Real Pilot Story: Powerless Over Paris

I cycle the power one more time finally put in 7600 as soon as we saw the emergency squawk the supervisor was in Brian we got a situation going on over here I know the power is up for about a minute then [it] went out again Can you say souls and fuel remaining I don't know how much fuel I got but I thought I've got increased one or two quarts to give up or fight for your life hold them I love them and I put the nose of the plane down into the candle on the morning of February 5th 2017 Dr. Peter Edenhoffer an instrument-rated commercial pilot with over 1800 hours of experience flew his 1977 Cessna Cardinal from his home airport in Paris Texas to Castroville Airport near San Antonio after a long day of work Dr. Edenhoffer began prepping for his night flight home he checked the weather along his route in Castroville and Dallas the current weather conditions and forecasts were VFR favorable for flying but Paris was reporting low thick cloud cover that started just 200 feet above the ground of course the trouble with Paris is that they only give you the weather right now so we always have to look phenomenally in Dallas to see what the weather forecast is gonna be so I looked at that that was okay right around Greenville there was like a frontal weather front which of course meant that you know your your tension level goes up a little bit every time for me at least when I know I'm gonna be flying high and hard IFR but I didn't see anything there that said it's a no-go don't even don't even bother. Dallas altimeter 29.82 it was late Sunday so traffic was light and I had worked the doctor in to Paris come in from South Texas and cleared him for the approach and everything was normal November 34731 cross CUKBO at or above 3000 cleared RNAV GPS runway 35 approach. - and crossing CUKBO at or above 3,000 cleared for RNAV 35, 731 - November 34731 report CUKBO Report CUKBO. I was flying a fairly high for the Cardinal you know about 10,000 coming down and hit the clouds around 5,000 feet that's I knew I got about a mile of clouds to go before it get out November 3473 one radar contact lost and November 34731 there's a good chance I'll lose you on radios also here your radar service is terminated report your cancellation or downtime this frequency or flight service I'm going to give you an alternate Fort Worth center frequency of 123.92 23.92 for your cancellation also okay one two three point nine two so fly in and power goes out all the electric just completely went out at this point in the flight Dr. Edenhoffer is flying in IMC just below 2,500 feet on an RNAV approach into Paris at that altitude because of the area's topography he's expecting to have poor radio reception especially when talking to Fort Worth Center now without electrical power his Cessna Cardinal has no radios no fuel gauges no transponder no GPS no flap control and no lights inside the cockpit or outside the airplane I thought fine we'll just fly straight and leveled i was descending but leveled out somewhat and cycled back up and okay good everything's good again so by this time though how flown a little bit too far so I knew I had definitely passed the final approach fix so had to come back and you know thick IFR I don't want to change my altitude too much so I'm just gonna concentrate on making a nice horizontal turn back to the final approach fix as I'm coming back towards the the final approach the power goes out again and at this point my flaps are down and I'm thinking you know I don't need to be landing right now so full throttle we're just gonna abort so I figured okay this is not a good day tension levels up there and I did have my little red light so I put the headlights on so that provides some visibility so I could see the basics of the panel God level of least and I cycle the power one more time had enough power to get the flaps up and I'm climbing out not just to the missed approach but I'm climbing out past missed approach just trying to get above the clouds the the power went out the third time okay so at this time I'm really getting a little bit nervous and but still I had a backup gyro and just looking at all the other gauges the old steam gauges which are a good thing so finally got out of the clouds again about 5,000 and 5,500 somewhere around there but my concern at that point was what does ATC think do they know that I'm out here hopefully they don't think that just another GA pilot that landed and forgot to log out. - November 34731 is on the GPS runway 35 to Paris he's been there for about four minutes we should be getting a downtime within the next couple do you have any questions no questions right as phil was assuming the sector we both noticed that the doctors code had come back out of Paris on a missed approach he's still climbing he said he was on the GPS what's the missed approach altitude for that? he should be going to 2200 what do you see him at? he's at 4,500 now it looks like he's still climbing all right we know it's foggy we know it's IFR so it's not unusual for a pilot to do a missed approach and try again but usually one when they come up on a missed approach they they talk to us hey I had to do the missed approach you know let's you know new approach procedure or something but you get his transponder for a couple of hits like like Phil said for you know 20 30 seconds and then it goes away okay well he was climbing so we feel pretty confident that the airplane still flying the first sign that something was wrong was that he was above the missed approach altitude he's still climbing I think something's going on okay Brian we got a situation going on over here November 34731 Fort Worth Center over I cycle the power back that time I was pretty nervous already so I should had difficulty remembering what number do you put in what it's 7 something so it actually took like a good minute finally put in 7600 I know the power is up for about a minute and then went out again so here I am my brain is racing and I start seeing everything in terms of headlines and pictures and and I start seeing pictures of people in my hometown reading the paper all well he crashed he's a dumb doctor and ha ha and he should have known better and I see all these conversations going on in my mind I have three boys and what to tell them goodbye so pull out the phone and started to text Brian I think we have a situation going on. Yeah he's squawking emergency now what you got going on November 34731 he's through his missed approach altitude and it looks like he's starting to squawk emergency and do you know the nature of the emergency negative everything was normal cleared him for approach about seven eight minutes ago and it looks like he's just gone primary target only let's start running running the checklist and see if we might have a cell phone on file as soon as we saw the emergency squawk the supervisor was in and that lasted for about 20 or 30 seconds and then it went away and then we had only the primary target available right now the radars only painting the airplane just the skin of the airplane there's no electronics or anything so it can get a little dicey when you're just dealing with primary targets because it's they're not reliable Phil took over the sector and started making some broadcasts to see if we could race the doctor we don't know what's going on at this time November 34731 Fort Worth Center if you hear Fort Worth Center acknowledge and ident. - it was a real wave of just wanting to give up let's just get it over you know I'm not gonna make it just I figured well okay what are you doing I'm not going to crash the plane that'd be stupid you really kind of feel like well this just that's it, you know and I thought well that'd be kind of dumb and then I heard the voice of the flight examiner that did my IFR he says "fly the plane fly the plane" and I swear I heard his echoes fly plane so that's what I did fly the plane, don't worry about the rest I still have fuel so my backup plan is land on the highway really kind of stupid if you think about it because I couldn't have landed in Paris anyway and if you're flying down gliding without fuel onto a highway that you can't even really see wait how are you gonna land regain composure somewhat and knew I had to fly south I had the phone and I figured okay let's see what the phone can do I'm over five thousand feet my phone shouldn't work that's what I thought but the GPS came up on my phone I was heading the right directions I was actually starting to see some broken clouds and then I realized you know I can't even activate the runway lights I don't have radio I figured nah this is not good hello this is Fort Worth Center can you look up the flight plan on November 34731 and give me the information you have from his flight plan ok so you have a just the pilots name home base is Paris and no other information no phone number anything all right thank you I'm gonna see if I can find something on it. All right hey Hugh I got a couple of questions for you you got a minute - Hey Charlie this aircraft that's gone into Paris Cardinal yeah I got a little time on a cardinal way back when if he refueled in South Texas he's been in the air for about three hours how much more gas do you think he has he's probably burning about eight to nine gallons an hour as long as he's been in the air yeah he's probably starting to run low on gas all right thanks for the info November 34731 Fort Worth Center, over. Hey Charlie we got lucky I got the phone number from the switchboard operator at the hospital I tried calling, couldn't get an answer but if you want to go and try it straight from the sector I'm gonna go work with law enforcement at the airport see if we can get anything on the ground there all right I'll keep trying thanks Bryan come on hey Phil we've got the phone number but I can't get ahold of him I'll take the phone number and see if I can send him a text message sometimes thoughs go through Tthen I get a text from ATC, I thought you're kidding Wow they know I'm alive good this is really good so all of a sudden things start looking better we had already pretty much surmised that he was heading to majors because he had he had circled over commerce and was heading that way the adjacent area was working on getting the pilot controlled lights on in contact with the tower operator the airport manager to get them out there to get make sure the lights were manually turned on and I continued to provide him information about the weather and things of that nature via the text message and American 1080 need a favor yes sir got a pilot in distress we're trying to help them find an airport I need you to go to CTAF frequency one 118.65 it's at Greenville majors and keyup click it 7 times we want to get them on high intensity and just report back when you're done and thank you American 1080 appreciate the help contact Fort Worth Center on 126.57 you know this is kind of where you know that ATC is on the same wavelength because they also said they're going to have the runway lights activated the cavalry is coming yay! okay good all right so I start to descend and where there's a break in the clouds. I was going down and poof the brake goes away I'm back in the thick of it and I probably only gone down a thousand feet so I figured oh I don't want to do this so I figure okay flaps are retracted so I climbed back out of clouds and I'm thinking okay great now I just used up whatever remaining fuel I had probably on climbing and I figured plus I'm going pass the runway now so the runway is probably behind me now so look for another break and I found another break this time I was going to go for it I was not going to take a chance and it was a dive probably well beyond 2,000 feet per minute and just trying to get through that hole in the clouds alright guys it looks like he's lined up for the final. Keep your fingers crossed hey Charlie we got the lights on high intensity at majors and the Fire Rescue Service is standing by okay he's getting closer he's lined up and proof all of a sudden you're out of the clouds I mean clear 10 mile visibility and I figured wow I made it I'm out of clouds but I'm going kind of fast pulled back very gently slowed down somewhat still going way way too fast in the runways over there I can see they're not always see the fire trucks everything make a circle and I I just had the engine idling of course because really I'm thinking I have no fuel I'm not counting on fuel anymore I just want to land so I pulled back and almost right back into the clouds to slow down almost stall and then come back down and from there it was like nice 80 knot glide all the way in it was a squeaker you know I just got a text from him it says "landed safely by the grace of God" outstanding! good deal. when he texted that he had landed safely by the grace of God it was it was it was good yeah it was great yeah well and and because there's so so many times when these situations don't end up like they don't know the time it ends poorly yeah you know and and it's not it's not because of a black of effort here it's just when you're dealing with an airplane and a bad situation there's a lot of bad things that can happen unfortunately usually we just get to read a report about it the next day and it's not you know positive you know it's it's unfortunately sometimes not not a good outcome that cheer went up and then we went back to work I kill the engine. Stop and there's this penetrating silence, you can't hear a thing and you realize you made it and and you know you're not thinking quite right I gotta tell you right somehow I'm expecting this round of applause saying congratulations you made it that was awesome but it didn't happen of course you're the middle of the runway and the fire trucks seemed like forever for them to get there and I kind of thought well maybe they'll say good landing, he said you're alright? yeah. okay, follow us. - it was sort of anticlimactic you know the story went on after that obviously because we tried to figure out what it was and we went through the electrical system didn't find anything wrong so they figured well maybe there's something intermittent with the alternator, no. found some corroded terminals well maybe that was it I never had a real satisfying answer besides the basic radios and just plain navigation light there wasn't much on so yeah I don't know why I went out then. - In their decades of experience controllers Charlie Porter, Phil Enis, and Hugh Hunton had never met one of the pilots that helped while on duty that is until Dr. Edenhooffer came along you assist a pilot that's in in trouble and you get the solution and they make it out of it fine but you have you never meet them you never hear anything afterwards it's just at that moment when they realize everything's okay and they change to adviser frequency or go talk to the tower or just land and it's over it's just over and you don't know what happened it was really nice could to get the to talk to the doctor and and get to know a little bit about him and what he felt and and that you know we had an impact you know I'm a physician and they're as devoted as a physician to saving lives and that's saying a lot that someone that puts their interests of your own they could have gone home one guy stayed over time I mean they were really there rooting for me and it wasn't it wasn't just a job for them they were really they're trying to pull me out of this so I think probably helped a lot that they were able to think out of the box in my situation with the cellphones and had the ability and guts to do that that obviously cell phone communication was quite pivotal to my situation so I could've ended quite differently without a lot of lessons to be learned from this whole experience we need to talk about some of these things always have your little red light there when you live fly like literally always wear you never know I never thought this would happen I always thought that I couldn't see you all it and that but not that no power other little lessons like safety precautions I used to fly high at night now if I really high at night just because so I can make the next airport and that's that's a factor because if you know your engine goes well then your engine goes. so just pre-planning everything a whole lot more weather obviously even more cognizant of that although still have that problem you know if you don't have forecasts at where you're going how good is it and weather changes anyway so how reliable is a forecast I almost always will file a flight plan even if it's good weather, even if it's VFR it's just good practice - some pilots and I think they all should put their cell phone number in the remarks section that that's a part of your flight plan yeah that's a new file that put your cell number in please And if you have a satellite phone make sure it says satellite phone and put that number in there. - radio have a nice, a really good basic radio with big buttons that you can take out in your sleep and turn on and hit the emergency frequency I have three attitude indicators because if one of the three goes out well which of the two is right so you can play that game with yourself so so I thought three is a good number so when all three say the same thing that's when I land, honest it sounds really extreme but if you're flying a hard hard IFR it feels much better down here there really does

Channel: Air Safety Institute

Views: 252,551

Rating: 4.9026275 out of 5

Keywords: institute, aopa, aviation, pilot, fly, flying, flight, plane, airplane, airport, air, safety, asi, air safety, training, education, aircraft, pilots, cessna, ifr, imc, Paris, Texas, Edenhoffer, Peter, Charlie, Porter, Phil, Enis, Bryan, Beck, Hugh, Hunton, ATC, NATCA, Fort Worth, controller, RPS, real, landing, wx, weather, metar, cardinal, electrical, failure, emergency, squawk, lights, reenactment, documentary, greenville, kprx, kgvt, instrument, commercial, in the blind, approach, fix, go around, missed, ils, Kurt Sensenbrenner, Smithsonian

Id: UQtvi1ijPQ4

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/austinrc1260]

Paris, Texas for those wondering

[u/bbreedy]

Hadn't seen this posted, though it was uploaded about a week ago. Great story about surviving an electric failure in IMC. Has anyone else had to use their phone to contact ATC? Also a good reminder to shop around for a standby radio.

[u/waynemcc]

1. I file IFR flight plans via ForeFlight and always include my cell number
2. My aircraft and I are registered on Leidos with that cell number
3. I carry a handheld radio
4. My cell connects Bluetooth to my headset
5. I have a document in ForeFlight listing phone numbers for all the ATC Centers.

So that's all decent backup... and as in the video that would help a very diligent ATC get ahold of me via voice or text.

BUT, if I can't get ATC on voice... I'm quite certain that 1800wxbrief won't accept a TEXT message (I sent a test, and no response)... nor will the ATC Center (likely landline) numbers. So... why can't ATC post at least one number that will accept text??!! Maybe I missed it, but a bit of Google searching came up with nothing.

[u/widdizzles]

I have seen this before. The production quality from AOPA is spectacular (as expected). Highly recommend you watch all of their accident case study videos if you haven't already.

[u/[deleted]]

This and the other electrical failures I've seen is why I have a handheld radio.

[u/AmIaPilotYet]

In today’s world, I am baffled as why people do not have an efb on board. Even if you do not use it actively, for god sake, it is backup equipment which can save your life when shit like this happens.

[u/HXZHp9eLugJe]

That’s a great scenario. That said, I have quite a lot of backups to make sure I’m not at the mercy of a clever controller and lucky text reception. Garmin Inreach being one of the key ones, as a backup to the handheld, which is the first backup, crap range and all.