When Everything goes Wrong

On April 20, 2015, a Mooney M20K pilot was dealing with a landing-gear malfunction near Providence, Rhode Island. Controller Joseph White, working at Providence, began assisting the pilot as the emergency developed.

The situation was complicated by a local radar outage. The Providence ASR-9 surveillance radar antenna was out of service, which meant aircraft below 2,000 feet in the vicinity could not be tracked by that radar. Controllers coordinated another scope using long-range radar so White could continue to monitor the aircraft as it operated at lower altitude.

The aircraft had more than one problem. The pilot reported that the trim systems, GPS and autopilot were also inoperative. White worked to vector the aircraft toward Providence for nearly 40 minutes while trying to keep the pilot oriented and establish a viable landing plan.

White then initiated no-gyro vectors toward the ILS Runway 5 approach. The pilot could not intercept the localizer. With the normal instrument approach no longer providing a workable solution, White instructed the aircraft to descend to 1,200 feet, allowing the pilot to get below the cloud layer and attempt to identify the airport visually.

The pilot broke through the clouds and reported the airport in sight. He then realized that the airport he had identified was Quonset rather than Providence. That created a final decision: continue toward Providence with several aircraft systems unavailable, or use Quonset, which was already visually identified.

White advised the pilot to land at Quonset. The aircraft landed safely, ending an emergency in which the pilot had lost multiple systems while the normal surveillance radar around Providence was also unavailable.

The case is particularly instructive because the controller's problem was not simply to issue vectors. He had to build a new plan as each earlier option became less useful, while maintaining enough communication to keep the pilot oriented.

Accident Facts

Sources

the associated record — https://flightfollower.net/incident/when-everything-goes-wrong/

the published record ATC recording associated with the April 20, 2015 event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ4bIRzWBnw