“If you haven’t flown a search-and-rescue (SAR) mission, it is difficult to appreciate just how hard it is to find an aircraft on the ground,” John Desmarais, emergency services plans officer at the national headquarters of the Civil Air Patrol, told AIN. “And it’s next to impossible to see a single person unless you’re directly over him in daylight and he’s in a clear area.” Desmarais said the single most important factor in being found is having a flight plan on file and sticking to it.
Lt. Col. Mark Fowler agreed, “Corporate pilots typically don’t give it a second thought because they usually operate on an IFR flight plan, but as they’re descending somewhere they may occasionally turn off course to get a close-up look at some fishing spot. If they go down, nobody has any idea they’re not along their flight planned route.” Fowler, the director of the U.S. Air Force national search-and-rescue (SAR) school at the U.S. Coast Guard training center in Yorktown, Va., also stressed the importance of talking to someone as soon as you think you have a problem.
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