I just saw this story, when moving old flying files, and I had forgotten the actual event. It's pretty amazing. I thought you might enjoy it. Talk about one lucky guy! From AIN:
In December 1997, the pilot took off from Great Bend, Kansas, in his Comanche 400, headed for Topeka. He was cruising at 5500' MSL, and put on the autopilot. The "sun was coming up, on a clear, beautiful day." All was routine as he switched tanks, and set up the GPS for Topeka.
"Then I lost about an hour-and-a-half of my life," the pilot recalled.
The airplane, trimmed for cruise flight by the autopilot, flew a perfectly straight course over Kansas until it ran out of fuel, and glided to a landing in a farm field near Cairo, Mo.
When he awoke, confused, disoriented and groggy from a deep sleep, the pilot thought he was still airborne and went through his landing preparations. Slowly it dawned on him that he was already on the ground with the engine stopped.
He had a few cuts and bruises, and the Comanche's right wing was damaged by impact with a tree, but all in all, pilot and airplane had survived the landing in remarkably good shape. The powerless, unpiloted airplane had touched down wings-level, and slid 525 feet before coming to rest in a wire fence and line of small trees.========================================================================
The pilot, with a severe headache and ringing in his ears, struggled 1/4 mile through snowy fields to a farmhouse. The most lasting damage was a broken wrist.
It was a cracked exhaust manifold... and the NTSB dinged the pilot in part, because the airplane was in for an annual, and the pilot chose to fly it before the annual was fully signed off.
Apparently, a few feet shorter or longer on touchdown would have taken him into powerlines or a plowed field. And, if he had had more fuel on booard, it is possible he would have died from the CO poisoning before the airplane ran out of fuel.
The pilot's CoHg (carboxyhemoglobin) level is estimated to have been 44% when he exited the airplane, and it was still at almost 27% when he arrived at the hospital. Loss of consciousness has occurred in other aviation cases at 40% CoHg levels.
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So.... all you ducks, geese, chickens and other feathered personnel out there -- --- --- buy yourselves some CO detectors for your Christmas present!!!!!!
