Crash Landing in the Pacific (Pilot) - Part One

A single engine, an endless Pacific, and a decision no pilot wants to make. That’s where Heidi Porch found herself eleven hours into a ferry flight to Hawaii when the oil pressure began to fall and the nearest runway was more than a thousand miles away. Heidi has flown everything from gliders to 747s and Gulfstream jets, but nothing demanded more focus than the moment she chose to prepare for a ditching, built a plan that fit her cockpit constraints, and committed to it.

We talk through the building blocks that made her calm under pressure: learning to fly in gliders where you cannot go around, methodically breaking in brand‑new engines on high‑power ferry legs, and practising failures mid‑ocean to cut panic down to size. When the Navy P‑3 and the Coast Guard joined the picture, precise position fixes, smart use of HF radio, and prearranged signals with her wingman created a lifeline of information for family and rescuers. Then the engine quit. 

What follows is a survival masterclass: escaping inverted with eyes closed against the burn, flipping a raft mid‑inflation, cutting a lanyard that threatened to shred her only shelter, and refusing to swim for a larger raft drifting the wrong way. She calculates ship speeds, accepts a night alone, and rides swells that build from gentle to threatening. Along the way, we explore the psychology of acceptance, the physics that govern low‑speed water impacts, and the small choices that keep you alive when gear fails and fatigue whispers bad ideas. It’s raw, practical, and unforgettable.

This is part one of Heidi’s story; next week we pick up as darkness falls, weather turns, and an unexpected rescuer appears. If this moved you, follow the show, share it with someone who loves aviation or true survival stories, and leave a quick five‑star review—your support helps us bring more extraordinary voices to your queue.

Episode Links: 

Heidi’s Book "Ditching the Sky" - https://www.amazon.com/Ditching-Sky-memoir-triumph-against/dp/B0DM73M8CL 

"Ditching the Sky" on Audible (narrated by Heidi) - https://www.audible.com/pd/Ditching-the-Sky-Audiobook/B0DPXXKZRB?srsltid=AfmBOopT7XrmdYwbr5HzOxP-7f_DYeW2nANyDaiafPUS_KD89X8mTD9s

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidi-porch-09783a89 

Speaker Profile - https://www.aviationspeakers.com/heidi-porch 

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Transcript

A Flight Turns Into A Mayday

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Somewhere between California and Hawaii, a single engine Cessna makes its way over the Pacific. The flight is 16 hours of open water. No land, no backup, and no margin for error.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

So I picked up the mic and my hands are shaking. Hunloo the radio, Sessna 8032 mic with a possible May Day.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

11 hours into the flight, the oil pressure hysteriously starts dropping.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

It was about maybe an hour and a half after calling the May Day that the engine finally did quit.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

And what begins as a routine delivery becomes a terrifying countdown to the unthinkable.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

The last few seconds before touching down, it was not fear as much as I wonder what it's gonna feel like. I wonder what's gonna happen.

Show Welcome And Two-Part Setup

Meet Heidi Port

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Just imagine being a speck in an endless blue expanse with 20,000 feet of water beneath you and no land in sight. What happened next with the crash, the escape, and the night alone in rough seas is one of the most extraordinary survival stories I've ever heard. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Ordinary Monday. Thank you so much for joining us. I am your host, Chris Barron, and each week I sit down with a guest whose job is far from ordinary. We explore how they got there, what it's really like behind the scenes, and then I ask them to relive the single most unforgettable experience of their career. Now, before we dive in, a super quick reminder about the new listener story segment that we have coming very soon. I want to hear your weird and wonderful job stories. So stick around at the end of the app to find out how that's gonna work and how to spend them in. Okay, so on to this week's show. This story was just so incredible that I couldn't fit everything into a single episode. So part two will be coming out next week. So my guest this week has basically spent her entire life in the sky, from piloting gliders as a teenager to commanding 747's pack of passengers to piloting fancy Gulf Stream jets for the ultra-wealthy. Heidi Port has loved thousands of hours across all kinds of aircraft and built a career defined by skill, composure, and an unshakable passion for the sky. One journey in particular, a ferry flight from California to Hawaii, pushed every ounce of her experience to the limit. So as you heard in that intro, Heidi was halfway across the Pacific when her plane had a critical malfunction. And within hours she was fighting for her life over one of the deepest stretches of ocean on earth. The crash, the the rescue, every single part of this story is just phenomenal. So um I hope you enjoy it. You're listening to No Ordinary Monday? Let's get into the show. All right. Heidi, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 3:09

Uh good morning, good evening, wherever you are.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah, we're on other sides of the world, which I'm sure you're more than used to.

SPEAKER_03 3:16

Where you just uh yeah, the amazement of technology these days.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Fantastic. And and so I guess your life now is maybe a little bit calmer than it would used to be, a little bit more peaceful.

From Gliders To Jumbos

SPEAKER_03 3:28

A little bit, a little bit. Yeah. I'm actually sleeping through the night now and uh uh not waking up every two to three hours, being on a crazy flight schedule. So that's something new for me.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Must be a nice change of pace. I mean, when when was the last time that you piloted an aircraft?

SPEAKER_03 3:50

Uh let's see, about uh year and a half, two years ago. Okay. Um, I retired, I retired from the airlines due to COVID. They had you know, everything just came to a screaming halt. They offered early retirement package.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Uh this was with Delta Airlines. So I took the early out, but then I got a job flying a uh business jet for a wealthy couple, a Gulf Stream. So I flew that for just shy of two years. Oh, that must have been nice.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Is that like I guess you're it's it's like the comparing flying a school bus can and then flying like a Ferrari, and then like driving a Ferrari or something.

SPEAKER_03 4:33

It was a rocket. I remember the very first takeoff on it. And it was I had to deadhead or get transportation up to the Lake Placid area. There's a little airport up there, and showed up and met the other pilot. And she said, Pidey, you wanna do this take off? And I said, Hell no, I want to watch first, yeah, because all I had flown was the simulators and at plate safety. And I'm sitting there and we take off, and I don't even remember saying this, but I went, holy crap, it was it slammed me back into my seat. It it was a rocket ship. It was really because I'm used to a 747 that just lumbers down, and you're going the same speed, but it's so massive you don't get that feeling of speed. So it was quite different. Took some getting used to.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Amazing. Well, what a what a way to sort of like, you know, kind of top off your career, which which is absolutely insane, and we're gonna get into. Um, but I I'd love to start just like you know, right at the beginning, you know, first memory. Where where did this love of flying, being in the air come from? Where where was sort of day one for it?

Building Hours And Breaking In Engines

SPEAKER_03 5:58

From my father, who uh when I was very small, he owned a Cessna 170, and we would fly on the weekends, and he perched me on top of some phone books so I could look out the window. And of course I couldn't reach the rudder pedals anymore, but um, he would take care of that for me. And he sold it when I was, I think, seven years old, but that that was the start of it. And then we took a airline flight from California to Michigan, and I was fascinated, you know, by a big airliner. Yeah, and I saw during the flight, you know, the the they were stewardesses back then. Stewardesses would go into the cockpit with a cup of coffee, the captain would come out, hang out in the galley for a while, and people are coming and going. And I told my dad, I go, I want to be a stewardess when I grew up. And he goes, Why? And I said, Oh man, you get to serve drinks and meals, and you get to drive the airplane and you get to see neat places. And he goes, No, they don't drive the airplane. And I said, Well, yeah, they I I saw them going in and out of the cockpit. He goes, No, no, no. Just the pilots fly the airply, don't okay. All right. I'm gonna be an airline pilot. And I never changed my mind. That was it. It shows me, I think.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

And um, that was age you said age about age seven or something? Are you?

SPEAKER_03 7:38

Yeah, five five in there.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Five.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

I just yeah, I mean and there were no female airline pilots back then.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Yeah. So I can imagine. But I mean even having such a um you know, such a strong pull towards a career at that early age. I I mean, I didn't want to know what I wanted to do till I was 24, you know? Like it's it you you're I maybe it's strange to say it, but like you're so lucky in some ways to know so early on, and you just basically can spend your everything you do up until that point is like, I'm I know where I'm going, you know? But did it feel that way at the time?

SPEAKER_03 8:16

I I was very focused. How and I think I was very lucky to have parents that supported me. Because they easily could have said, no, Heidi, women aren't don't fly for the airlines, and you know, they could have squashed, you know, my dream real quick. But um but as I got older they said, Well, that's that's a great goal, but have something to fall back on. Heidi, because maybe a medical situation will come up where you can't because back then you had to have 2020 uncorrected vision. Yeah, you know, it's just one thing. So so I kept that in mind. And I took drafting, I was interested in architecture and then so I always had something I could fall back on, but my main drive was flying and getting an airline job.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

I guess, yeah. So you wanted to be a commercial airline pilot from a young age. And what I mean, what was it? Do you remember what the feeling was? Like obviously being in the air. Like, can you describe that sort of what was it? So what was it that pulled you so strongly towards that career?

Crossing The Pacific In Single Engines

SPEAKER_03 9:28

Well, uh initially, yeah, just being in the air. Absolutely loved it. There's there's nothing like it. Um it's totally different than sitting in the back of an airliner looking out a side window, unless you see it, you know, all around you in the front and going in and out of clouds. And you know, it's just beautiful and seeing new places. And then as I I got older, you know, it was the lifestyle too. You know, I definitely wanted to be international pilot and um seeing the world, uh, not sitting behind a desk nine to five Monday through Friday. I liked the idea of having a lot of time off, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:15

Um, but you know, there's trade-offs. Um as I as I got on with the airlines and I would see people who were married with children. It was a very difficult career, you know, being away from family for so long and and all of that. So, you know, there are trade-offs, but I just liked the idea of the lifestyle and the thrill of just flying something that large. Really, you know, getting it off the ground is it's pretty amazing. You know, the first time I flew a 747 and or taxing first. And of course you you're you go to simulator training and and school for like six weeks, and then the first time you're behind the controls, it's full of passengers, you know, and but you're with an instructor, yeah, captain, you know, so you're totally supervised. Um but that first that first takeoff is just indescribable. It's just magical.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

So you'd kind of obviously reached your, you know, flying 747 must have been incredible, but to get there, I mean, how hard did you work? How hard was it to sort of achieve that goal from that, you know, seven-year-old girl who was so pulled toward this career?

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Right. Well, once I I started taking lessons, it took me about 13 years to get enough flight hours to start sending in my applications. So the typical, back then, the typical progression would be uh you go to the airport, go to a flight school, in airplanes, take lessons, get your private, then get your commercial, so you could have a job flying, get your flight instructor rating. I'd say 80% of the pilots coming up into the airlines would get their flight instructor rating.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Then your multi-engine rating. Yeah, somewhere in there, your instrument rating, so you could fly and land airplanes in bad weather.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

You know, in saying that, you know, that's that's a typical routine. You know, you get your private, you get commercial, you get your instrument, all those kinds of things would be a typical way in. Most pilots would do that. But you didn't necessarily have the most typical way into that, did you?

Practising Emergencies Mid‑Ocean

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Right. Right. I had planned on, I mean, I had gotten my I started in gliders and sailplanes, which is a little in unusual. Uh, I'm glad I did because I think it made me a better pilot because you don't have an engine to fall back on. So if if you come in for an approach and you're too high or too low, you can't go around. You gotta make it work. So uh so that was that was good. And it's just the basics of flying. You understand lift and um cloud formations and what you can expect by flying close to them. And if the wind is strong and you're coming up on a mountain ridge, where's where's the turbulence going to be? Yeah. Uh so I'm glad I started in gliders, but that's not the usual progression. Um, I had every intention of getting my flight instructor rating. And I had gone to a flight school uh in Northern California to get my multi-engine rating, which is just a weekend school and get it in a couple of days. And when I was ready to leave, they said, Well, would you like to be a flight instructor here? And I said, I don't have the rating. And they said, Well, we'll give it to you and you can work it off. I said, Great, okay. Wow. So I uh had planned on moving up there, and a week before that happened, I was offered a job for this company at the local airport where I lived called Transair, and they were an outfit that would deliver single-engine airplanes mostly from the factories in Wichita out to California, and then they take all the seats out and put gas tanks in the cockpit, and then they deliver them to Australia and New Zealand and throughout the Pacific. And I had just dropped off a resume to them a month earlier and said, Hey, if you ever need, you know, spur of the moment, you're short pilot, need somebody to go to the factory and bring a plane back. And they they called me and on the flight back they said, Do you want a job? And I said, Yeah. So that seemed much more appealing to me, being the one behind the controls than being a flight instructor and sitting next to a student who might kill you. So I don't want to put my instructors there.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

I was about to say that's your trust, your trust level is clearly you trust yourself.

SPEAKER_03 15:24

Yeah, yeah. And you know, flying when you're flight instructing, most lessons are half an hour, 45 minutes, and it's it takes a long time to build up flight hours, excuse me, flight hours.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

Delivering airplanes, you rack up a lot more time.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

And so this is this is this is basically like driving a it's like taking a car almost off the manufacturing line and driving it to the showroom in a way, or driving it to its owner. Is that kind of like a good way of comparing it?

Oil Pressure Falls And A Mayday

SPEAKER_03 15:58

Yeah. Uh a flight from Wichita to California was normally total at 12 hours, maybe. And depending on the airplane, maybe stop somewhere in Colorado and spend the night and go the n, you know, the rest of the way the next day. So I had no interest whatsoever in doing overwater stuff. Those guys were crazy. I mean, no way. So I just I said, I'll just do as many domestics as you want. And over the course of, you know, six months, and I saw all the preparation that went into their flights, and I heard them talking about Pango Pango and Fiji and Ponape and truck and you know, all these places, and like I said, World War II was always very fascinating to me. So I thought, you know, I'll do it once, just to say I've done it, and then that's it. And you either loved it or you hated it, and I absolutely loved it. So yeah, we would fly anywhere from 45 to 55 hours in four days. So it would be like it would be like getting in your your Corvette and in San Francisco and flooring it for twelve for uh twelve hours.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

No, you've got a floor.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

Like drive drive it as fast as you can. So you're driving over a hundred miles an hour, and then do that for you know, sixteen hours, and you'll be in Hawaii. Oh jeez. And then you do it again the next day for 17 hours down to Samoa.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

And you just keep keep doing island hopping basically across the entire Pacific.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Oh man. And you're basically Yeah, because I was reading in the book, like you've got to you've got to drive these things at like high intensity on the engine to like season them or whatever you want to call it.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

Yeah, these were mostly brand new airplanes from the factories. So you you need to break the engines in. Some of the planes we picked up only had 20 minutes on them. And that was a little tense.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Well, I can't. I mean, you're you're picking up a plane that's you got 20 minutes of flight time. Someone's obviously checked it over, and you're potentially taking it across a 12-hour flight across open water across the Pacific. Like, how does like how does something like make you a bit nervous?

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Well, yeah. Um the wor the worst aircraft pickups, there was one Cessna had factories all over the Wichita area. And one of them was butted right up against McCon uh McConnell Air Force Base. So there was restricted airspace around that. If you if you think of an upside-down wedding cake and you take off, you've got to stay very low for the first three miles, maybe only two or three hundred feet. And then once you get beyond three miles an hour, you can go up to 500 feet.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

So you're picking up an airplane with 20 minutes on it. You've got to stay at like 200 feet, 300 feet for the first few minutes, and you say, Did the guy accidentally leave a rag in the gas tank? Or because if the engine sputters, you don't have much time. You're you're going down wherever you happen to be. So that was very tense. But once you got away from that airport and you get some altitude, but on the flight from California or from which side of California, you're you're putting, you know, 12 to 15 hours on it. By that time, when you landed, you'd take a hot oil sample and we'd send it in for analysis. So if it showed any metal shavings or anything abnormal, we'd do a top overhaul on it. We'd fly it another 20 hours and then take it across. So there was a lot of preparation that went into it.

Navy And Coast Guard Coordinate

SPEAKER_01 20:09

I mean, it must have been daunting, given all that you've just said. I mean, that first time that you like took off, you know, in America and you sort of had that California coastline and you're sort of flying over for the last time seeing land, and you've just got that huge expanse of Pacific Ocean in front of you. And what just described that feeling for the first time?

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Well, it was probably a good thing. Um, we would normally take off between two and three in the morning. You you would you would plan your departure for the time you want to land in Pango Pango days late and then work backwards from there.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

And um, so it was probably a good thing that I didn't see the water for the first few hours until the sun came up, and then I found that about every four hours the reality would sink in where it's nothing but water all around you and no land, and you're at five or six thousand feet, one engine, and uh alone in the cockpit often. Alone and well, most of the time we would we would be with other airplanes. We'd go in a group, you know, so we'd have somebody to talk to and and help with navigation and then but when this reality would kick in, that would be when I would make believe the engine just quit. And so I'd put my life vest on, I'd mark my location, I'd do a fake radio call, um maybe get the manual out and look up the procedure for something, you know, engine failure or electrical failure or whatever. And I would time myself. And by the end of the trip, I could shave a couple of minutes off of that time. And it would get you over that anxiety hump, and then I'd be good for another four or five hours, and they go, oh man, where am I?

SPEAKER_01 22:16

And that's not standard procedure. They don't recommend that you like, you know, during a 19-hour flight that you sit and regularly do your procedures. Like that's just you going, you know, it's very practical, I guess, but you're also trying to keep yourself sane.

SPEAKER_03 22:30

Yeah. Yeah. Most of the time it was very, you know, boring, you know. Back then I had a Sony Walkman and I'd bring cassettes and play, you know, music. And except uh one time I was pretty punchy. I think it was a Doobie Brothers song, and and I had the microphone in my hand, act, you know, app like I'm singing. Well, I accidentally hit the transmit button and it w it went out. And then I heard all this clicking on the mic and applause.

Accepting The Ditching

SPEAKER_01 23:07

So the what's the clicking, is it clicking on the mic like other pilots sort of laughing or something?

SPEAKER_03 23:12

Is it an acknowledgement when you hear a lot of clicking? Um we would have a common emergency frequency, uh, one, two, one, decimal five. And that way, if there are any airliners in the area or military or or that, and you needed help or just needed, you know, hey, did anybody experience turbulence at 30,000 feet or you know, whatever you could you could talk? So you always had that radio tuned in. You normally had two radios installed in the airplane. So one would be on the emergency frequency, and one would be just a discrete frequency that you'd have with your buddies. And I thought I was actually tuned to that one. I wasn't, and I was on 1215.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

But you put the entire brothers and emergency as you're seeing it down the down the down the radio as well.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

Right, right. But you know, most of the time it was just staring out the window, and then every, you know, half hour you'd be doing an engine monitor and keeping track of your airspeed and fuel consumption and talking to people. We get really bored. We'd fly formation with one another, you know, for 20 minutes or so to break up the monotony. But um yeah, it wasn't too bad.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Well, I guess you know, the main uh one of the main things I I like having people on to this podcast for is I asked them to sort of take us back and and sort of recount and reliver the sort of most unforgettable sort of experience of their career, you know, the one that sort they can't forget. And I know um, you know, you've got an extraordinary story, um, if you wouldn't mind sharing that with us.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

Sure. Yeah, it was while I was doing these ferry flights, and I was uh uh paired up with another airplane. I was in a Sessna 182, which normally holds four people. It's a high-wing airplane. And ultimately we were headed for New Zealand. So it was going to be a four-day trip. And I was on the first leg, and the flight was flight planned for 17, almost 18 hours to Honolulu. And you were flying from California or from Cal yeah, typically California to Honolulu, which is the longest span of open water with no land that's any closer. So once you take off from California, the closest land is to turn around and go back where you came from or continue on to Hawaii. There's nowhere you can divert to that's any closer. Yeah. And that is uh about 2100 miles.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Yeah.

How To Hit Water And Live

SPEAKER_03 26:06

Yeah. So I was on that first leg, and about 11 hours into the flight, I noticed my oil pressure was lower than it should have been. So I told my wingman, uh, who was in a Cessna 170 to a little slower than mine, and said, Do you see anything abnormal streaks of oil on the belly coming out of the engine area or smoke or anything like that? And he didn't. And I wasn't too concerned at first because sometimes the oil pressure will drop because the oil is so hot, you know, it thins out. But about 10-15 minutes later, it was down even more, and that's when I got this really sick feeling. And uh so Earl was my who was also my boss at the time. So, well, what do you want to do? Um, because we were past the halfway point. And I said, I think I better call for help. And he said, Okay, you know, go ahead. So now I have a Mayday call, which I've seen that in the movies, but never thought I'd have to do it myself. And so it took me a few minutes to kind of settle down and know what I was gonna say on the radio and all of that, and I we had a an uh HF radio high frequency that allowed us to be able to talk to Honolulu over the ocean because your regular aircraft radios don't have the range. So I picked up the mic and my hands are shaking, and I'm okay, all right. Oh Honolulu radio, Sessina 8032 mic with a possible mayday. It just came out. Well, at the time there was a navy airplane in the vicinity, and because they monitor the same frequencies, they heard my I have a possible mayday, and the captain said, What is a possible may? You're either pregnant or you're not, you know. So he's listening in, and I and Honolulu came back, yeah, what's the problem? I said, Well, I'm an assessment 182 at this waypoint. I'm losing oil pressure. I do not know how long the engine's going to continue to run. I'm requesting assistance and declaring an emergency. And then that sets into motion all kinds of stuff, you know, Coast Guard search and rescue and and all of that. So the P3 waited till all these radio calls were done, and then they called me and said, um, hey, we remember hearing you give a position report about a half hour ago. Was that you? And I said, Yeah. And they said, Well, we passed you, go in the other direction. We can turn around and locate you if you if you want or try to. And I said, Yeah, that'd be that'd be great.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Yeah.

Impact, Inversion, And Escape

SPEAKER_03 29:25

So they turned around, and over the course of the next um half hour or so, I saw a contrail at a high altitude uh of a flight from Honolulu to California. And I called him and said, You're directly overhead right now. Can you do an S turn for me? So I absolutely know it's you that I'm talking to. And he did. And when he was overhead, I got a latitude longitude from his equipment. That was much more accurate than anything I had. I passed that on to the Navy airplane and um within half an hour, so they had me in sight. So that was very comforting. Because they started coordinating along with the Coast Guard and that to get the airplane out to me.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

I guess going through your mind, you just must have been you're in that infinite blue expanse of water and thinking, if I go down out here and no one has an exact mark of where I am, because you're basically like driving in a car or a train and you're you're coming up on a cliff. You know you're gonna go off the cliff, nothing you can do about it, and you you're terrified because you would just be a speck in an infinite expanse of water.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

Exactly. Exactly. Now I fortunately it was uh a beautiful day. Um the wind was under 10 knots, uh, temperature outside was probably in the high 70s. Um, and so I couldn't have had more ideal, you know, conditions, but I still wasn't 100% sure I was going to have to ditch because the only indication I had that anything was wrong was a drop in the oil pressure. The oil temperature never budged. And I had always been told that when you are losing oil pressure, the temperature goes up corresponding, and it it wasn't. So I thought, well, is this just a faulty gauge? Or, you know, am I still gonna make it to Hawaii? And that first 15 minutes of not knowing what was gonna happen, was the engine really gonna quit or no, was driving me nuts. Um, and finally I just had to make up my mind, Heidi, you're either gonna make it to Hawaii or you're gonna end up going in the water. And I said, I'm gonna end up going in the water, and then it was like click, and then everything fell into place, and it was kind of an out-of-body experience, you know. It was, I was watching me do it, and you know, I was cracking jokes with the guys and you know, set up a plan and um, you know, discussed uh checklists with with Earl. And I I decided, you know, if the engine should quit, I don't want to have to refer to a book for the procedure. So I just read off those steps to Earl. I said at the appropriate time, if I need it, I want you to read this checklist off to me. Yeah. You read it, I'll accomplish the steps, and that way I can focus totally on the on the flying. And um that worked out pretty well. So it was about uh an maybe an hour and a half uh after calling the May Day, closer to two hours, that the engine finally did quit.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Man, that must have been an excruciating hour and a half, knowing that maybe there's a problem, maybe there's not a problem, but if there is a problem, it's a it's a serious one.

Fighting The Raft And The Sea

SPEAKER_03 33:16

And it's it's coming, and what's gonna happen? And so it happens. And so when the engine did quit, um my very first thought was how beautiful it was out there. It's so strange. What you know, because you you're not, it's quiet now, right? And you can really take in the surroundings, and it was so pretty. And then I was just in a glider, wasn't it? It was a glider, and I just reverted right back to my glider flying days, so I had full airspeed control, you know, I could maneuver it just fine. It was just now it was descending, and I had no control over that. So uh yeah, it felt very, very natural. And I had worked up some procedures of my own that weren't in any book or anything, but my biggest fear of hitting the water was being knocked unconscious, yeah. And in the cockpit for ferry flights, we would take out the co-pilot seat and the seats in the back, and they were gas tanks. So to my immediate right was a gas tank right about here. And on top of that tank were the radios, extra radios, my flight bag, my life raft, and I'm completely blind off the right side. I could only see forward and out the left. And so I thought I'm gonna pull my raft into my lap to use as kind of an airbag.

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Of course they don't have airbags, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

Right. Yeah um and but in order to have enough room in my lap for this big bundle, you know, I had to move my seat all the way back. Well, the further back you go, you can't see over the nose anymore.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

So I'm blind off the front, I'm blind off the right, I've got the window to my left, but I can't reach the rudder pedals anymore. And the rudder pedals are what give you control left and right.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Yep.

Alone Over 20,000 Feet Of Water

SPEAKER_03 35:50

And I still have the control yoke, so I could control the wings and I could control the elevator, but not left and right. So the Navy guys were giving me advice on the best way to ditch to hit the water. And they said, Heidi, you should stall the airplane in. And for those of you that don't know what a stall is, for for a wing of an airplane to create lift, you have to have airflow going over the top of the wing and the bottom of the wing. And I I won't get too technical, but that's imperative to create lift. Well, stalling is when you bring the angle of the wing up to a point where the wind can't go up and over the top of the wing anymore. It hits the bottom, and your lift is dissolved.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

You know airspeed as well, right?

SPEAKER_03 37:00

Yeah, and you're going very slow, very slow. So when the wing stalls, at the point it stops flying, it just drops straight down.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

You're basically like a stone, like a rock. You're just gonna fall.

SPEAKER_03 37:15

Yeah. Yeah. And with no airflow over the wing where your ailerons are that control this, I could move the control yoke all day long and nothing would happen because there's no airflow over the control surfaces.

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Yeah, you're basically paperweight falling through the air.

Why Staying Put Saved Her

SPEAKER_03 37:35

Right. So because I couldn't see forward any longer, I really didn't know how close I was to the surface. And you're not landing on a flat surface, it's rolling. And I thought if I stall the airplane the least bit too high and it breaks, one wing tip might drop lower than the other, and thereby one landing gear, one tire will hit before the other, and it's gonna go sideways. And here's this gas tank right here. And I thought if I go this way, I could hit the side of my head on the edge of that tank and be knocked out. Yeah. So I told them I was not gonna stall the airplane in and decided to do a it's called full flap landing with just a few knots above stall speed. And that way, even though I couldn't have left and right control anymore, I still could control the the wings and keeping it level would hopefully make both landing gear touch down at the same time. And everything would go in a straight line, and I'd have the raft in my lap to protect me against hitting the windshield, and hopefully that would fingers crossed. Yeah. So that's what I did. And before touching down, I opened the door and the window to my left because I thought if the plane does cartwheel, the fuselage might torque, yeah, and the door might not open. So I wanted it already open, but it worked out really well. The mains touched down, and the whole plane bounced back up into the air, but it kept going straight. And then the nose grabbed, and then it just flipped onto its back, but everything went forward, so it worked out really well.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

It must have been so surreal opening the door and like so unnatural, like and seeing the tops of the waves, and it must have been bizarre.

SPEAKER_03 40:00

That was really bizarre because before, well, I'd never seen the water that close, and it was always within the bubble of my cockpit. So there's always glass between me and the water. But now with the door open, I could see in that crack, you know, I could touch it. And it was, you know, uh the last few seconds before touching down, it was not fear as much as I wonder what it's gonna feel like. I wonder what's gonna happen. It was just this overwhelming curiosity of yeah, what's what's gonna happen here?

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Did you think that even in that moment you could die?

Night Falls And Seas Build

SPEAKER_03 40:46

Uh the first instance that I had that I might die was when the plane came to a stop and there was there was an explosion of water. There was no water coming in. It was just one second, there was nothing, and the next millisecond was water. And I remember as the plane pitched over, I remembered hearing myself go either out of shock or the pressure of you know the deceleration, but in that breath I had water.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

And when the plane came to a stop, I immediately flashed back to an incident I had when I was four years old. I fell into a swimming pool and didn't know how to swim and was clinically dead. And what it was right when CPR was brand new. And there was one person at this party that we were at that knew CPR, and that's what saved me. But took me seven, eight years to get into a swimming pool after that, and I I can barely swim. Why I did this is crazy. But um, yeah, so I the sensation of having water up my nose and down the back of my throat and all of that just took me back to that incident. And my for my thought was, this is it, I'm gonna drown.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

Again. Oh my god. Wow.

Part Two Tease And Closing Notes

SPEAKER_03 42:28

And then I started having a mental argument with myself. Well, stupid, you're not gonna have people pulling out of this one, so get busy. And I tried moving and I still had my shoulder harness and seat belt on. And so then I went down to undo the seatbelt and my raft was gone. I thought, where'd the raft go? You know, well, it was just kind of floating there, and I was upside down, so yeah. So I just and I've never been able to open my eyes underwater. I I can't do it. My mouth opens instead. I can't do it. I don't know why. But I knew there was a door on one side and a gas tank on the other. So I I just took my hands like this and pushed, and this one hit the tank, and this one swung the door, and I just started moving in that direction. Yeah. And I was able to tell through my closed eyelids that I was moving in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:27

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:28

Oh my god. And then and then obviously, you know, the plane's upside down, and luckily, I guess it's floating for a second, you know, for a second.

SPEAKER_03 43:36

And then you've found the raft and um yeah, so the nice thing about flying a high wing airplane is with it upside down, now it's a low-wing airplane, so it gave me a platform to stand on.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:53

And uh, so I I got up on the underside of the wing, and before before hitting the water, I had taken uh there's a lanyard that you can pull out from a flap on the side of the raft bundle, and I tied that around my waist because I was worried, well, if the raft goes out the door, I'll still have a means of pulling it to me. So yeah, that worked. So I inflated the the raft, and there were problems with that. It started opening upside down.

unknown 44:31

Oh jeez.

SPEAKER_03 44:32

My raft is exactly the same type as what Tom Hanks had in Castaway.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

So it had one tube and a floor, so it mattered which side was right side up. Yeah. And it was inflating upside down. And so I knew, and the way to correct a raft that's upside down is they have these four handholds on the underside of the raft, and you you grab two of them and put your feet in the other two, and then you throw yourself backwards with the raft on top of you, and they said, No way I'm gonna want to do that. And so as it was inflating, I was flipping it to where it opened right side up, and then it was a matter of getting in the raft and then maneuvering back to the cockpit and getting my extra survival equipment in and all that, no problem. But the raft was kind of moving away from the plane, and so I had to jump in the water and dog paddle over to the raft, and that oh, before that I had pulled the tabs on my life fest, and all that happened was it unfolded, but it didn't inflate. And I thought, well, don't worry about that now, just get in the raft. So I tried getting into the raft, and I get halfway in, I get pulled back into the water. So I tried again, I get pulled back into the water. Well, I looked down and I could see that that lanyard was really long and it was caught to the airframe somewhere. Yeah, and it was tangled around my ankle. So I get halfway into the raft, I'd take up the slack, and I get pulled back into the water. So I dog paddled back to the wing, got up on the wing, untangled my ankle. Now the raft is a little bit further away. Dog paddled back to it. I'm getting pretty tired. Yeah, I can imagine. Heaved myself up, tumbled into the raft, and thought, okay, finally, this is good. Well, then I tried maneuvering back to the cockpit, and I didn't have oars packaged in the raft, so I'd get a few couple of feet or something, and then I wouldn't go any further. I couldn't figure out what was happening. And then I heard this weird scraping noise, and I turned and that lanyard was still caught to the airframe somewhere, and now it was pinning the raft against the rudder of the tail, and the rudder is made of corrugated aluminum with very sharp edges, and I just had this vision of someone popping a balloon, and inside the raft are packaged supplies, they're minimum, but you've got some supplies, and one of them was uh a knife, and so it's in a metal canister. So I was my hands were wet and everything. It took me a while to get the knife out, but I started hacking away at the the lanyard and finally was able to cut it and immediately started moving away. So now I'm not attached to the raft anymore. And the only way I could go back and get supplies was if I jumped back into the water, swim, bat it, and then go back to the raft again, hoping I could get in. And I decided, nope, I'm just going with what I've got in the raft, and that's that. So the the plane, after about a half hour, eventually sank.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Oh my god. And that that's I mean, one of my fears is is deep water, and that is you're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and it's like, uh, do you have any regulation how deep that water is?

SPEAKER_03 48:45

Yeah, when I got home, we had this great atlas and they had a map of the ocean floor, and I was right on the edge of the there's a really long name for it, but basically it's the the trough. Oh and so the water was over 20,000 feet deep where I was at. So but it might as well have been 10 feet. I still wouldn't have I know.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

It's just what it's one of my personal fears. It's like I I don't know where maybe I was younger and and we went out, you know, someplace and in the ocean, and I just remember being there is such deep water beneath me, and it kind of created like a a fear, but I can't even imagine, you know, um, you know, having you having to deal with that. It's watching the plane, you know, sort of slowly sink its way down, and then it's just you and the raft and hoping that someone's coming to rescue you.

SPEAKER_03 49:38

Yeah, and one more thing about realizing how deep it was and everything. Um I had swallowed a lot of salt water, you know, during the ditching. And so shortly after getting into the raft, I I had to vomit. Yeah. And so I leaned over the edge of the raft and vomited. And that made me think about sharks, you know, because I didn't know if I had any internal injuries or anything. Um, so after that I emptied a bag of supplies that were in the raft, and I used used that to get sick into. But looking over the side of the raft gave me such vertigo because the water is crystal clear, but you know it goes down forever and there was nothing you could focus on. So I couldn't look over the raft into the water because it was just disorienting.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Because I can picture it, you know, that sort of you look straight down into it and it kind of has that sort of sunlight, you know, um twinkling through it, and it just goes into this abyssal sort of blue.

SPEAKER_03 50:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:57

So yeah. Not for me.

unknown 51:01

No.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

Wow. So yeah, so so you were obviously, you know, trying to cope with the fact that you're you're you're now safe in the raft, you know, you've got a little bit of supplies, but not much, and you luckily, I guess you had you know all that time, you know, with the with the naval plane and the Coast Guard, you're in communications with folks, and you're kind of giving them as much information as you possibly could have. And then they're kind of hopefully putting, you know, various procedures and stuff and rescue plans into place to try and find you. Because at the moment you're literally just a a tiny pixel on a vast giant blue canvas.

SPEAKER_03 51:41

Right, right. I knew I wouldn't have any communications with anyone once I was in the raft. Excuse me. So before uh before the engine quit, I had told Earl, um, let's work up some signals so I can let you know how I am. And so when you call back to California and talk to my parents, you know, you can tell them something. So I I told him if I get in the raft and I wave both arms to you, it means I'm great, rafts in good shape. Keep going.

SPEAKER_02 52:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:21

Uh because he still had to fly onto Hawaii before he ran out of fuel. You know, um, if I wave one arm, it means I'm banged up a little bit, maybe broken bone, cracked rib. But basically, everything's okay. Keep going.

SPEAKER_02 52:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:37

If I get in the raft and I don't wave my arms, it means I'm hurt badly. And I don't know how long I'm gonna last, and somebody needs to get in the water with me if I'm to survive. Yeah. And if I don't get in the raft, you know. So the very first call my parents got, you know, was Heidi's ditch, she's not hurt, location's pinpointed, help is on the way. Yeah. You know, it just kind of answered all their their questions. And um, yeah, and the P3 the P3, uh they were in touch with the Coast Guard, but the Coast Guard plane was already airborne on another mission. And so there was going to be about a 20-minute lag where the P3 had enough fuel to still make it home to California. But if they waited for the Coast Guard to show up, they'd have to shut an engine down.

SPEAKER_02 53:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 53:35

Well, they had already shut one engine down to conserve fuel, they'd have to shut a second engine down. And so they're debating what to do. This is before my engine quit. And finally they said, Well, Heidi, what do you want us to do? And I said, Well, I know you guys want to get home, but I'd feel a lot better if you stayed till the Coast Guard plane has me in sight.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:57

And then do that, which meant they'd have to go back to Hawaii, refuel, and then go to California. But they agreed, and so that worked out. So they they dropped uh marker beacons to keep track of my position. Um, the Coast Guard dropped me a 30-man life raft and a separate bag of supplies. But um, you know, I I tend to believe things happen for a reason. And if I had not had that drowning incident when I was a kid, I I would have died out there because when the they drop the the raft, the idea is you drop it upwind of your target, and there's a long rope from the bag of supplies to the raft. And as it drifts towards your target, all they have to do is grab that rope and pull in the raft, and then you know, they're all set. And they drop smoke flares to see what direct direction the wind is on the surface, so they know what is upwind. Well, the current was going the opposite direction, which they didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

What?

SPEAKER_03 55:16

So they drop these supplies, and within 30 seconds, they could tell it wasn't drifting towards me, and they all said she's dead. She's not she's gonna go for it, she's gonna try and swim, and she's not gonna make it.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

Because anyone, anyone sort of in their not in their right mind, but anyone who's confident enough to go, oh, it's just over there. I'll just go and swim over and and get to that better situation.

SPEAKER_03 55:42

Right. And they had been on enough other rescues where um they said the top reason when they lose people in rescue missions is when they attempt to swim for something better and they don't realize how difficult it it is to swim in open water. Yeah, and if the swells were two to three feet, so you're on the downside of a swell, and where where are you swimming now? Where is your target? Yeah, and they were dumbfounded that I didn't go for it. And they knew if I did, I wouldn't make it.

SPEAKER_01 56:21

And that was purely because of that incident when you were four and you you almost died in a journey.

SPEAKER_03 56:26

Oh, yeah, and I knew I well, I'm okay where I'm at right now, and you know, anybody else could probably make it, but uh I don't think so. I think I'll just stay put.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

So, so how but at that point there, how long did you think in your head, like, okay, I'll have rescue in an hour or two, I'll be fine, I'll just sit and chill out here and whatever. What did you think?

SPEAKER_03 56:49

Well, this was two in the afternoon when I went in, and the last bit of information I had received was that they were going to dispatch a destroyer out of Pearl Harbor to come get me. Wow. And I was over 500 miles away from Honolulu. So I knew that it would be over 24 hours at least because I estimated the cruise speed on a destroyer is 25 knots or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 57:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:22

Um, I knew I'd be out there all night and um by by the time the sun set, the weather was getting much worse. So by midnight the swells were 10 to 12 feet.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

And I mean, just to give us a picture of what what's that like when you're in a raft, like is it enough to think that a wave is just gonna tip you over?

SPEAKER_03 57:53

Yeah, I thought about every third swell or something there'd be water that would spray, you know, into the raft. And I thought if it gets much worse than this, I'm probably gonna capsize in in half hour to an hour.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

And that is it for part one of Heidi's story. Stick around for next week when we pick up as the sun starts setting, the weather turns bad, and Heidi faces a long, dark night alone on the open ocean. With U.S. boats still hundreds of miles away from her, she finds herself in the hands of an unlikely and potentially dangerous rescuer. It's a gripping conclusion that you don't want to miss, so make sure you're following or subscribed wherever you get your podcasts. A huge thanks to Heidi for sharing her incredible story across these two episodes, and a big thanks to you all for listening as well. If you'd like to see more from Heidi, uh you'll find links to her book, Ditching the Sky, and her speaking work and all the details in the show notes of this episode or on our website, no ordinary monday.com. And as always, you can find extra clips and visuals for this episode on our website or on our socials. We're on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and some others as well. Okay, so before I go, let's talk about the new listener story segment that I'll be introducing in the coming weeks. At the end of each episode, I will be sharing a short story from you guys. So this is your chance to share any funny, surprising, or weird or wonderful stories from your own working life. There's a couple of ways you can send your stories in. Uh, number one, you can head to the website and click on the listener story page. And there you can either record a short audio message, which I'll just insert at the end of the episode, or you can just write your story and I'll read it out for you. Um, either way, you will get a shout out uh if you include your name. You can also email hello h l o at no ordinary monday.com with listener story as the heading. And just to kick things off, At the end of next week's episode, I will be sharing one of my own weird and wonderful behind-the-scenes stories from my career in TV. So stick around or stay tuned for that. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do two really quick things for us. Click five stars and maybe leave a review, and tell a family member or friend. It really helps us grow the show and attract more extraordinary guests and inspires new listeners. And that's it. This show is produced, hosted, and edited by me, Chris Barron. Thank you so much for listening and have a great Monday, everyone!