N333LD, you hear me? Foxtrot, India, Sierra, Hotel, Yankee
No comment on the triple three call sign
One of the most grabbiest headlines today consisted of various forms of, “Passenger with 'no idea' how to fly plane lands aircraft in Florida after pilot has medical emergency.” It is a feel-good story. In these times of utter chaos, it spawned a smile. Click bait, for sure, as while I was busy working, I had to know more.
According to reporting by The Palm Beach Post (bold mine),
The nine-seater Cessna 208 Caravan was on the way back from The Bahamas just before noon when the pilot told his passengers he wasn’t feeling well. He fell against the controls, putting the aircraft into a nosedive and sharp turn, according to the FAA.
Instead of panicking at 10,000 feet, one of the passengers grabbed the controls and called into Fort Pierce Air Traffic Control as the plane was about 30 miles offshore.
Most news sources reported there were two passengers and a pilot onboard the plane. Many of the news outlets refer to an FAA blog. None of the reports I found linked to it. I searched faa.gov and couldn’t find the source, but maybe someone else might find it?
The Associated Press ran the story, and echos reports of the passenger pilot’s communications with an air traffic controller in Fort Pierce, Florida:
“I’ve got a serious situation here,” the man said Tuesday afternoon, according to audio on LiveATC.net, a website that broadcasts and archives air traffic controller communications. “My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”
This is reported such that it can be assumed to be the first communication of the passenger pilot with air traffic control at Fort Pierce. The problem is, though, it wasn’t.
ABC affiliate, WPBF, out of West Palm Beach, Florida, provides a link to “audio from the Fort Pierce tower” and a link to a transcript of the “Fort Hood Tower Log”. I downloaded the audio file to my phone and my tablet; I couldn’t get it to play. I accessed it on my computer, and it played, but with no sound, not a peep I could detect (also tried with headphones - still no sound) - if someone can access it, and actually hears something, please let me know. The “Fort Pierce Log” transcript begins at 11:21 with, “Passenger: I've got a serious situation here. My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane but I am..”
Many newsources reference “LiveATC.net,” which is great, I imagine if one wants to search by Airport/ARTCC Code (which is KFPR for Ft. Pierce) and the frequency and listen through a bunch of recording - I wish I had the time to do this. Fortunately VAS Aviation recorded and trancripted the communications for us (BTW, interesting to read the comments at that link, as many noted the passenger pilot must have had some prior experience).
The recording compiled by VAS Aviation establishes the passenger pilot’s first communication with the tower at Fort Pierce as, “Traffic, N-triple three-Lima-Delta, you hear me?”
This does not sound like someone who had, according to Ari Hait, “zero” experience. This passenger knew the call sign of the plane. How many passengers know that? Also, he knew the FAA phonetic alphabet (which, yes, many people know, especially those with military training). But he also began his communications with “traffic,” and it was offered casually; what inexperienced person would begin a call with air traffic control (in an intense emergency, after pulling a plane out of a nose dive) by uttering “traffic.”
In defense of Ari, a friend of mine observed,
I know that reporters frequently get details wrong. And then if the next reporter goes off of the original report, it’s like a game of telephone. So him saying something like “I had zero flight hours in this plane” ends up being reported as “he had never seen the inside of a cockpit”. Just a thought.
And this certainly is true. But my next question would be why did the reporters eliminate the first communication in the transcript? It is an important one, as it undermines credibility in the assertion the passenger pilot had no experience. We know reporters repeat talking points, and we know the news is skewed, but we jack this up to sponsors like the “Pf” kind. In this case, it is blatant manipulation of a story for who knows why.
At some point the passenger pilot quickly responds to air traffic control at Ft. Pierce says, “I am descending right now at 550 feet a minute, passing 8640 now.” Below is flight tracking altitude and speed for N333LD. It is somewhat easy to approximate where he is on this chart. The green line is altitude, and it is clear where he begins to descend, it is also easy to appoximate 8600 feet. When he says this, it is soon after when he began the descent.
This graphic shows the steady climb upward after leaving Marsh Harbour, the stabalization at 12,000 feet (climb and stabilization looks to be on autopilot). It shows the desent to approximately 10,000 feet (9,825, to be exact, and also on autopilot) in preparation for landing. It shows the sudden, accellerated descent of the plane and the corresponding spike in speed when the plane was reported to be in a nose dive - the plane descended around 3,000 feet, and it looks like the two passengers had only seconds to respond.
Yes, seconds… The plane plunged over 3,000 feet to 6,425 feet in 32 seconds. It looks as if the plunge began just slightly before 11:58:39, and the plane was pulled out of it between 11:58:55 and 11:59:12, but definately closer to 11:58:55. Giving this scenario a large benefit of doubt, I’ll go with 32 seconds as the amount of time the passengers had to respond. Verbally counting out 32 seconds will allow one to understand just how long this is, so it is plausible if the passenger was in or near the pilot’s seat (the Caravan is a smallish airplane with pilot and copilot seating), he had enough time to pull the plane out of the nosedive.
At the time of the nosedive, just after 11:58:23, the plane was knocked off its 286 degree heading (west, with just a tad of north mixed in) heading (looks like it spun, but this is probably an anomoly). After control of the plane was regained, it was no longer on autopilot and started heading south.
While airspeed was maintained with slight fluctuations, note the picture perfect desent, with no variance.
The other little oddity is the transcript of communications with the Ft. Pierce tower offered by news sources (WPFB) and the recording offered by VAS Aviation do not match up. The transcript includes statements made by the passenger pilot that indicate a lack of experience. These statements are interlaced in the conversation, but are not heard on the VAS Aviation audio. Some examples:
@15:33 - “Passenger: You guys located me yet? I can't even get my screen to turn on. It has all the information on it. Any ideas on that?”
and @16:11 “Passenger: Muffled... I have no idea how to stop the airplane. I don't know how to do anything.”
Since I do not get any audio from the source from which WPFB indicates the transcript was prepared, I have no clue which is the correct version. If it turns out VAS Aviation’s recording is complete and unaltered, this would mean parts of the transcript were written from thin air, and if so, this would be really sad.
N333LD, you hear me? Foxtrot, India, Sierra, Hotel, Yankee
This is great with more fact checking analysis than MSM applies in a year of stories. It sure does seem like a tall tale to believe this person had zero experience and calmly pulled it off.
I know it’s hard to hypothesise other people’s intentions, but I’m curious what you think would be the reason for these embellishments? What is there to gain by underestimating someone’s pilot knowledge? Just for a feel good story? Also, I’m very curious as to what happened to the actual pilot. Heart attack? And why are there no interviews with the two other passengers? It’s all a bit odd.