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Running out of fuel 253 miles from Hawaii

submitted by SFOGuy

9 years 10 months 4 weeks ago

This professional ferry pilot was trying to get a Cirrus propeller plane from California to Hawaii (it had extra tanks in it)---when he discovered, past the halfway point to Hawaii, that his final fuel tank wasn't going to work. He apparently tried all sorts of things to get the fuel flowing, but realized it wasn't going to work.

He contacted the Coast Guard, was notified of an ocean liner along his pathway to Hawaii, met a C-130 Hercules sent to provide overwatch, then pulled his Cirrus' parachute and ditched in what were apparently heavy seas (look how quickly a plane with empty fuel tanks is suddenly flooding and underwater).

He got out of the plane, into his one person life raft, and was rescued by a lifeboat being used as a rescue boat from the ocean liner.

Lucky guy and a good ending to a bad technical problem (not the usual "fuel exhaustion when someone should have known better" situation)

Engineering because the plane parachute thing is pretty cool.