Posted for "Bryan Burr" <bjburr@mwheli.com>:

 
 The pilot's brother, Leslie Brooks, is my next door neighbor.  What this
 article doesn't say speaks to the stupidity of the men.  None of them
 had told their wives they were going flying.  My neighbor's wife only
 knew that he was to be home at 5 pm on Saturday.  At church on Sunday I
 met here in the hallway of our chapel.  She told me that her husband
 hadn't come home and she thought he had flown with his brother to check
 on their houseboat at Lake Powell because they do this a few times every
 winter.  Her sister in-law had received a phone call on Sunday morning
 that they had been in an airplane accident but they were ok.  That was
 Sunday morning and the phone call was cut short due to poor reception.
 She didn't even know they had gone.  Being in the commercial aviation
 business I called my FAA Principal Operations Inspector at home on
 Sunday morning to see if he could help.  He was the on duty accident
 officer for the weekend so he would be the one "in the know".  He knew
 nothing.   I asked my neighbor's wife a few basic questions that I was
 sure the FAA Inspector would want to know.  How many people, what kind
 of airplane, what is the N number, had they actually made it to their
 destination the day before, where they on their way home.  She had no
 answer for any of the questions except the 3 people involved and their
 names.  She thought they were in a Cessna.  Actually the airplane was a
 Cirrus.  At 9:30 am on Sunday morning all we knew was they had crashed
 and they were OK because of a broken phone call.  About 11:00 am another
 phone call was received and "they were on the lake".  Another broken
 phone call.  What lake?  Utah Lake, the point of departure, one of
 several lakes between here and the destination, or Lake Powell? This was
 getting frustrating.
 
 
 
 
 I called the Inspector again with this new information.  I felt they had
 made it to Lake Powell and had crashed into the lake.  Utah lake has
 excellent cell phone coverage and we wouldn't have broken calls.  I felt
 they had cell phones but because they were probably wet the phones
 weren't working.  I suggested the Inspector get with the Park Rangers at
 Lake Powell and see if they could be found.  By this time the fisherman
 had located the men and delivered them to the Park Rangers.  The men
 were then recovering in the houseboat that they had gone to inspect.
 Still no phone calls to family or the FAA.  We, the FAA, Family and
 neighbors got into this whole thing by backing into it.
 
 
 
 
 
 These idiots had left about 10 am Saturday morning.  They had no flight
 plan.  They had told no family members of their intentions, their route
 of flight, etc.  They called no one to say they had arrived safely.
 They called no one to say they were returning home.  Complete fools.
 The route of flight from Spanish Fork, UT to Bullfrog Marina Airport is
 over some of the most desolate and unforgiving in the nation.  We are
 talking high mountain ridge lines (11,000 feet) badlands, deep canyons,
 no roads, no communications, no water, cold.
 
 
 
 
 
Furthermore, they departed the Lake Powell, Bullfrog Marina airport and
 decided to do some sightseeing.  What really happened is they were doing
 full power high speed low level flying over the lake.  Through the
 canyons low level 150 knots.  The landing gear actually hit the water
 first.  This was high speed CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain). Have
 you ever looked at a sectional of Lake Powell.  There are definite
 altitude restrictions because it is a National Recreation Area. This
 time of year there is nobody on the water.  Perhaps only a lone
 fisherman or two.  The water was 44 degrees.  They had to swim for over
 an hour to shore.  It was 4:30 pm.  The airplane sank in 300 feet of
 water.  Certainly no ELT was going to work.  The night temps drop to 27
 degrees.  NO BODY KNEW ANYTHING until the next morning.
 
 
 Bryan J. Burr
 
 
 N132BB
 
 
 Neighbor to Stupid People!
 
 
 Olympic Wrestler, Two Others Survive UT Accident
 
 
 Plane Was "Flying Low" When It Impacted Lake
 
 A man fishing on Utah's Lake Powell caught some serious fish Sunday
 morning, in the form of Olympic wrestling champion Rulon Gardner.
 <http://www.aero-news.net/##>  <http://www.aero-news.net/##>
 Gardner was a passenger in a Cirrus SR22 (file photo of type, below)
 with two other men from Utah -- pilot Randy Brooks, and his brother
 Leslie -- when it crashed in Lake Powell on Saturday, Garfield County
 public information officer Becki Bronson told ANN. Bronson added the
 plane was "flying low to the water" when it impacted the lake.
 The three men were able to exit the aircraft before it sank, and swam
 for more than an hour in frigid water before spending the night without
 shelter, according to Bronson.
 After they were discovered by a fisherman on the lake, the three men
 were initially taken to Bullfrog Marina where National Park Service
 Ranger Medics examined them. Instead of an AIRVAC helicopter, the three
 opted for Brooks' son-in-law to fly them to American Fork for further
 medical evaluation. All suffered hypothermic injuries to their feet, but
 no life-threatening injuries were reported.
 "It takes only about 30 minutes for someone swimming in 44 degree water
 to start suffering the effects of hypothermia, so the fact that they
 swam in it for an hour, not to mention surviving the plane crash and the
 night without fire or shelter, is pretty amazing," said Steven Luckesen,
 a district ranger at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. "If these
 guys were a cat with nine lives, they just used up three of them."
 The exact location of the crash is still uncertain, and is believed to
 be near the Garfield County/San Juan County border running through Lake
 Powell in Good Hope Bay. An investigation is currently underway.
 Rulon Gardner is a two-time Olympic champion and three time national
 champion in Greco-Roman wrestling. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney,
 Gardner made history with a win over then-undefeated Alexandre Karelin,
 in what was dubbed the 'Miracle of the Mat'.
 On Monday, Gardner -- who also survived a bad motorcycle crash in 2004,
 and being stranded during a 2002 snowmobile expedition -- told ESPN's
 Dan Patrick the plane was flying approximately 30 feet off the water
 just before the crash. He believes the left main landing gear hit the
 water first, and caused the plane to cartwheel.
 <http://www.aero-news.net/##>  <http://www.aero-news.net/##>
 In an earlier interview on NBC's Today Show, Gardner said, "We kinda
 came down then we skipped once then hit a second time. That's when we
 dug in and the propeller stopped. That just spun us, then we just kinda
 went nose down into the water."