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Mountain Search Pilot, Part I

© Wendy Beye

There is one aspect of flying that pilots don’t really like to contemplate; something that only happens to "the other guy." Sometimes airplanes crash. Statistics show that the most frequent cause of a crash is pilot error rather than mechanical failure. Here in the Rocky Mountain west, several crashes occur each year as a result of pilots flying into the mountains when bad weather hides crags and cliffs in clouds or precipitation. A search for the missing aircraft is initiated by the Air Force, whose satellites pick up civilian distress beacon signals, and in our state, the Aeronautics Division calls on volunteer search pilots to gear up for duty.

The search begins as soon as weather conditions permit the launch of search crews, so the Aeronautics Division must maintain a list of immediately available volunteers. The volunteers must be specially trained to handle their search duties safely and efficiently. Our Aeronautics Division developed a first-in-the-nation training program for mountain search pilots. The three-day program is conducted every September, and I felt privileged to be selected as the first female instructor in 1994, the program’s 14th year.

The Mountain Search Pilot Clinic always begins on a Friday afternoon at a small airport in Kalispell, Montana, at the north end of Flathead Lake. Thirty carefully selected pilots from around the state gather to register and receive their study packets. The curriculum includes survival training, emergency locator transmitter direction finding instruction, map reading, radio procedures, mountain navigation, search observer techniques, backcountry airstrip use, aircraft emergency procedures, explanation of Air Force SARSAT procedures, and much more, all crammed into two and a half 16-hour days of study and flying.

Friday evening, class work begins with introduction of the five flight instructors, a slide show of actual crash sites that vividly illustrates the difficulties of spotting those sites from the air, and a review of Air Force procedures. Participants crawl into bed at 10:30 p.m., knowing they must be up at 5:30 a.m. to be ready for the next day’s activities.

Flight instructors rise at 5:00 a.m. to make sure the airplanes to be used in the training are fueled, pre-flighted, and ready to go. In Montana in mid-September, this frequently means crawling on top of the wings of the airplanes to polish off any frost that accumulated during the chilly night. After a quick breakfast and weather briefing, each instructor loads three participants in his/her airplane, and before the sun rises, we’re all heading east to three wilderness airstrips to begin training. The flight over the Swan Range is spectacular (unless, of course, a rainstorm spoils our route). We fly through a narrow notch in the range, over a deep turquoise lake guarded by sharp gray rock spires. We land at our assigned airstrips and unload participants so that we can work with each one individually for an hour in the airplane.