Student Pilot Recovering After Overnight Stranding

It's one of the very first things a flight instructor tells a VFR student pilot: if you run into clouds or extremely poor visibility conditions, turn around NOW. A Rocky Mountain College student pilot took that advice on a recent night cross-country flight... and though his plane did crash, stranding him overnight in snowy conditions, who knows how much worse things could have been.

As ANN reported, the student -- now identified as Andrew Scheffer -- took off from Billings, MT the evening of March 25, bound for Pryor. According to the National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report on the accident, things were fine for the first 45 minutes or so of the night flight... but things took a turn for the worse when rain and snow moved in along his flight path.

Scheffer began to turn the Piper PA-28-181 Archer around, the NTSB says... but as the plane came around, Scheffer says he received a terrain warning from the aircraft's onboard GPS. He pulled up in response to the warning... and that's the last thing he remembers.

The aircraft came down in the Pryor Mountains, about 40 miles south of Billings. The impact knocked Scheffer unconscious; when he came to, he put on a jacket and wool hat, and wrapped himself in a tarp as protection against temperatures which dropped to near zero Fahrenheit.

In the morning, he used his cellphone to call his flight instructor, then hiked out to meet rescuers through a mile of waist-deep snow, wearing his jacket, his hat... and shorts and sneakers.

From the sound of things, Scheffer had several fortunate circumstances in his favor: the plane's ELT sent out a signal on impact, which was received by authorities at 2152 local time. His aircraft also had a well-stocked emergency kit, including a high-visibility orange tarp, space blankets, and flares... the latter he used to flag down passing aircraft. He was also able to briefly hail search crews using the plane's comm.

The NTSB also noted Scheffer attended a recent Winter Survival Clinic, operated by the Montana Department of Transportation.

After a brief hospital stay and treatment for hypothermia, Scheffer is recovering. He hasn't returned to the flight line yet, though, as his time has reportedly been tied up talking to investigators.

Again, it could have been far worse.

"He is a lucky, lucky, lucky, kid," Al Blain, whose family operates the aircraft recovery service tasked with retrieving the wreckage, told The Associated Press. "He had God looking out for him. It literally sawed the seat off next to him.

"The aircraft was extremely destroyed," he added.

FMI: Read The NTSB Preliminary Report