Student Pilot Recovering After Overnight Stranding
It's one of the very first things a
flight instructor tells a VFR student pilot: if you run into clouds
or extremely poor visibility conditions, turn around NOW. A Rocky
Mountain College student pilot took that advice on a recent night
cross-country flight... and though his plane did crash, stranding
him overnight in snowy conditions, who knows how much worse things
could have been.
As ANN reported, the student
-- now identified as Andrew Scheffer -- took off from Billings, MT
the evening of March 25, bound for Pryor. According to the National
Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report on the accident,
things were fine for the first 45 minutes or so of the night
flight... but things took a turn for the worse when rain and snow
moved in along his flight path.
Scheffer began to turn the Piper PA-28-181 Archer around, the
NTSB says... but as the plane came around, Scheffer says he
received a terrain warning from the aircraft's onboard GPS. He
pulled up in response to the warning... and that's the last thing
he remembers.
The aircraft came down in the Pryor Mountains, about 40 miles
south of Billings. The impact knocked Scheffer unconscious; when he
came to, he put on a jacket and wool hat, and wrapped himself in a
tarp as protection against temperatures which dropped to near zero
Fahrenheit.
In the morning, he used his cellphone to call his flight
instructor, then hiked out to meet rescuers through a mile of
waist-deep snow, wearing his jacket, his hat... and shorts and
sneakers.
From the sound of things, Scheffer had several fortunate
circumstances in his favor: the plane's ELT sent out a signal on
impact, which was received by authorities at 2152 local time. His
aircraft also had a well-stocked emergency kit, including a
high-visibility orange tarp, space blankets, and flares... the
latter he used to flag down passing aircraft. He was also able to
briefly hail search crews using the plane's comm.
The NTSB also noted Scheffer attended a recent Winter Survival
Clinic, operated by the Montana Department of Transportation.
After a brief hospital stay and treatment for hypothermia,
Scheffer is recovering. He hasn't returned to the flight line yet,
though, as his time has reportedly been tied up talking to
investigators.
Again, it could have been far worse.
"He is a lucky, lucky, lucky, kid," Al Blain, whose family
operates the aircraft recovery service tasked with retrieving the
wreckage, told The Associated Press. "He had God looking out for
him. It literally sawed the seat off next to him.
"The aircraft was extremely destroyed," he added.