The Azores
32,000FT. 505 passengers. 200 miles from home. No power. CAE-trained Iberia pilot Capt. Robert Piché was going to have to wing it.
Uttar Pradesh
Oct. 22, 2004. Flash flood in Uttar Pradesh, India. Buries 10 CAE simulators and a $20 million Air India investment under 6 feet of water. Panic call. Just let ’em dry out. That’s all? Yup. They’ll be just fine. 3 days later and enough hair dryers for 10 Oscar ceremonies and every single simulator was home and dry and (so to speak) ready to fly.
Syria
Syrian desert. Pilot MIA for 6 hours. 30 miles behind enemy lines. CAE-trained helicopter pilot Mike Carpenter was in a hellish situation. He’d located the pilot, but a freak sandstorm had blasted out of the western dunes, blotting out light and landscape, with 100 km gusts threatening to shear off the rotors. Instrument-only training kicked in as he steadied the craft, descending gently until a tooth-rattling jar told him he’d landed on the ground. He couldn’t see. Out of the eddying murk emerged sand-stung eyes in a sand-stung face. Now they just had to make it home.