What a retarded airplane for that job.
FTFY
Che-sus! Wx like that, we gotta give 'em kudos for knowing which direction to SWIM!
That was the view of the runway from FSS taken just before the missed approach, the machine was reporting 1800RVR. They lost the engine around 2000ft on the missed, still well below radar coverage. They only had 17 boxes on so anywhere from 800-1000lb load, but still drifted down. We had 2 planes arrive before him, the first hit pretty substantial ice on the approach, the second not as bad, so may have been a factor. They reported breaking out around 200ft and being in ground effect. ATC tried to give them the location of the old Annette airfield, but with no radar there wasn't much they could do. Plus the Annette/Metlakatla weather wasn't much better than Ketchikan. They made one call to to FSS that they were trying for a beach and that was the last anyone heard them for the next few hours till searchers from Metlakatla found them on the beach. Keep in mind that KTN was 30G40 at the time so wind out where they were in Nichols Passage would have been even worse. Any beach out there would be in cell range, but no call an no ELT, so the general consensus was for a grim outcome.
Big props for the searchers out of Met, heading out in to 50kts winds, big water and white out conditions in a small boat and finding those guys.
The WX was bad enough to hold the helo in Sitka and the CG sent a 45 footer from KTN to search.
That was the view of the runway from FSS taken just before the missed approach, the machine was reporting 1800RVR. They lost the engine around 2000ft on the missed, still well below radar coverage. They only had 17 boxes on so anywhere from 800-1000lb load, but still drifted down. We had 2 planes arrive before him, the first hit pretty substantial ice on the approach, the second not as bad, so may have been a factor. They reported breaking out around 200ft and being in ground effect. ATC tried to give them the location of the old Annette airfield, but with no radar there wasn't much they could do. Plus the Annette/Metlakatla weather wasn't much better than Ketchikan. They made one call to to FSS that they were trying for a beach and that was the last anyone heard them for the next few hours till searchers from Metlakatla found them on the beach. Keep in mind that KTN was 30G40 at the time so wind out where they were in Nichols Passage would have been even worse. Any beach out there would be in cell range, but no call an no ELT, so the general consensus was for a grim outcome.
Big props for the searchers out of Met, heading out in to 50kts winds, big water and white out conditions in a small boat and finding those guys.
