'The engine just went silent': Then, this B.C. pilot had 3 minutes to react

CBC

10-05-2025

For more than a month, Canadian pilot Michael MacDonald had taken a marine biologist on daily flights over Mexico's Gulf of California, surveying the sea for wildlife.
Thirty-three of those flights went smoothly. About three hours into the 34th, things went south.
MacDonald, who is now safe at home in Burnaby, B.C., is recounting the seconds, minutes and hours after he realized the engine in his small aircraft had quit, and how far he and his passenger were from land.
The pair were soaring at about 457 metres above the ocean, just low enough so they could see all kinds of whales, orcas, dolphins and turtles, on April 18.
Three hours into the four-hour flight, "the engine just went silent," MacDonald recalled.
"I just immediately turned left 90 degrees, because that was the closest to the land," he told Gloria Macarenko, the host of CBC's On The Coast.
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They were about 11 kilometres away from the shore, and falling about 150 metres per minute, MacDonald said.
"Three minutes is all we had left to play with."
He spent about 90 seconds trying to figure out what had gone wrong in the four-seater Cessna 182. When nothing worked, he knew they were going to hit the water.
MacDonald, 47, has been flying since 2012, and the procedure around what to do in the event of a crash landing has been drilled into him.
"We talk about it a lot, about the possibility of ditching," he said. "Every day we go over a briefing and remember how to do this procedure, that procedure and make sure that we know what we're doing."
MacDonald, 47, passed a pillow to his passenger so she could cover her face to protect herself from debris.
They tightened their harnesses and prepared for impact.
MacDonald remembers trying to navigate the big swells in the ocean.
"When I still thought I was a few feet off the water, it felt like something reached up and grabbed us and just pulled us into the water," he said.
"We went head first and flipped over, immediately blew out the windshield, and water came rushing in."
Having already opened his door, MacDonald unbuckled his harness and rolled out the side of the aircraft, swallowing sea water as he moved.
"It was a bit of a punch to the face. It was kind of a surreal feeling. It was so sudden."
He turned to see his passenger struggling to get out of the harness, and water was up to her chin. He reminded her to unbuckle, and as he swam toward her, she was able to free herself.
Fortunately, they were wearing self-inflating vests. MacDonald pointed out how crucial it was that they wait until they were in the water and out of the plane to pull the cord.
"You could be floating inside the airplane as it's sinking, and you can't swim down to the door to get out."
MacDonald helped the passenger get her vest inflated with relative ease. But when he pulled the cord to inflate his own, nothing happened.
In a moment of physical and emotional strain, where maintaining a steady breath is already a lot to ask, MacDonald had to blow his vest up himself.
"I blew into the little red tube that filled it up. I've been playing bagpipes for years, so it all came into practice."
Shortly after, he felt a vibration on his thigh. His phone, an iPhone 15 with an OtterBox case, was ringing underwater. He carefully pulled it out, dried it, and spoke to someone from his administrative office who had received an alert that something might be wrong.
"I couldn't hear anything initially, so I just started talking into the phone."
He gave his location: seven miles east of Punta and 10 miles southeast of Isla Cerralvo.
"Then I went silent and I could hear, clear as a bell: 'I'm already talking to rescue.'"
And then he immediately lost reception. The phone itself still worked, so he was able to take some photos and video of his harrowing experience while he and the passenger waited for more than two hours.
While he was confident a rescue team would come, he said his marine biologist passenger wasn't so sure. He made it his mission to convince her they were going to be OK.
Both MacDonald and the passenger were rescued without incident.
Since then, MacDonald said he and the passenger have bonded over the shared experience.
"She's my little sister now."
The only time he's been on a plane since the ordeal was on the flight home to B.C. several days later.
He said he paid a little closer attention to the safety demonstration from the flight attendants.
"I thought, OK, I know where my exits are," he said.