After Pilot, Daughter's Miracle Survival, Another Stroke of Luck

Their location wasn't known, but the girl had an iPad with her
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 16, 2021 1:20 PM CST
They Survived a Plane Crash. An iPad Led to Their Rescue
This stock image shows a Cessna 150.   (Getty Images)

A father and daughter whose plane went down in a wooded area in Pennsylvania were rescued thanks to the teen's iPad. As CNN explains, the two-seat, single-engine Cessna 150 departed from the Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport on Sunday bound for an airport in the Pocono Mountains. Then it vanished from radar. WNEP reports the FAA contacted state police and told them the plane had rapidly descended but their whereabouts weren't clear. Rescue teams, going off of the plane's last known location, started searching the woods without luck. The pilot's wife was contacted, and authorities learned the daughter had an iPad on her.

"With certain iPads, you're able to ping signals to it and once we got that coordinate, that's where we located them," some 7 miles from the airport, says Chief James Serafin with the Bear Creek Volunteer Hose Company. He describes it as a "miracle" they were found, saying "from what I hear and see, you don't really hear of survivors, especially in the area that they crashed, it's very heavily wooded. They had to go through trees and everything else. It definitely was a miracle."

The 58-year-old and 13-year-old were recovered around 2am Monday in a pre-hypothermic state and were hospitalized. The Centre Daily Times reports temps had dropped to the mid-30s, and WNEP reports it was cold enough that neither the pair nor the plane's wreckage could be detected using infrared. It's not yet known what caused the plane to crash. (In another recent crash, a father's bear hug may have saved his daughter's life.)

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