Twenty minutes later we’d found one medium sized cargo ship and a small white sail boat that seemed much too small to be so far out at sea but no Stormin’ Norman. We were running out of time and needed help. I knew that if we could get the current exact longitude and latitude of the disabled ship I could put it into the GPS and fly right to it. But how to get an updated position report from the Coast Guard this far out at sea? As a ferry pilot I spend a lot of time in the middle of the ocean out of normal radio range. Usually I bring along a HF radio to make position reports and call for help if needed but if that doesn’t work there’s always one last chance of yelling for help available, commercial airliners. Cruising along at thirty eight thousand feet an airliner can pick up a small plane’s transmissions over one hundred miles away and is a great last ditch chance for help for a pilot in a bind. I tuned in the frequency that I knew that airliners use to chat with each other and called in the blind.
“Any plane, any plane, is there anybody out there who can assist in a search and rescue operation?”
“This is American 325, how can we be of assistance?”
I told the pilot of the Airbus flying high overhead what we were doing and asked if he could possibly get in touch with the Coast Guard and see if they could get us an updated position report of the Stormin’ Norman. The captain of the American flight told me to standby while he made the attempt. The minutes ticked by as the airliner got farther and farther away. Finally the pilot came back with the good news, he’d somehow managed to contact the Coast Guard in Puerto Rico and had gotten a new position report for me. With his radio signal already fading away the captain read of the coordinates while I copied them down. I thanked the captain for his help and his reply was almost unreadable as his aircraft flew out of range.
