Plane Crash
Jonathan Leber
Audio: 911 call for help from Lake MichiganPosted on 04/26/2005 7:11:36 PM PDT by Jean S
A 20-year-old ministry student's rented single-engine plane ran out of gas and went down in Lake Michigan about five miles offshore, prompting him to make a frantic 911 call from his cell phone pleading for help.
| Plane Crash |
|
Jonathan Leber |
| 911 call |
| Audio: 911 call for help from Lake Michigan |
Rescue crews in boats, helicopters and planes spent much of Tuesday searching the choppy waters for Jonathan Leber before calling off the search late in the afternoon.
Leber told a dispatcher he had no flotation device and was planning to swim to shore.
"I need any help real fast," Leber of Springfield, Va., said in the call shortly before midnight Monday.
"My plane's going down real fast," he added as the dispatcher asked him questions.
He said, "I'm in the water" before the water could be heard in the background and the call cut off.
The Coast Guard estimated Leber could survive in the 44-degree water for about four hours, Lt.j.g. Boris Montasky said. Investigators don't believe the plane floated for long.
Leber, who was preparing for the ministry at Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Watertown, was flying west across the lake when he radioed he was low on fuel, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
He ditched his plane in the lake a short time later.
Leber was flying under visual flight rules and was not required to file a flight plan, Cory said.
"He had gone for the weekend to New York. He had stopped in Michigan Sunday and was coming back from Michigan," said Darryl Sturgill, assistant to the college's president.
Leber had rented the plane from Wisconsin Aviation Four Lakes Inc. of Madison.
"It's tragic," said Jeff Baum, the company's president. "He was a young man with a promising life."
The National Transportation Safety Board would investigate the crash. The search included Coast Guard boats and helicopters, a C-130 plane from the Canadian Coast Guard and boats from the Milwaukee Police and Fire Departments.
Coast Guard Lt. Rolando Hernandez said the search would not resume unless investigators had new information that would lead them to think Leber could be alive.
Complete coverage of this story will appear online later tonight and in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the morning.
Sorry - very emotional time. Read your first comment and overeacted immediately. Please accept my apology for my gut instict. Please, all, don't trash the pilot. He made mistakes, and his family is suffering. They very much appreciate your prayers at this very sad time.
No worries. Prayers up for you and yours in this difficult time.
I don't get it. A good friend dies and you immediately sign up on a website and find the thread where they're comment on his death? Weird.
Good catch, ClintonBeGone. This may be the most recent incarnation of the infamous "death troll" (Poohbah coined the term), that periodically signs up on FR for a thread about someone's tragic death, pretends to be a close friend or relative, uses guilt to evoke the deepest sympathy and tries to see how many posters he can suck in. Typically, to prove his bonafides, he'll google up as much information as he can find on the victim and sprinkle it throughout his posts. I think the last time the death troll struck was on the thread about the death of a base jumper who died parachuting off of a tall radio tower.
--Boot Hill
LOL I had no idea that such a person existed. Pretty sick isn't it?
That's one of the reasons I try to avoid flying single engine at night, especially over the mountains (not many large bodies of water here in Arizona). I really don't want to have that joke come to mind when I'm engine out at 100' in the dark. DOH!! Talk about a Homer Simpson moment.
Usually when you have to ditch you never even make it out of the airplane before it sinks. Your sage advice reminds of some more good (?) advice when having to ditch far from shore - "save yourself and everyone else a lot of time and grief and just swim straight for the bottom."
Prayers for this kid, he made a terrible lapse in judgement and paid dearly for it.
LUMB, That's a good one.
No one deserves to die. I'm guessing from your statement that you have never made a mistake in your entire life. God has appointed a time to live and a time to die. It was Jonathan's time to go whether he would have made a mistake or not the Lord decided to take him on that day.
I am a 21 year old pilot and have had my private pilot's license since I was 17. I first learned to fly in northwest Indiana. I know how dangerous flying over Lake Michigan can be. However, Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR's) state that:
A life preserver or a floatation device is required:
to be worn by the pilot and to be available for each passenger beyond gliding distance from land or beyond 50 nm from land, whichever is less.
Did he have this aboard the aircraft?
In addition to that, another FAR states that if you are flying on Visual Flight Rules (VFR), which he was, then you must have AT LEAST 30 minutes of fuel on board if flying during the day and at least 45 minutes of fuel by night. If this FAR was followed properly this accident could have been prevented.
Lastly, there are devices aboard all aircraft called an emergency locator transmitter (ELT) that sounds off and sends a signal when the aircraft impacts something. Did this not go off? If it did, how come nobody could find this young man or his plane?
We all are human and subject to error. With aviation especially, it is very easy to make a fatal mistake. It truly is a shame something that was so preventable had to end in tragedy.
Incoming!
Denver didn't do a proper pre flight. He had plenty of gas in his auxillary tank. He purchased the plane used, and was too arrogant to preflight and read the directions on how to switch tanks. When he reached around his shoulder to switch the lever for the aux tank, he simultaneously pressed his right foot to the rudder and performed a figure 9 into eternity.
As for the young minister of the gospel...
"It is better to die for something, than to live for nothing."
"Bob Jones"
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