When a fighter jet lost an engine over the Bering Sea last summer, the quick thinking of an Anchorage air traffic controller hundreds of miles away helped bring two U.S. Marine pilots home safe, and earned the controller a national award last month.
On July 25, 2016, Jessica Earp was monitoring 20 to 30 aircraft in two sectors of sky over the Bering Sea between Alaska and Asia when one of those pilots lost an engine and declared an emergency.
About one aircraft a month reports losing an engine in flight to Earp's control facility — a Federal Aviation Administration building off Boniface Parkway known to pilots as "Anchorage Center" — but most of them are three- or four-engine cargo jets.
This one, however, was a Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet, making its way from Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks to a training exercise in Asia. The pilot, Capt. Jesse Simmermon, turned his aircraft back toward Alaska, with another F/A-18 accompanying him. Both were running low on fuel.
A tanker aircraft traveling with the jets was refueling another Hornet in the flight group and couldn't break away, according to an account of the situation from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Earp said the tanker tried circling back to reach the two F/A-18s. But by that time, the jets were too far away, the NATCA account said.
"When (Simmermon) started asking, 'Where is the tanker, how much farther is it?' I started to hear the catch in his voice," Earp said, recalling the incident in Anchorage Thursday.
Soon the engine failure forced the Hornet pilots, with the Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 242 based in Iwakuni, Japan, to a lower altitude.
"We cannot maintain (36,000 feet)," Simmermon said over the radio, according to a recording released by the FAA. "We are in a full descent."
Earp said the Hornets were planning to land at King Salmon – still 550 miles away. But she had a different idea.
"There's an airport about 80 miles to the southeast, St. Paul," Earp radioed Simmermon, according to an edited transcript. "I can get runway distance, if you need, and conditions."
"Affirm," Simmermon promptly replied. "We need all that."
More:
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/aviation/2017/04/13/a-fighter-jet-lost-an-engine-over-the-bering-sea-a-voice-from-afar-brought-it-home-safe/Good story. There is nothing in the universe so reassuring as a calm voice coming on and giving you the right numbers. Don't know about the Marines, but if she'd done that for one of us, she'd have gotten our zap tags in thanks.
