1st at five though exclusive new
details tonight from the pilot that
crashed his plane into a high voltage
tower Sunday night in Gaithersburg.
Just hours ago. That pilot, Pat Merkel,
told our Bruce Leshan that he
considered landing in Frederick as
the weather conditions worsened.
But he decided to continue on to
Gaithersburg because he did not want
to disappoint people who were waiting
for him and his passenger to return.
Bruce Leshan talked to him live on the phone.
He joins us now live from the scene.
Yeah, what is he telling you, Bruce?
Hey Leslie, it's Merkel who has flown
in and out of here scores of times,
tells me that the fog was like pea soup.
He could see the ground but he
couldn't see anything in front of him.
Now experts tell me that in those
conditions on instrument approach,
when you hit the minimums,
you should either go around
or divert to another airport.
Just hours ago, workers Hacked Off the wings
of the mangled single engine plane and
loaded it on a flatbed.
Pilot Pat Merkel tells
me the survival of him and his passenger
is a miracle that has restored his faith in
God. I'm really getting worried.
The plane is definitely moving from the wind.
Merkel and passenger Janet Williams
spent about 7 hours hanging 100
feet off the ground. Plane dangling
from its propeller, which was tangled
in a high voltage tower. He told the 911
operator what he thought happened.
I got down a little bit lower
than it should have been.
Gotcha. I thought.
I was supposed to be the airport than I was.
We could see the ground,
but we couldn't be in front,
Merkel tells me as he flew over Frederick.
He considered landing there,
but even as the fog rolled in,
he kept going toward his home
airport in Gaithersburg because
people were waiting for him.
The better airport in this case.
Under those weather conditions
would have been Frederick.
It's a larger airport.
They have better instrument approaches.
Former NTSB investigator Greg Fife says
pilots have to be able to see the runway,
even on instruments.
It gets you to a point in space where if
you can't see the runway environment,
you have to abandon the approach.
Merkel admitted to me that he
crashed another small plane in
Utah 30 years ago with his wife,
his two children.
And his nanny on board?
They all survived.
If both of these crashes are
determined to be his fault, should he
still be flying? It's up to
the pilot to demonstrate that
he did exercise good judgment.
Now, Merkel told me that he would
only answer questions about what
he calls miss misinformation that
he says is being passed around.
He says that his plane never
hit the power line or he and
his passenger would be dead,
although that is really questionable.
He also says that the tower and the
plane itself were never electrified,
and he's pretty frustrated that
firefighters took hours to get
them down from there. Leslie.
Hey, Bruce.
Good job getting the information.
They were able to get on. I'm curious,
after hearing about two crashes,
how many flights he's actually,
you know, taken. Yeah, as as a pilot.
But what about the planes altimeter?
Was it working?
Was it set properly?
What do we know about that?
Yeah, that's a big question about the
altimeter, something that the NTSB
is definitely going to be looking
into because it has to be working
properly to tell you how far you
are off the ground, your altitude.
It also has to be said for the barometric
pressure at the location where you go,
and you got to check that
out on your flight plan.
You got to figure out what it is.
If it's changes, changes,
you have to set the altimeter correctly.
So they're going to be looking at that.
Still interesting that he's
frustrated with the firefighters.
For taking so long as he
put it to get him down,
but they they got him down safely,
say, and they had to do a lot
to make sure that was possible
and of course the ripple
effect from all of this too.
Alright, Bruce, good job.
Alright, thanks so much.