Lost Pilot Sends Text MSG for Help!?!

chris

Well-Known Member
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/01/27/m1a_KEMPER_0127.html

High above a rural stretch of Florida east of Fort Myers, a young student pilot on her first solo flight began to panic.

She had stopped receiving the radio signals that served as her way points in the sky. Now she was lost, and her single-engine trainer was running out of fuel.

Desperation set in.

If her instructor were there, he would have told her to call for help on an emergency frequency. Instead, the student reached for her cellphone and thumbed a text message to a friend, also enrolled at Kemper Aviation flight school near Lantana.

I'm lost, the message read. What do I do?

Moments later, the student's plane crash-landed in a field of tall grass near LaBelle. She emerged with minor injuries.
 
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/01/27/m1a_KEMPER_0127.html

High above a rural stretch of Florida east of Fort Myers, a young student pilot on her first solo flight began to panic.

She had stopped receiving the radio signals that served as her way points in the sky. Now she was lost, and her single-engine trainer was running out of fuel.

Desperation set in.

If her instructor were there, he would have told her to call for help on an emergency frequency. Instead, the student reached for her cellphone and thumbed a text message to a friend, also enrolled at Kemper Aviation flight school near Lantana.

I'm lost, the message read. What do I do?

Moments later, the student's plane crash-landed in a field of tall grass near LaBelle. She emerged with minor injuries.

Did the txt look like this:

OMGZ! IOUD ISO KWIM? Kbye...
 
OMGZ! IOUD ISO KWIM? Kbye...


Lol_wut_pack.jpg
 
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/01/27/m1a_KEMPER_0127.html

High above a rural stretch of Florida east of Fort Myers, a young student pilot on her first solo flight began to panic.

She had stopped receiving the radio signals that served as her way points in the sky. Now she was lost, and her single-engine trainer was running out of fuel.

Desperation set in.

If her instructor were there, he would have told her to call for help on an emergency frequency. Instead, the student reached for her cellphone and thumbed a text message to a friend, also enrolled at Kemper Aviation flight school near Lantana.

I'm lost, the message read. What do I do?

Moments later, the student's plane crash-landed in a field of tall grass near LaBelle. She emerged with minor injuries.

Hmmmm...
 
Getgin lost in Florida just be-F'n-wilders me.

Students have an amazing ability to get lost anywhere. Every non-pilot I have taken up in a glider has not had a clue where we were after 3 minutes. (I don't generally venture more than 3 miles from the field.)

But yeah, getting lost in Florida should be nearly impossible.
 
I don't understand how you get completly lost... You have so much available to you to find your way home. Sectional landmarks, VORs, NDB, A fudging GPS. How much more could you want? I fly out of Barren Omaha, Neabraska and flown hundreds of miles without getting lost just by using dead reckoning+Radio aids and a simple gps that gives me bearing to the airport and my GS. Redicoulous to get lost over Florida to say the least...
 
it is possible to get lost in the traffic pattern?

That's what I was thinking. No way a CFI would send somebody out on a xc or even to the practice area on their first solo. I guess she forgot to turn base or something and got super disoriented?

I really have no idea how she managed to screw up so much.
 
Getgin lost in Florida just be-F'n-wilders me.

Like getting lost in California too.

Coastline in the west, I-5 & Hwy 99 in the center, Sierra Nevadas toward the east.

Heading North, water on the left, you're on the west coast. Heading South, water on the left, east coast. Look for the big freaking lake.

I think people leave out the deductive reasoning variable out of the dead reckoning equation.
 
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