Crash Landing in the Pacific

Pilots Dave McMahon (left) and Sydnie Uemoto had never met each other before the flight that landed them in the Pacific

Her copilot, 26-year-old Dave McMahon, heard it, too. Up to that point, the two-hour flight from Oahu to the island of Hawaii had been uneventful. They were just two young pilots, strangers to each other, looking for flight time and taking a short trip with no passengers. When they heard the sound, shortly after three o’clock, McMahon brought the plane down to 1000 metres, where the engines seemed to run more smoothly. Then, without warning, the pilots lost power to the right engine. A moment later, the left one went. Sitting in their metal compartment high above the ocean, they heard what every pilot dreads: an eerie quiet. It took them a moment to process the fact that they might crash.

The next few minutes were a blur of activity. As they began to lose altitude, the pilots powered through the items on the emergency checklist – turning on fuel pumps, pushing the throttles to full – which can sometimes restart the engines. Nothing worked. Following their emergency training to a T, McMahon handed the controls to Uemoto and, fighting a rush of warm air, propped open the cockpit door. Now they wouldn’t get trapped inside after the expected marine landing. At about 300 metres and falling quickly, Uemoto made their last distress call. “We’re 25 miles northwest of Kona,” she said to air traffic control. “We’re going down.”

Uemoto gripped the controls. In pilot school, they teach you about ditching a plane, but you never actually practise dumping your ride into the ocean. She knew the chances of survival were slim. If she hit the water at too steep an angle, the force of the collision would kill them. If she allowed one wingtip to hit the water first, the plane could cartwheel uncontrollably and wrench the aircraft into pieces.

Just land as if you’re landing on the ground, Uemoto told herself. As the plane hurtled towards the ocean, she forced herself to imagine a runway stretching along the choppy surface of the water. The air roared in her ears as the ocean rose up to meet them. At the very last moment, with the Pacific filling her field of vision, she pulled back on the yoke, nudging the Apache’s nose up a little. Then everything flashed white as the plane made contact.

It struck the surface with an

McMahon and Uemoto were stung by jellyfish, had a close encounter with a shark and spent more than 20 hours at sea before being sighted

explosive, shuddering impact, water spraying over the windscreen as the aircraft plunged into the ocean. McMahon and Uemoto were thrown forward violently, as if rear-ended by a semitrailer. In a daze, McMahon opened his eyes. He got his bearings and realised that he was, miraculously, OK. Uemoto was slumped next to him, shocked and bleeding but still conscious. Then McMahon felt the water pouring through the open door, and a new realisation hit him: they had to get out of there, fast. He unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out onto the wing. “Sydnie, get out!” McMahon called. She looked at him blearily. With her hands on the controls, Uemoto hadn’t braced herself for impact and had slammed forward, breaking her nose.

She rose to her feet unsteadily and felt the blood pouring down her face, bait for the deadly sharks that inhabit the waters around Hawaii. “Get out!” McMahon called again. The water was knee-high inside the plane, and in moments, she would be submerged. “What about the sharks?” she said. “You can’t think about that!” said McMahon. Uemoto trudged through water towards the door, picking up two life jackets along the way. By the time she’d climbed out onto the wing, the water was covering the seats of the aircraft. As the plane sank, they jumped into the ocean. Within seconds, the plane disappeared beneath the surface. The ocean had erased all signs of human life except for the two small figures bobbing alone in the vastness of the Pacific.

As the waves broke around them, McMahon felt a strange sense of calm. He pulled the tab on his life jacket. The seal holding the CO cartridge fell off, leaving a gaping hole in the now-useless flap of plastic. But even that didn’t faze him. A laidback Oahu native, he had grown up in the water – surfing, canoeing and

spending years on the swimming team. He and Uemoto had done the impossible by surviving a crashlanding into the ocean. It was a clear, beautiful day, and the Coast Guard knew where they were. Now they just had to stay put, treading water in the warm sea until they were rescued.

Uemoto, however, was a wreck – crying and terrified. McMahon tried to calm her, keeping the two of them turned away from the waves and making small talk. “Tell me about your family,” he said. “Do you have any siblings?”

“I have a sister,” she said between gulps of air. Family was the reason Uemoto had been on that flight. Just a few years into her career, the young pilot was intently focused on work – taking on as many flights as she could during the week and working as a baggage handler for Hawaiian Airlines on weekends. That night was Uemoto’s father’s birthday, but rather than take the whole day off, she had decided to work in the morning and then rent a plane to fly home that afternoon, getting in some of her required hours behind the controls of a multi-engine plane. When her original copilot couldn’t make it, McMahon, who also wanted to log time on a twin engine, agreed to join her.

“When will the Coast Guard get here?” Uemoto asked.

“They’re coming,” McMahon said. “We’re just going to float here.”

After a couple of hours, McMahon’s prediction seemed to come true. A US Navy plane appeared in the sky, circling the area. It flew directly overhead as McMahon waved his life jacket, overjoyed at the sight. And then, without any sign of recognition, the plane continued on its way. Salvation had arrived, then shockingly disappeared over the horizon. For the next several hours, plane after plane flew overhead, circling in search of the lost pilots. Each time, McMahon and Uemoto did what they could to be seen. And each time, the potential rescue plane continued its flight without spotting them.

As the sun began to grow dim, McMahon’s calm began to crack. He became scared. We’re going to have to spend the night in the water, he thought. Uemoto saw the fear on his face. She felt the current shift direction, the waves moving southwest now. A Hawaiian native, Uemoto knew what all locals know: there is nothing south of Hawaii until you hit Antarctica, 11,990 kilometres away. She and McMahon made the decision quickly. They looked to the outlines of the volcanoes at KailuaKona, 40 km away, and swam towards them.

By about ten that night, Uemoto’s legs began to cramp, so she swam with her arms, letting her legs drag behind her. Soon enough, McMahon was faring even worse. More than eight hours in the water had left him exhausted. He, too, cramped up and

began shivering uncontrollably in the cool night air. While McMahon had been the one supporting Uemoto in those first few hours, she now took over. Swimming on her stomach, she had McMahon wrap his arms around her knees. He rested his head on the back of her legs while they swam in tandem – Uemoto pulling the 1.6metre McMahon with her arms as he kicked. But even with that support, it slowly dawned on him: If we keep going like this, I’m going to drown.

“Sydnie, I need to stop,” he said.

Uemoto unhooked herself from McMahon, then faced him. In a desperate attempt to find some way to help, she examined his life jacket and found it had two separate air compartments. Both sides were deflated, but McMahon hadn’t tried the second CO cartridge. She gently tugged the tab, and that half of the vest filled with air. Then it started to leak, and the second CO cartridge fell off. McMahon stuffed his fingers into the two holes where the CO cartridges had ripped through the plastic, forming a seal. By exhaling each breath into the air tube, he found he could keep his vest inflated on one side, providing just enough support to keep him afloat. He wrapped his free hand around Uemoto’s ankle and rested, gathering his strength, while she pulled them towards the shore. “Just hang on to my ankles,” she said.

As Uemoto swam, hour after hour, a feeling of calm came over her. The moon was bright, sparkling off the water and casting its light on the distant mountains. The two had begun as colleagues who had never exchanged a sentence, but in the quiet of the night, they had become partners. To be alone in the ocean was awful and terrifying. But to be with someone else – to feel another person’s comforting presence in the darkness – somehow made the ordeal bearable.

“Hey, Dave?” Uemoto said softly at one point. She hadn’t heard from him in a little bit. “Hey, Sydnie,” he called back. “You doing good?” “I’m doing good.” It was while they were still in this position, McMahon clinging to her legs, that Uemoto felt a flash of excruciating pain. She lifted up her arm. In the moonlight, she saw something white and silky clinging to her forearm, coming off in gloopy pieces. Jellyfish. Within seconds, box jellyfish

Uemoto imagined a runway stretching along the choppy water’s surface