Drive to Survive Kicks In

Hard IFR in junky old airplanes with no autopilot, no GPS, and minimal redundancy? Check. Over rugged mountain terrain, howling wilderness, and frigid open ocean? Check. In the dark bowels of a storm-tossed, moonless night? Sure, why not.

These days I’m older and theoretically wiser—or maybe just less desperate. In my current work life I am almost pathetically cosseted with a glass cockpit, twin jet engines, multiple layers of redundancy, a usually sharp young first officer, and a whole host of supporting characters with an interest in the successful outcome of any given flight.

I still enjoy the yank-and-bank aspects of the job but recognize that, most days, the airline is paying me almost solely for my risk management skills. Like most captains, I’ve gotten pretty good at sniffing out trouble and making deft use of the cornucopia of resources at my fingertips to head it off before things get too exciting.

As my wife, Dawn, and I prepared to embark on our flying trip to Alaska in our Stinson 108, I thought a lot about the risk factors.

When I was flight instructing and freight-dogging, survival gear was seldom a consideration even though I regularly flew over remote areas of the desert southwest. 

At best, I’d take a ski jacket. Later, when we owned a Piper Pacer, I carried a basic survival kit and augmented it for trips to the Bahamas and Baja, Mexico. With the Alaska adventure looming and worst-case scenarios dancing in my head, I decided it was time to get serious about survival gear. 

We planned to camp on this trip and were bringing a fair amount of camping gear, itself quite useful in survival situations. I decided to build a custom survival kit specific to our needs, using the best-quality components I could find.

There are two different scenarios that would affect how much survival and camping gear could be retrieved and used.

The first is a forced landing in which the aircraft is wrecked but remains accessible, and its contents can be salvaged more or less at leisure. The second requires rapid egress for immediate survival, followed by loss of access to the aircraft—think ditching or post-crash fire. In this second scenario, I could foresee difficulty in locating and retrieving the full survival kit. The camping gear would almost certainly be forfeit.

For this reason, I took a three-tiered approach.

The most critical (and portable) items remain on my person, in a fly-fisherman’s vest worn on any flight over remote areas. Less critical or less portable gear is stowed in the main survival kit, a bright orange dry bag that remains accessible immediately behind the two front seats. The third tier is camping gear—tent and sleeping bags in one duffel bag immediately under the survival kit, and “comfort items” (mattress pads, food, cooking gear, etc) in another adjacent duffel. 

With weight and bulk in mind, I set a 72-hour requirement for self-sufficiency. Some might consider that inadequate, and I’ll admit it would be during winter or extended poor weather, or in the most remote areas.

Along our route, though, there are excellent search and rescue (SAR) services with both fixed-wing and rotary-wing assets, and in decent weather you’re likely to be picked up within 48 hours—so long as SAR knows where you are. If they don’t even know where to look, two weeks of provisions wouldn’t be enough. For someone as load-limited as me, making myself findable is absolutely critical. 

I fly with a Garmin inReach satellite tracker/communicator, and use the tracking feature with position uploading every two minutes. I file flight plans with a link to my track in the remarks section. Additionally, I provide a responsible person with our itinerary and tracker link, with instructions to contact authorities if we don’t reach our destination and cannot be contacted.

After some deliberation, I also rented a satellite phone for this trip. It’s mainly in case of an emergency landing at a remote strip, where aircraft repair rather than personal rescue must be arranged, and also for filing and closing flight plans outside of cell and RCO coverage. 

Our trauma kit has several CAT-7 windlass-style tourniquets, Israeli compression bandages, clotting powder, and splints. The general first-aid kit has bandages, sutures, ointments, and medications. Both live in the main survival kit, at the top, except that one tourniquet and one compression bandage stay in my vest. For scenarios where ditching might occur, Dawn and I wear manual inflatable PFDs.

The next big threat is hypothermia. It’s important to get dry and warm as quickly as possible and stay so through any inclement weather.

We wear down jackets and hiking boots while flying in even slightly cool weather or when crossing mountains. I carry several Mylar space blankets in my vest, and the survival kit contains wool base layers.

Making fire is critical for heat and for being found. I carry a pocket chainsaw, pocketknife, butane lighter, waterproof matches, and flint striker, plus a bit of fire starter in the vest, and more fire starter plus a lightweight hatchet and fixed-blade knife in the main kit. Making shelter is important so besides the saw, knives, and hatchet, I have paracord in the vest and a folding shovel in the main kit. 

Humans can survive 72 hours without water in a moist, cool climate but wouldn’t be doing so well. On this trip I carried 2 gallons in a 5-gallon collapsible container. Fresh water sources are plentiful along our route, and we packed iodine tablets to purify it. I’d certainly carry more water in a hot, dry place like Baja.

Food is less critical but still important for keeping morale and energy levels up, allowing you to assist in your own rescue. I packed a couple of energy bars in the vest and several MREs in the main kit. The camping gear has a backpacking stove, pot, utensils, and food for several days in a bear-proof container.

By the time I was finished, the survival kit weighed 14 pounds, the vest another 2. Add in water, camping gear, jerry cans with fuel, paper pubs, tie-down kit, tools and spares, filming gear, and clothes for three weeks, and we were bumping right up against maximum gross weight, despite leaving the pooch at home.

I wouldn’t be winning any STOL competitions, but I did feel much better knowing that if the worst came to pass, we were well equipped to meet the challenge. What I didn’t know at the time was just how close we would come to the unthinkable—but that’s a tale for next month. 

This column first appeared in the October Issue 951 of the FLYING print edition.