Fact Checking Nelson's "Doors Of Death" light aircraft near death experience

[Moksha]

It should be noted that DCP, the anonymous coward Kiwi who hides behind a moniker, and the Midge are unusually spiteful and personal toward gemli in the comments section. I'm literally shook to know just how mean they're being toward the person known as gemli. Will anyone go on SeN and call them out for their sustained and viscerally negative comments they're making about him?

- Doc

Could you post a link for some virtuous poster who has not been banned from that site? I hope they do not try to produce a Kwaku-type film of assaulting Gemli.

[mcjathan]

Maybe we could give Nelson the benefit of the doubt and assume it was in a biplane sometime between the Wright Brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk and before 1976. Any documentation of this incident could have been taken up to heaven by an angel toting a drawn M-16. The angel wished to avoid any cumbersome paperwork. So there.

Dear lord!

[DrW]

Maybe we could give Nelson the benefit of the doubt and assume it was in a biplane sometime between the Wright Brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk and before 1976. Any documentation of this incident could have been taken up to heaven by an angel toting a drawn M-16. The angel wished to avoid any cumbersome paperwork. So there.

Thanks, Moksha. Speaking of paperwork, here's a point to consider.

The pilot of a passenger-carrying commercial aircraft would almost certainly file a flight plan with the FAA Flight Service Station (FSS) in SLC prior to departure for St. George, even if they plan the trip under visual flight rules (VFR). This is especially the case if the planned flight is over water, desert or mountainous terrain, which was the case. If the weather requires the pilot to fly on instruments (IFR), a flight plan is mandatory.

This flight plan must be closed out with the local FSS upon landing at the destination airport. Failure to properly close out a flight plan is a rooky mistake and any sane a pilot will only experience the consequences once. Depending on the situation, failure to close a flight plan will eventually initiate a search for the missing aircraft.*

If the flight in question went down in a field, and not the destination airport, there are two possibilities regarding the flight plan:

1) the pilot had the good sense to get on the radio (if in range), or more likely to a landline phone in 1976, and close his flight plan. Since the plan was not executed as filed, this report would include the reason for not landing in St. George, (engine fire and emergency landing not at an airport), or

2) the flight plan was not closed and the plane was determined to be missing after the flight time for the reported fuel on board had passed.

Either way the FAA, through the FSS, would have had a report of the engine fire and forced landing, or of a missing aircraft. This latter open file would have been resolved by the report of what happened to the plane. There is no way, even in 1976, that an incident such as that described by Rusty would have escaped the FAA's official attention. And especially if an engine fire was involved - that of the NTSB.
____________

* Having failed to close the flight plan for a trip to the Bahamas, I learned via radio when back in the air headed home that the plane I was flying was the subject of an international search for a missing aircraft. I was able to close the original flight plan over the radio and open another to allow entry back into the US. I caught all kinds hell from the tower, the FSS, and the FBO in Fort Lauderdale who rented the plane, when we landed back in the US. My passengers and I were 'delayed' while US Customs searched the plane for contraband. Fortunately, my passengers had a sense of humor. Once was enough.

[dastardly stem]

Piecing this all together, here's what we end up with:

I think it's fair to say Nelson did fly on November 12 or 11th 1976 to St George, UT. I'd guess he'd flown there before on a small plane. Its likely he was never comfortable flying on those small planes, and imagined after watching a number of movies from his youth up what it'd be like to be in a plane that was going down. He likely had been through various degrees of turbulence many times and had seen or heard a number of people cry out as he himself clutched arm rests but attempted to remain cool and collected. He then imagined, "If I was going to die, it'd be really cool if I was as calm as the cucumber because it'd show my faith that God really did love me." He dreamed the incident and went over it again and again. He was cert something crazy like that was possible. After years of putting himself in that place, the story once imagined became real. A decade or so of imagining it and seeing himself as victor he ended up with vivid memories of spiraling down in a plane, a woman screaming, and since he had to have lived through the ordeal, he imagined that this spiraling plane corrected itself and it landed safely unexpectedly in a farmers field.

After some years without much detail he alludes to the dreamed event and in so doing realizes it really does make him look good to a fawning audience. After the story caught some fanfare and by the time Ms. Dew recorded the story, he had matched this event to an actual inconsequential sounding flight that he recalled. He knew for certain, by this time, his fawning audience weren't concerned about whether something really happened or not. They just wanted to be delighted by typical sounding feats of heroism and poise.

[Res Ipsa]

Maybe we could give Nelson the benefit of the doubt and assume it was in a biplane sometime between the Wright Brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk and before 1976. Any documentation of this incident could have been taken up to heaven by an angel toting a drawn M-16. The angel wished to avoid any cumbersome paperwork. So there.

Thanks, Moksha. Speaking of paperwork, here's a point to consider.

The pilot of a passenger-carrying commercial aircraft would almost certainly file a flight plan with the FAA Flight Service Station (FSS) in SLC prior to departure for St. George, even if they plan the trip under visual flight rules (VFR). This is especially the case if the planned flight is over water, desert or mountainous terrain, which was the case. If the weather requires the pilot to fly on instruments (IFR), a flight plan is mandatory.

This flight plan must be closed out with the local FSS upon landing at the destination airport. Failure to properly close out a flight plan is a rooky mistake and any sane a pilot will only experience the consequences once. Depending on the situation, failure to close a flight plan will eventually initiate a search for the missing aircraft.*

If the flight in question went down in a field, and not the destination airport, there are two possibilities regarding the flight plan:

1) the pilot had the good sense to get on the radio (if in range), or more likely to a landline phone in 1976, and close his flight plan. Since the plan was not executed as filed, this report would include the reason for not landing in St. George, (engine fire and emergency landing not at an airport), or

2) the flight plan was not closed and the plane was determined to be missing after the flight time for the reported fuel on board had passed.

Either way the FAA, through the FSS, would have had a report of the engine fire and forced landing, or of a missing aircraft. This latter open file would have been resolved by the report of what happened to the plane. There is no way, even in 1976, that an incident such as that described by Rusty would have escaped the FAA's official attention. And especially if an engine fire was involved - that of the NTSB.
____________

* Having failed to close the flight plan for a trip to the Bahamas, I learned via radio when back in the air headed home that the plane I was flying was the subject of an international search for a missing aircraft. I was able to close the original flight plan over the radio and open another to allow entry back into the US. I caught all kinds hell from the tower, the FSS, and the FBO in Fort Lauderdale who rented the plane, when we landed back in the US. My passengers and I were 'delayed' while US Customs searched the plane for contraband. Fortunately, my passengers had a sense of humor. Once was enough.

That certainly makes sense. The main problems we have in terms of verification is that the FAA’s publicly available database starts in 1978, so we can’t check an incident in 1976. What Nelson describes appears to be an incident as opposed to an accident, and the NTSB database says it does not include all incidents — in fact, there’s a note that says certain incidents were removed from the database.

I do have a question for you guys with experience. I saw a couple of NTSB reports with a notation of something like: engine failure/flamethrough. Would that be the same as an engine fire?

[DrW]

I was in an airplane going from Salt Lake City to St. George to participate in a function at Dixie College. We were in one of those small commuter airplanes. There were about six passengers in it. The pilot had just announced that we were over the halfway point between Salt Lake City and St. George—we were past the point of no return. I thought, 'Well, that's a weird announcement to make

I'll have to ask the pros, was that weird announcement to make?

Absolutely - assuming any modern pilot would ever have actually made it.

References to "the point of no return" I've found in present day, refer to how far down the runway a plane can get before it is forced to take off.

What you are referring to here is known as V1: ("commitment to fly"). This is the point along the runway at which the takeoff can no longer be safely aborted. This point varies according to aircraft type, take-off weight, wind speed and direction, etc.
This parameter is not of much concern to light aircraft pilots unless they are on a short runway. My wife, who has a few aviation adventures as co-pilot, refers to our V1 as "fly or die" - in our case usually related to obstacles like tall trees or power lines near the end of the runway.

This aspect, and used as a line in “Zero Hour!”, “The High and the Mighty” (1954), and “No Highway in the Sky” (1951) - see previous post, was a factor in aviation at the time when propeller planes like DC4s and DC6s had a limited flying range, and once past the reckoned “point of no return” a plane in trouble could not turn around and return to its original taking off point without running out of fuel.

"The High and the Mighty" starring John Wayne (of course) was one of my favorites movies as a kid. Twenty years later, when alone on long flights, I used to hum the melody of the theme song to that movie. Another favorite, especially when flying out of Seattle on a clear day, or popping out on top, above the cloud cover, to see the summit of Mt. Rainier in the bright sunlight "I Can See Clearly Now". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GXG--DNNGk

[Res Ipsa]

Whoops, I misremembered the term. It's "flameout" not "flame through." So, is a "flameout" of an engine considered an "in flight fire?" What does a "flameout" of a engine look like?

[Dr Moore]

Wouldn't Nelson have shared this miracle story in the talk he gave upon landing? Or is this one of those more-powerful post-dated miracle stories?

[IHAQ]

Wouldn't Nelson have shared this miracle story in the talk he gave upon landing? Or is this one of those more-powerful post-dated miracle stories?

I think he was flown in just to offer the opening prayer. Maybe he mentioned it in that? It certainly wasn't reported on at the time...

[Dr Moore]

Another take away might be that Mr. Cook made the entire thing up or part of it up. Perhaps Cook was in coach and Mick came back from first class to talk to one of his assistants and Cook imagined a conversation with the rock star as he [Cook] was drooling, while seated in coach and watching the conversation from a distance?

When I heard this story, Cook was filled with the spirit and declared Jagger a "Son of Perdition". We all knew this story to be true.