FoxKhan

Hello everyone,

A Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander made a forced landing yesterday on a somewhat remote mountain in Transylvania (Romania). The pilot was a former airline pilot with 38 years experience and over 16 000 hours of flying time. He and one of the passengers died a few hours after the crash landing occurred. Four other passengers and the co-pilot survived.

The plane was transporting medics from Bucharest to the western part of Romania to harvest organs for transplant when it was forced to crash land at an altitude of 1,400 meters (4,595 feet). The conditions were poor with low visibility due to heavy fog. One of the survivors said that „the pilot tried to de-ice the aircraft, we lost altitude and crashed”.

I took more than 6 hours for the rescue teams to get to the crash site, not because the road was that difficult or because the crash area was that remote, but because the Romanian authorities were unable to determine the location of the crashed aircraft. The survivors were found by local mountain rangers and villagers.

From the information I currently have, the BN-2 had unfortunately only a 121.5 analog ELT. The medics had smartphones on them and managed to call and alert the authorities even if the network coverage was poor at the location. Unfortunately, for reasons still unknown, the survivors were unable to obtain precise GPS coordinates using their phones.

Again, the terrain wasn't very difficult, you could get with off road vehicles up to about 3 km of the crash site in maybe less than half the time in took (a local off-road club got there before the authorities), foggy conditions, above freezing temperatures, some snow. The rescue teams had about 1 hour and a half of daylight. Helicopters weren't available due to bad weather conditions.

Determining the plane recharge and the survivors’ position was the main problem. Could have anything been done to find their location sooner? With your experience, how would have you approached this situation knowing that pin pointing their position as fast as you could might have saved lives?

Thank you,
Fox

brianb

A GPS based SAT phone would have been my first choice, especially in areas of poor "smart phone" coverage.

savall

I was under the impression that the GPS locator in the iPhone and most other smart phones was not dependent on how good cell coverage is; I thought it was a standard GPS chip that should be able to locate even in poor service... I thought the service only made it so that the map would load in detail.

threeighteen

GPS locator in the iphone is abysmal at best. And the map typically doesn't even load if you don't have a 3G or better connection.

brianb

That is correct. You would need a "true" SAT phone. Similar to what the SEAL teams use but based on a civilian platform.