80-year old wife lands twin after 81-year old husband dies

No Kiddin....... WOW.......

80 years old.. with a dead husband ..And a dead engine on a twin,,, and walks away...:yikes:

There were angels in that cabin:yesnod::yesnod:
 
N801BH said:
No Kiddin....... WOW.......

80 years old.. with a dead husband ..And a dead engine on a twin,,, and walks away...:yikes:

There were angels in that cabin:yesnod::yesnod:
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Not to mention it looked like it was a pretty decent landing all things considered. Looks like that airplane will fly again. Damn fine job.
 
Wow is right. I keep trying to convince my wife to at least take some lessons so she can feel comfortable with landing in an emergency.
 
Challenged said:
Wow is right. I keep trying to convince my wife to at least take some lessons so she can feel comfortable with landing in an emergency.
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I started early on letting my wife handle the controls, tune the radios etc. Then we progressed to lowering flaps and landing gear and slowing the plane to landing speeds. We would pick a floor altitude and she would attempt to make a gradual descent to that floor. After she was comfortable with that I scheduled her for a couple of hours with an instructor. She was plonking down on the centerline in no time. Teaching your spouse to tune the radios and land is a simple act of preparedness. We all should consider it.
 
Our flying club does a "Pinch hitter" a member can let a family member take some instruction to feel comfortable with landings in case of emergency. For me it was the beginning of this journey to get my license because "landing" was *fun* :)
 
So tragic for her.
 
I gotta agree with Peggy on this one. I don't think she regarded walking away from this one as some sort of miracle, or that she thought there were angels anywhere near.

That of course is assuming she loved the old guy.

I went to a friends memorial a few years ago. His widow bravely got up and gave a wonderful speech about their lives together. Not a tear, not a quivering lip. She might as well have been giving a speech about an upcoming flower show.

Then she rid her home of every single reminder of the guy within a few weeks.

-John
 
John Baker said:
I gotta agree with Peggy on this one. I don't think she regarded walking away from this one as some sort of miracle, or that she thought there were angels anywhere near.

That of course is assuming she loved the old guy.

I went to a friends memorial a few years ago. His widow bravely got up and gave a wonderful speech about their lives together. Not a tear, not a quivering lip. She might as well have been giving a speech about an upcoming flower show.

Then she rid her home of every single reminder of the guy within a few weeks.

-John
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Everyone deals with greif in different ways. I love my wife, if she died her stuff would be gone by the end of the funeral. I would not want the torture of looking at every piece and item of hers. It's like taking a bandaid off, get it over with. That's just me. :dunno:
 
Geico - I agree. :) I loved my grandpa more then anything. When he finally died it was all good. People wondered why I didn't cry at the funeral. I was at peace with it. Everyone grieves differently. I felt like I was the consoler of the visitors instead of letting them console me.
 
John Baker said:
I gotta agree with Peggy on this one. I don't think she regarded walking away from this one as some sort of miracle, or that she thought there were angels anywhere near.

That of course is assuming she loved the old guy.
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I've read in other stories that they were indeed very much in love.
N801BH said:
No Kiddin....... WOW.......

80 years old.. with a dead husband ..And a dead engine on a twin,,, and walks away...:yikes:

There were angels in that cabin:yesnod::yesnod:
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And in another story I read, one engine was "sputtering". And she has had prior pilot training, all the way to soloing, but it was 30 years ago. She is also the survivor of 2 heart attacks herself and is fairly frail. And apparently she cracked a vertebrae in the landing.
 
gprellwitz said:
I've read in other stories that they were indeed very much in love.

And in another story I read, one engine was "sputtering". And she has had prior pilot training, all the way to soloing, but it was 30 years ago. She is also the survivor of 2 heart attacks herself and is fairly frail. And apparently she cracked a vertebrae in the landing.
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Yikes.
 
gprellwitz said:
And in another story I read, one engine was "sputtering". And she has had prior pilot training, all the way to soloing, but it was 30 years ago. She is also the survivor of 2 heart attacks herself and is fairly frail. And apparently she cracked a vertebrae in the landing.
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She is still Very lucky..... A sputtering engine on a twin, with a frail 80 YO lady.... This could have easily turned into a smoking hole in the ground.:yesnod:
 
Thank you Lord, finally a STFU to the ME fear mongers who preach how on top of your game on multi engine or "it'll kill you! Oooooo scary scary". A big bad fire breathing you can't learn to fly in one in 250 hrs fire breathing 421. 80 year old lady did a talk down approach, went OEI even and lived to tell the tale. How well do you think she would have faired when her single engine died?
 
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Henning said:
Thank you Lord, finally a STFU to the ME fear mongers who preach how on top of your game on multi engine or "it'll kill you! Oooooo scary scary". A big bad fire breathing you can't learn to fly in one in 250 hrs fire breathing 421. 80 year old lady did a talk down approach, went OEI even and lived to tell the tale. How well do you think she would have faired when her single engine died?
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:popcorn::popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:
 
saracelica said:
Geico - I agree. :) I loved my grandpa more then anything. When he finally died it was all good. People wondered why I didn't cry at the funeral. I was at peace with it. Everyone grieves differently. I felt like I was the consoler of the visitors instead of letting them console me.
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Exactly, and you lost someone very close to you. Everyone grieves differently.

Sorry about your grandfather.
 
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gprellwitz said:
I've read in other stories that they were indeed very much in love.

And in another story I read, one engine was "sputtering". And she has had prior pilot training, all the way to soloing, but it was 30 years ago. She is also the survivor of 2 heart attacks herself and is fairly frail. And apparently she cracked a vertebrae in the landing.
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""She reported one engine was sputtering on that last attempt to land."

Yeah, she didn't land an engine-out twin. But that isn't to take away from what she did which is amazing.
​
 
Henning said:
Thank you Lord, finally a STFU to the ME fear mongers who preach how on top of your game on multi engine or "it'll kill you! Oooooo scary scary". A big bad fire breathing you can't learn to fly in one in 250 hrs fire breathing 421. 80 year old lady did a talk down approach, went OEI even and lived to tell the tale. How well do you think she would have faired when her single engine died?
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Well, a sputtering engine on final with a twin when the other engine is likely pulled back is not going to be too hard to manage. Now, if she'd had to go around .....
 
jnmeade said:
Well, a sputtering engine on final with a twin when the other engine is likely pulled back is not going to be too hard to manage.
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.. until you toss in a dead husband/pilot, 30 years since your last flight lesson, and so forth. Those things might possibly ratchet the stress level up a notch, maybe even two.
 
DaleB said:
.. until you toss in a dead husband/pilot, 30 years since your last flight lesson, and so forth. Those things might possibly ratchet the stress level up a notch, maybe even two.
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Exactly! I brought this up in another thread, I think the difference between a persons basal reaction to stress, accelerate or freeze, is a greater factor in your survival in an emergency than anything else.
 
DaleB said:
.. until you toss in a dead husband/pilot, 30 years since your last flight lesson, and so forth. Those things might possibly ratchet the stress level up a notch, maybe even two.
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You took my comments about 180 degrees out of context - they were a comment on Hennings post. I didn't say a word about stress. I was talking about the difficulty of flying a twin on reduced power on final. It's not very hard in the first place. If you are landing a twin with one engine out, final is the easiest place to fly it because assmetrical thrust is less a factor. As I said, if she'd had to do a go around on one engine, things would have been different.
 
DaleB said:
.. until you toss in a dead husband/pilot, 30 years since your last flight lesson, and so forth. Those things might possibly ratchet the stress level up a notch, maybe even two.
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Exactly what I was thinking. I'd take the burning match in my face (Fate is the Hunter) over my dead spouse sitting next to me!
 
brentee said:
Exactly what I was thinking. I'd take the burning match in my face (Fate is the Hunter) over my dead spouse sitting next to me!
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Actually, it's a pretty good deal at that age. My ex in Aus, both her grandma's took a liking to me, and they're in their 80s. They're quite ready to finish up with life, they are tired and outlived their spouses. In that they were opposites. One, the day that mean git died was the happiest day in her life; the other lost her partner and it was a hard event buffered by the fact that he had crippling arthritis for years.

At 80 you accept death on a level that precludes freaking out about it. In her circumstance she had the option of just not doing anything with the plane and letting it crash. Personally I think a plane crash while traveling would be a pretty good deal for my mom and dad.
 
Not to minimize this lady's loss, or her feat, both of which I think are monumental, but this story got me thinking that when my time is up, I'd be fortunate to go doing what I loved- provided I wouldn't be risking others
 
She was calmer and had better situational awareness than her rescuers. Especially regarding her fuel state. They were dismissing information she was giving them.
 
Just got done listening to the audio. Unbelievable, 40+ minutes and I was hanging on every second. Thank God for the people involved. Every time I heard heterodyne (doubling), I thought of miscommunication and disaster. It still worked out. All I can say is...WOW, and so sorry for her loss...
 
I think everyone did a great job. There were a couple of questions that came up, though. First, who was the other party talking to her, trying to get her to go to Green Bay? Her getting two conflicting sets of instructions was certainly a cause of confusion. Her son was apparently trying to find that out from her, but I didn't think he ever got an answer, probably because they didn't really identify themselves to her.

The second surprise was the emphasis that her chase pilot was putting on trimming the aircraft. It certainly makes it easier to fly, but I'm not sure that he wasn't adding more confusion and tasks.

Of course, it is very easy to armchair quarterback after the fact. They did a great job and had about as good an outcome as could be hoped for.
 
I heard that she flew around for an hour to make sure he was dead.
 
wabower said:
I heard that she flew around for an hour to make sure he was dead.
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Actually, it did strike me that she barely mentioned him on the audio posted above, just that he might be blocking the trim wheel. I'm under the impression that she already knew he was dead. Her concern to get on the ground quickly was because of fuel, not because she wanted to get him medical attention.

And it did sound from her description that the right engine was more than just sputtering, it was truly dead.
 
Any one hear anymore of how the lady is doing nowadays? This happened last week right?
 
gprellwitz said:
Actually, it did strike me that she barely mentioned him on the audio posted above, just that he might be blocking the trim wheel. I'm under the impression that she already knew he was dead. Her concern to get on the ground quickly was because of fuel, not because she wanted to get him medical attention.

And it did sound from her description that the right engine was more than just sputtering, it was truly dead.
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It wasn't relevant to the task at hand outside blocking the trim wheel. Why he was slumped there was not a relevant factor, dead or alive, the primary concern of landing ASAP did not change, and if they ran out of fuel nobody was getting help.
 
She was interviewed this morning. Seemed fine.

As far as the "Green Bay" question, at first I wondered if he had two receive sources selected on the audio panel, and had just switched to Unicom, but the more I think about it, it was probably some pilot "trying to be helpful" on the Unicom frequency at a different airport. They're shared.

She would hear them, but the recording is obviously a handheld on the ground near or at the airport she eventually landed at.

Eventually whoever else was talking to her figured out that she was having a conversation and they couldn't hear both sides so they shut up.
 
roncachamp is an air traffic controller up in that area. I wonder what he has heard about this.

Paging Steve M.
 
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