In October 2024 a pilot and his wife were flying a King Air twin turboprop aircraft to Monterey when the pilot suffered a cardiac arrest and ultimately died while the aircraft was on autopilot at 20,000 feet. His wife was a student pilot with no multi engine, instrument, turbine or other ratings, but she knew enough to ask for help on the radio. What followed was almost 2 hours of help from air traffic control and other pilots to guide her to a safe landing in Bakersfield.
This grew out of a little side project, using real data from aircraft tracking to recreate the flight path and views, an authentic aircraft model with a cockpit that matches the aircraft, and ATC recordings of this dramatic event. I’ve used the same reconstruction tools for air disasters, but I wanted to share one with a happy ending.
Based on the the ATC recordings that were FOIA’d by AvocadoFlight , he provided the unedited audio, but he has a different version which includes sequences I cut for brevity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XUtVUQPcyw
More details on the event:
https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/449893
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