Friday, July 23, 2021

Cirrus SR22 GTS, N211CM: Incident occurred July 19, 2021 in Campton, Wolfe County, Kentucky

MoneyPit Investment Corp








Greenville pilot Clark Jernigan  was trained on what to do in the event of an emergency landing.

Last month, for the first time in his 38 years as a pilot, he had to put that training to work.

Jernigan was traveling from the Dayton-Phillipsburg Airport in Ohio, en route to the Greenville Downtown Airport, when engine failure led him to land on a Kentucky highway.

Jernigan was not injured. The small Cirrus SR 22 plane he and Michael Zurenko purchased 13 years ago was not damaged.

Jernigan told The Greenville News via phone Saturday that he’s still here due to intense emergency training from the likes of Rick Beach, a pilot safety instructor with the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) and other trainers he’s worked with over the years.

The training by Beach, in particular, helped Jernigan remember the guide to deploying the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS).

The emergency landing happened at approximately 6:30 p.m., Monday, July 19. Jernigan picked up the plane from Phillipsburg after a facility had painted its exterior, giving it a new interior, and provided annual maintenance.

He and two pilots with the maintenance facility perform a test flight for an hour and a half to confirm that it was safe to leave.

Everything checked out fine, he said.

About 45 minutes into the flight to Greenville, Jernigan said he had a subtle indication that one of the plane’s two magnetos - an engine driven electrical generator - may have failed. That failure was confirmed but, like most aircrafts, the Cirrus 22 can continue to operate with one magneto.

Fifteen minutes later, the engine quit, Jernigan said. It did so without shaking or any apparent causes, he said. “It just stopped developing power.”

That’s when Jernigan recalled the CAPS checklist of what to do when an engine fails in flight. The checklist includes determining whether the plane can glide to the nearest airport.

That wasn’t an option due to lack of energy to get there. Another option is to find a suitable landing site.

As he was descending, Jernigan considered pulling the plane's attached parachute. While positioning the airplane in a good location to pull a parachute, he saw that his landing site would be a highway.

“We are trained to have what we call floor for pulling the parachute. That is an altitude below which you won’t have enough time for the parachute to fully deploy,” he said. “My floor was 2,200 feet above sea level altitude. The terrain below me was about 1,200 feet above sea level. It was my intent that my floor would be 1,000 feet around the surrounding terrain." 

His biggest worry as he surveyed the Mountain Parkway – a 75-mile highway that traverses the mountain landscapes of eastern Kentucky- was whether he’d identified the power lines accurately.

“So often, with an off-airport landing, power lines can appear that were not seen until the person is too close to avoid them,” he said. It appeared that Jernigan had a suitable landing without the power lines.

But Jernigan recognized that he was about to descend at an altitude which would render the parachute worthless.

“I knew from my training that, at that point, based on the sight view, that I could land the airplane on the highway,” he said.

The airplane typically touches down at about 75 miles an hour. Jernigan was able to merge it in with the cars on a roadway that allows speeds up to 70 miles per hour.

The landing was in Wolfe County, near the town of Campton, Kentucky.

The plane’s wingspan is about 38 feet, Jernigan said. The highway on which it landed was about 25 feet with guardrails on either side.

There was no room for cars to go around it, he said. He feared that the plane would be rear-ended, but it wasn’t. Cars, noticing its descent, stopped and made way for the plane.

“We are trained to have what we call floor for pulling the parachute. That is an altitude below which you won’t have enough time for the parachute to fully deploy,” he said. “My floor was 2,200 feet above sea level altitude. The terrain below me was about 1,200 feet above sea level. It was my intent that my floor would be 1,000 feet around the surrounding terrain." 

His biggest worry as he surveyed the Mountain Parkway – a 75-mile highway that traverses the mountain landscapes of eastern Kentucky- was whether he’d identified the power lines accurately.

“So often, with an off-airport landing, power lines can appear that were not seen until the person is too close to avoid them,” he said. It appeared that Jernigan had a suitable landing without the power lines.

But Jernigan recognized that he was about to descend at an altitude which would render the parachute worthless.

“I knew from my training that, at that point, based on the sight view, that I could land the airplane on the highway,” he said.

The airplane typically touches down at about 75 miles an hour. Jernigan was able to merge it in with the cars on a roadway that allows speeds up to 70 miles per hour.

The landing was in Wolfe County, near the town of Campton, Kentucky.

The plane’s wingspan is about 38 feet, Jernigan said. The highway on which it landed was about 25 feet with guardrails on either side.

There was no room for cars to go around it, he said. He feared that the plane would be rear-ended, but it wasn’t. Cars, noticing its descent, stopped and made way for the plane.

In the midst of an experience unlike any that Jernigan has experienced, the “most wonderful 48-hours of my life” unfolded because the kindness, generosity, and resourcefulness of the people of Campton and Wolfe County.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), with Jernigan’s permission, inspected the engine. Mechanics from Steel Aviation, which had performed the work on the plane prior to Jernigan picking it up, sent mechanics to replace the magnetos, test the engine, and determine its airworthy before having a professional pilot take it to a nearby airport for more surveillance.

A friend and owner of another Cirrus plane, Justin Winter, eventually flew Jernigan home, thus ending Jernigan’s week in Campton, Kentucky.

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