Plucky Pilots

I'm not sure what they're feeding the pilots in New York these days but I want some of their brand of Man-Up.

A few years ago, a US Airways pilot who encountered airplane problems (namely, a flock of geese which took out both engines – ouch. And eww?) was forced to bring his plane down suddenly, but instead of crashing it into a fiery blaze of former-airplane, he rather simply and relatively non-dramatically just landed the commercial airliner on the Hudson River, thank you very much.

Every passenger was recovered alive and safe and there were no major injuries. He was rightly regaled as a hero, and you can bet that if I were ever in such a predicament, you're darn tootin' he's the one I'd want to be at the helm.

Now Michael Trapp, a 42-year-old pilot from New York has shown the world what a can of well-consumed Man-Up looks like by surviving 17 hours floating in Lake Huron, Michigan. He, too, encountered airplane trouble and when the engine stopped running, had to stall his plane into the water.

He didn't get quite the graceful landing that the Hudson pilot did, and instead the plane flipped over on impact. But amazingly, Trapp (happily sparing himself any awkward and unfortunate last-name ironies) was able to free himself and get to the surface as it sank only seconds later.

The plane had crashed 17 miles from the shore of the massive Great Lake and he'd already made it 15 miles between the 5p crash and the 10:30a rescue from a fishing boat that spotted him (waving his socks around over his head) a long, wet 17 hours later.

Trapp said he nearly got run over by a freighter at one point, and he was undoubtedly fatigued with cramps, hunger, dehydration and exposure. Dean Petitpren, who was on the fishing boat that found him, said that he was “really on his last leg. It looked like he was going to drown, his eyes were starting to shut.”

But he'd hung in there long enough to be rescued, and the Harbor Beach police chief commented that Trapp never lost his sense of humor. The police chief reported that Trapp said, “If a 13-year-old girl could swim across the English Channel, I can survive overnight.”

Petitpren also said that when he offered Trapp a glass of water, Trapp said, “No, I've had enough water.”