Father/Daughter Duo Rescued Using Family Tracking Capability

A father-daughter flight duo involved in a plane crash were rescued by location tracking capability of their devices, said rescuers. Teams initially believed they were dispatched for a recovery operation, only to find, with the assistance of family, that the crash coordinates could be found quickly for an accurate, timely rescue instead. 

Chief James Serafin of the Bear Creek Volunteer Hose Company told CNN that survivors of crashes in the area were rarely survivable, owing to the heavy forestation. The landing site took the survivors through a section of dense vegetation before coming to a halt in the cold Pennsylvania woods. "I can honestly say, I think every rescuer out there was planning this to be a recovery rather than a rescue, and nobody was more surprised than when I first got to the plane and found they were alive" said Sergeant John Richards, with the Pennsylvania State Police. 

Officers from the Wilkes-Barre Patrol Unit were alerted to a possible plane down at 20:30 Sunday evening 25 miles south of Scranton, being told that a Cessna 150 (file photo) had disappeared from radar contact with two souls aboard. The father and teenage daughter were assumed to be the target of a recovery mission, with a cold snap descending with the night and snow on the ground. Rescue teams began at the last known location of the airplane and began a grid-by-grid search of the area. 

As teams closed in on their assumed location, they came into contact with the man's wife at the Pocono Mountains Municipal Airport, where they used the family's cell phones to ping the man's location. When they learned of the daughter’s ipad, they reportedly queried the GPS coordinates and immediately narrowed their search zone. Without the need for a wide-ranging search operation, rescuers made good time closing in on the site. Teams found the duo huddled together for warmth, pre-hypothermic, with injuries sustained in the crash. After rescue, they were transported to a local hospital to recover from their injuries, happy to be back in the warmth once again.

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