Flying blind, landing safely: MCAS Beaufort air traffic controllers help pilot land in fog

Correction: As originally published, this story incorrectly stated the credentials of pilot Samuel Tims. Tims is licensed to land a plane solely with instruments, and the story has been edited to remove the incorrect information

The pilot was in trouble.

He was running low on fuel and a heavy fog had reduced visibility to nearly nothing.

He had tried twice land -- once on Lady's Island and once in Walterboro.

With his options running out, he turned to the air traffic control tower at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort -- and to Nick Wallace and Lance Cpl. Matthew Pittman.

The pilot, Samuel Tims of Seabrook, had taken off from the Beaufort County Airport on Lady's Island around 9:45 p.m. Nov. 30 expecting to perform some night landing practice approaches.

Less than an hour later, Pittman was guiding Tims and his fuel-starved Cessna 182 onto the tarmac at MCAS Beaufort.

Soon after takeoff, the pilot's Cessna was shrouded by a layer of fog so thick he couldn't see what was in front of him, according to an article from the MCAS Beaufort public affairs office. The pilot climbed to about 1,000 feet before unsuccessfully trying to descend and land.

Wallace said Tuesday he and the air traffic control tower at MCAS Beaufort were first contacted by Tims after the aborted landing at the Beaufort County Airport.

He reported a problem with his plane's instruments. Wallace helped him with basic radar services and sent him along to Walterboro Airport in Colleton County, handing him off to an air traffic control tower in Charleston.

Although the air traffic control tower aboard Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort primarily serves the F-35Bs and other high-tech aircraft, it routinely works with civilian pilots in the area.

The tower monitors the corridor between Charleston and Savannah, handling nearly all civilian aircraft flying below 10,000 feet through the area -- commercial planes making their approach to Hilton Head Airport, medical helicopters making runs to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, and everything in between.

Soon after the handoff, the air station was contacted by the Charleston tower. The pilot had again run into fog in Walterboro. The glide slope, a signal that allows pilots to track their approach for landing, was too weak to trust for a safe landing.

His fuel dwindling, he was headed back toward Beaufort County in hopes the fog had cleared at the Lady's Island airport.

The pilot, who declined through the air station to be interviewed for this article, had a bigger problem though.

He had slowed considerably to conserve fuel, and now he didn't have the speed or fuel to make it back to Lady's Island.

Given the number of factors involved -- the deteriorating weather, the low fuel, the reduced speed to conserve what little he had left, and instrumentation that wasn't showing the correct altitude -- Wallace and the pilot declared an emergency and cleared him for landing at the air station.

In Wallace's five years at MCAS Beaufort -- four as a Marine air traffic controller, and a little over one year as a civilian instructor -- few of the situations he's had working with civilian aircraft have been as urgent as the one Nov. 30.

Wallace handed communication with the pilot off to Pittman, who began to guide him toward the airport using precision approach radar. The system uses a sonar-type image that still shows the outdoor visual conditions. Instead of gray fog and clouds in his face, Pittman was looking at a large orange cloud on his radar screen.

The limited fuel meant there would be no practice approaches, no second chances at landing.

Pittman would have to guide the pilot in, and the pilot would have to trust every instruction Pittman gave.

"There was a sense of urgency in his voice," Wallace said of the pilot. "There was definitely a little uncertainty."

For almost 10 minutes, Pittman called out changes to chart headings and altitudes every two to three seconds, helping the pilot cover the final nine miles and descend 1,500 feet to safely land at MCAS Beaufort.

Tims quickly thanked Pittman, and the two men in the windowless control room continued on with their shift.

"LCpl. Pittman did an amazing job with the precision approach," Wallace said.

Wallace said he and Pittman were "watchful" during the final few seconds when the plane's wheels hit pavement.

"I was never nervous on our side," he said. "It's like plays in baseball; we all know what to do on our side. I was 100 percent confident in the Marines."

Wallace, who has worked as an air traffic controller at MCAS Beaufort as a Marine beginning in September 2010 and as a civilian instructor beginning in August 2014, said he has used the successful assistance as a teachable moment for the Marines he instructs, a textbook case of how to help pilots in distress.

"The overwhelming feeling I got was to tell my students 'this is what we prepare for,'" he said. "Most of what I do is instruction and we routinely reference specific instances like this. ... the most important thing is to be in a position to provide assistance. It would have been significantly more difficult for someone far away to help him. We were in the right place."

Follow reporter Matt McNab on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Matt.

This story was originally published December 22, 2015 at 2:49 PM with the headline "Flying blind, landing safely: MCAS Beaufort air traffic controllers help pilot land in fog."