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Pilot, two children survive night on airplane wing in frozen Alaska lake after crash
The Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser, carrying a pilot and two juvenile family members, went missing on Sunday while on a recreational sightseeing tour.
For 12 freezing hours, a pilot and two children clung to the wing of their crashed plane, half submerged in an icy Alaska lake, their survival uncertain until a good samaritan spotted the wreckage and set a rescue in motion.
While scrolling through Facebook on Sunday night, Terry Godes saw a post seeking help to find a missing plane. By Monday morning, he was at Tustumena Lake near the edge of a glacier when he spotted what he thought was wreckage.
“It kind of broke my heart to see that, but as I got closer down and lower, I could see that there are three people on top of the wing,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
He said a little prayer, then continued to approach and witnessed a miracle.
“They were alive and responsive and moving around," he said, adding they waved at him as he approached.
The Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser, carrying a pilot and two juvenile family members, went missing on Sunday while on a recreational sightseeing tour from Soldotna to Skilak Lake.
The Alaska National Guard rescued the three from the eastern edge of Tustumena Lake on Monday after Godes informed other pilots searching for the plane that he had located it.
Another pilot, Dale Eicher, heard Godes' radio call and, being closer to Skilak Lake with better cell reception, notified troopers and gave them the plane's coordinates.
“I wasn't sure if we would find them, especially because there was a cloud layer over quite a bit of the mountains so they could have very easily been in those clouds that we couldn't get to,” Eicher said.
But he said that finding them within an hour of starting the search and finding them alive “was very good news.”
The three were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, Alaska State Troopers said.
“They spent a long, cold, dark, and wet night out on top of a wing of an airplane that they weren't planning on,” Godes said.
He mentioned that many miracles were involved, from the plane not sinking to the survivors staying on the wing, and the fact that they survived the night in temperatures dropping into the 20s (subzero Celsius).
The plane was mostly submerged in the lake, with only the wing and the top of the rudder visible above the ice and water.
Located about 130 km southwest of Anchorage, the 24,200-hectare Tustumena Lake is known for its sudden, dangerous winds, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
With AP inputs
