped out to and reach down to light the signal fire the helicopter flew right over the top of us and I didn't have time to light the signal fire but what I did do is I grabbed my cellphone and I turned the camera on and started flashing them with the camera flash on the phone and he saw it he went into he went into a hover and it was one of the most feels beautiful things I'd ever seen because I'd realized at that point we'd been found once we got to Silver City we met with the Hawaii County deputy and their Sheriff's Posse who had been searching for the victims all night long and they had located them in a ravine about 15 miles from where we were at they were working with the Idaho Air National Guard to get a helicopter to be able to come in and do a hoist operation but because of the steepness of the ravine they were in they weren't sure that they were going to be able to do that so we split up our rescue team and we jumped on four-wheelers and ATVs with the Owyhee County Sheriff's Posse members and we started heading back in towing our gear in a Stokes basket a task edge straight v's and we went through solid snow whiteout conditions at time heavy snowdrifts some pretty treacherous terrain once we reach the actual crash scene we had to determine how we were going to get him out so we started to make a plan to take them out to Silver City to where they would be transported by ground ambulance and that was going to be a big project to get done so we prioritized the patients and we determined that Brian brown the pilot that his wife Jan and daughters were in worse shape than he was so we decided his daughter Heather would be the first one that we would transport out so we started to package as more assets arrived at the scene we had Idaho Mountain search-and-rescue who was a huge help we had Nampa Fire Department personnel on scene we had the air st. luke's flight nurses and flight medics and their crews on scene and some were right in that time as we were prioritizing the patients we found out that the Idaho Air National Guard was actually launching a bird and they were going to be coming to our location and from that point on the rescuers just kind of kept coming kept coming and package dust up and then ended up hoisting us out one at a time with National Guard hoist helicopter all of the missteps on this flight could fit under one broad umbrella poor choices the decision for a non instrument-rated pilot to continue into marginal conditions the pressure to prove that a light GA aircraft can serve a utilitarian purpose when other options are more viable the choice to press on without any Plan B over unfamiliar and unforgiving terrain but it goes deeper than that label under pressure to continue despite questionable weather with a narrowing window of daylight over mountains and the frustration of previous delays it's easy to see what we want to see and not what's really there and when I left Rome State I saw a condition that felt that I felt very comfortable to continue there was a large clearing in the weather and I accepted that large clearing as being good enough instead of actually getting that last weather report to see what could happen I know that that mission driven mindset made me take some some risks that I wouldn't have normally taken here I found myself just slowly and slowly and slowly being convinced that this flight was still safe enough to continue I would have terminated the flight in Susanville if I could do it over again my mission would have still been complete if we'd have flown back gotten in the car and driven to see our oldest daughter would it have been stressful or frustrating and you know sure it would have been and again are our egos as a pilot you know I didn't complete the mission the way I wanted to but but the mission would have been complete and we wouldn't have had to have gone through what we went through that day and that night on the mountain I wish I could take all that back because I didn't start that flight thinking I was going to crash in the side of a mountain and I did any long cross-country flight over mountainous terrain should require extra precautions like choosing a route that minimizes time spent over remote areas filing a flight plan obtaining flight following and checking in with flight watch for updated weather reports and if things go bad there's always the option of contacting ATC to declare an emergency I didn't always file a flight plan but I I pretty much always use flight following and this flight I didn't do that and you know I I had that mindset that well my daughter Tabitha's at the other side she she's in cellphone contact with us all the time where she knows she knows where we're going what our route is and she's and we're stopping and calling her we had called her in Susanville we called her in at Rome State and we called her at Lodi before we laughed I had that false sense of security that the cellphone and having contact with somebody was a flight plan and it's not it's not anywhere close to that if I'd had the flight plan and I'd gone down the rescuers would have probably started 30 minutes or so after our crash versus the three hours that it took before my daughter called you know same with flight following it we've been using flight following that that notification time that from the time we crashed to the time people started looking would have been even narrower it also pays to make sure the airplane is equipped properly and contains the necessary gear for the trip for example while shoulder harnesses would not have prevented the accident they would have greatly reduced Brian and Jan's injuries warm clothes and survival equipment such as a plb could also have helped we had lap restraints only is a 1966 Cessna and I would put shoulder harnesses in a new airplane for sure that weren't equipped with one because it would have had a definite different different outcome for the both of us you have to do some planning to be able to deal with some of the things that you may face when I go into the backcountry there's gear that's going with you every time you need to be able to start a fire you need to be able to signal somebody you need to seriously consider some sort of GPS system that's going to allow you to mark where you're at and the path that you've taken in because it's easy to get lost for pilots that's going to be a difficult thing to do because the storm or whatever the circumstances were that caused you to crash in the Hawaii mountains may not have allowed you to mark your location but those survival skills and the survival gear is something that you have to have we left in California weather was nice and warm and and comfortable so my wife and daughter were in basically Capri shorts and thin thin blouses and sandals look at that flight path that's what I would tell people again is you know from point A to point B or point A to point Z whatever is in between that consider that you're going to have to spend some time there and and plan for that that whole route above all always be learning invest in yourself experience may be the best teacher but confidence comes from having the skills to meet those experiences I don't know what kind of trips you make some people just make short hundred dollar hamburger hops that don't require flying over the mountains or you know unusual terrain but you just don't ever know and part of your pilot's skill sets and my mindset you know even though I'm a professional rescuer is having basic first aid as must I don't think my wife were to survive that night had I not known what to do the best survival equipment you can have is knowledge of first-aid and just basics of how to survive without much equipment at all because that's truly where we were I was dealing with just what we had in the aircraft and if so if you did have just something simple that's great whatever it is but know how to use it that is the biggest and best thing I can tell you is having those gadgets is one thing but knowing how to use them as a whole nother story I think when you look at this plane crash we were all very fortunate that the pilot of the plane also happened to be a career firefighter because he did what is probably the most important thing you can do for somebody in that situation and he stayed calm and it's a very difficult thing to keep your wits about you when you have these circumstances that you're just not used to dealing with right in front of you and you don't see a way out of it but if you can stay calm then you'll be able to start to make a plan or at least keep hope that somebody's coming to help you there were a lot of people involved in this rescue at one point I looked around and we probably had 50 people on scene so once we know that you're in a bad spot there are people coming but in the meantime you're going to be responsible for setting up some things to make that situation survivable for you whether it be starting a fire or building a shelter and all of those things that you wouldn't normally do in your day-to-day life if you can't stay calm and stay focused on what your problem is you're not going to be able to do that so I think the biggest thing that I would tell people is take a couple of deep breaths evaluate what options you've got and start to make some decisions that are going to improve your situation instead of just looking at the downside and starting to lose hope

Channel: Air Safety Institute

Views: 277,694

Rating: 4.9099216 out of 5

Keywords: Aviation (Industry), Pilot (Profession), Rescue (Profession), Accident (Cause Of Death), Aviation Safety (Literature Subject), Aircraft (Type Of Fictional Setting), Aircraft Owners And Pilots Association (Membership Organization), Survival Skills (TV Genre), rps, asi, pilot, flying, plane, aircraft, crash, accident, story, interview, weather, wx, stall, airport, flight plan, family, vfr, mountain, impact, ELT, emergency, survival, analysis, documentary, short, doc

Id: NokGZ4d9mrk

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/xiz111]

ASI's videos are excellent .. both the real pilot stories, and the accident analysis.

[u/eclipseflyer]

Hope this hasn't been submitted here yet. Just stumbled upon this on the Air Safety Institute's playlist. A story of misinterpreted weather, get-there-itis, a crash in the mountains and surviving the experience. A very educational and well produced video.

[u/ThatGuyNamedRey]

Totally thought this was Uncle Vernon from just looking at the thumbnail.

[u/mark-zach]

I haven't seen this one before. It definitely is a good example of little decisions leading up to a bad consequence. As the story played out I thought, this guy is doing the right things by landing and waiting for better weather. But then when you see the bigger picture you realize he should've just scrubbed the flight.