14 June 2016
+VIDEO Three men had a lucky escape when a single-engine Beech Musketeer aircraft being flown by an 81-year-old pilot had to make an emergency landing on a glacier near Whistler, British Columbia last week.
The three were on a sight-seeing flight over mountains north of Vancouver. Pilot Vern Hannah took off from Pitt Meadows Airport in clear, warm weather at 0830 on Sunday 5 June, and the flight went well until Hannah took a wrong turn into a blind valley.
“We thought we were turning into Whistler Valley,” said Hannah, “but we turned one too soon and it’s a blind valley. You’ve got to climb out over the top and we didn’t have enough power to climb out.
“When we got up close to stall speed, the only way that I could avoid stalling was to lower the nose and take a run at the next little hill. It was too late to turn back, so all we could do was try and out climb the valley, so we flew up the valley,” he continued.
“But we kept losing airspeed and there was a terrific downdraft that kept us from climbing. Pretty soon we were right close to the rocks.”
Luckily, the glacier appeared and Hannah took the decision to land on the snow-covered surface… and it paid off.
In the right seat, passenger Peter Jedynakiewicz, a 54-year-old with some gliding experience, noted the airspeed just as they touched down
“We could have crashed into the rock and there was lots of fuel in the wing,” said Jedynakiewicz. “But he got over the glacier. I checked in the last second, the speed was 40 miles per hour when we had the impact with the ice. It was a soft landing.”
CBC News coverage
But that wasn’t the end of their ordeal. Leaving a note in the aircraft, they crawled over the glacier, avoiding crevasses, and then set off downhill following a river. No flightplan had been filed and the aircraft’s Emergency Locator Transmitter failed to go off. No one knew where they were.
“We followed the river so anybody can find us and because we had to have water to drink,” said Jedynakiewicz. “This water saved our lives because of the hot weather. We dried so fast. I drank maybe 10 gallons in just two days.”
The Canadian Rescue Coordination Centre received a report from a snowmobiler who had spotted the aircraft on the glacier, and sent out search aircraft. After the three men had spent a night on the trail, a helicopter spotted them on a small beach alongside the river and they were picked up… unhurt.
Search and Rescue helicopter finds the men’s Beech Musketeer on the glacier near Whistler Mountain, BC. Lucky indeed! [Photos: Royal Canadian Air Force]
