B.C. pilot recounts remarkable tale of survival after plane crash in Mexican waters

A Burnaby pilot whose small plane crashed into Mexico's Sea of Cortez is sharing his incredible story.

B.C. pilot Michael MacDonald had spent many a plane ride envisioning how he would react if disaster were to strike. What might be a macabre pastime to some would prove to be vital in his tale of survival, after a forced landing left him stranded for two hours in Mexican waters.

MacDonald had been travelling over the open waters of the Sea of Cortez, near La Paz, with a local marine biologist to record sea life when his plane’s engine began failing.

There had been no warning, no sputtering of the engine. Three hours and fifteen minutes into a four-hour trip, the plane had simply silenced.

“Realizing which direction I was headed and how high I was, my time was very limited,” he says, reflecting on the April 18 event.

“I made a 90-degree turn to close the shoreline, which was still seven miles away and at a sink rate of 500 feet per minute.”

MacDonald says he attempted to source the root of the problem before restarting the engine, both to no avail. Faced with just 90 seconds to prepare for the plane’s landing, he fell into autopilot, carrying out the same course of action he had prepared in his head so many plane rides prior.

“When you’re flying over the ocean for six weeks and you look down to that water and it’s pretty close to you, you think ‘What would I do today, right now, if this happened?’ For six weeks, it’s not a worry, it’s just a plan. When the time came, I guess I was ready,” he says.

MacDonald advised his companion to tighten her harness, open the plane door for a safe escape route, and protect her face from any potential windshield-induced damage. As they were plummeting closer to the ocean – MacDonald says the plane’s final registered speed was 113 km/h – the passenger pushed the panic button to alert officials of their impending crash.

When rescuers called, the two were bobbing in the water with their life jackets on, the plane sinking, tail sticking straight in the air “like the Titanic,” in the water beside them, he says.

“I pulled my phone up very carefully, not to drop it into the abyss,” recalls MacDonald.

“I said, ‘We’re in the water! We’re in the water! We’re seven miles east of Punta Arena, 10 miles southeast of Isla Cerralvo.’ Then I waited a second, and I heard rescuers say, ‘He’s on the phone now,’ and then the phone went dead.”

MacDonald says he grabbed onto his flight partner and held her for the next two hours, the two battling against the strong currents, heavy wind and the floating debris that remained of the plane.

“She was having a very tough time in the water, and that actually gave me an opportunity to find a goal,” he says.

“I’ve got to help this girl. I feel completely responsible for her. I’ve got to save her from panicking so much that it just makes her situation that much worse.”

As the two waited for help MacDonald ignored his own fear and instead whiled away the time trying to make his companion feel as comfortable as possible, making eye contact, talking and telling “crappy dad jokes,” which, he assures, she liked.

“I felt like I had a bit of an out-of-body experience, watching someone else do it. So, I was OK,” he says.

MacDonald says the sense of purpose provided a distraction. It wasn’t until they were rescued, by the Mexican military in a speedboat, that the severity of the situation and the physical impact truly hit him. He “puked (his) guts up” as soon as he stepped foot into the vessel, he says.

“I think I just took in too much sea water. It was my body rejecting whatever was in my stomach and the rocking of the waves, because the sea was so violent on that boat. I just couldn’t take it,” he says.

“I’m not a sailor,” MacDonald laughs.

Military doctors and an ambulance greeted the two survivors as they made it to dry land at La Paz. Aside from the cuts, bruises, and the emotional toll of the ordeal, the two had gotten off from the crash relatively lightly, he says.

The largest repercussion has been the loss of his passport, which MacDonald is now waiting to have replaced so he can return home to Canada and recover properly.

As for whether MacDonald is afraid to take to the skies in future, he says he is convinced that the likelihood of such an experience happening to him again is so slim that it shouldn’t warrant any fear.

“I still believe air travel is probably the safest way to get anywhere, flying an airplane is much safer than most other modes of transportation,” he laughs.

With files from Yasmin Gandham