June 25, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Doug White shares his harrowing story of survival and raw determination after the pilot of the private plane he was on died mid-flight, leaving him suddenly in control of a King Air 200—and responsible for the lives of his wife and two daughters on board. The event would later go on to inspire the film On a Wing and a Prayer.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love hearing your story. Send them to our
American Stories dot com. They're some of our favorites. The
motion picture On a Wing and a Prayer follows passenger
Doug White's arrowing journey to safely land a plane and
(00:32):
save his entire family from insurmountable danger after their pilot
dies unexpectedly mid flight. By the way, the role is
beautifully played by Dennis Quaide. Here to share the story
is the man who lived it, Doug White. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Nineteen eighty nine, I was running a drug store in
little town of Mangam, Louisiana m A n G h
A M. We had no doctors there, so we had
to depend on people to come from larger cities like
Monroe after they've seen the doctor and bring the prescriptions
thirty miles back to our store. Well, my store was
(01:12):
literally right the side a drug store that had been
there for one hundred years, and it was called Mangham
Drug been there Salon. Well, I wasn't out of town
or I lived thirty miles away, and I was originally
wasn't from this area.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
And the lady that was running.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
The drug store next to me was born and raised here.
Her daddy owned the cotton gin there. She graduated from
high school there.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
So, to say the.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Least, she was killing me in business, we were just
about to starve to death. So rather than try to
beat her in business, I just married her.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
We made one big drug.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Store, and two kids and three granddaughters later, here we are.
So fast forward to two thousand and six. I was
having a conversation with a friend of mine and he
had just come back from the Cooper Clinic in Dallas,
and I said, what's the Cooper Clinic?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
He said, you know the guy that.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Invented or started aerobics, doctor Ken Cooper, And I said yeah.
He said, well, he's got a big clinic out there
in Dallas. They don't accept insurance, they don't do any treating,
but they it's a diagnostic clinic. They just diagnose and
they've got this one test that I went through.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
He said that we'll give you a good.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Indication if you've got any blockages in your cardiac art
reason it's non invasive like a heart caf is.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
I said that sounds interesting to me. I said, I think.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I'll look into that because I've got a lot of
heart trouble in my family on both sides. So I
talked to my wife and I said, you want to
go to Dallas for the weekend. She said yeah. Well
we went out there on Friday and I made the deployment,
went through all the tests and everything. Of course, I've
been riding a bicycle a pretty good bit, so I
had some good cardio training under my belt, and we
(03:00):
just all figured I was gonna acea all that. Well,
the lady comes out on after the treadmill. She said,
well it was a positive test.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I said, that's good.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
She said, no, that's not good. Positive is bad. It
means you flunked it. I said, oh, I flunked.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
It, yep, and.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I think you need to have a further exam. So
we did the test where they checked your calcium in
your arter is the one my buddy was telling me about.
And I flunked that one. And then they had me
go do a heart sea tea and I flunked that.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
One.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Guy said you need to find a cardiologist. I said, man,
So I came back. That's made for a long weekend.
I came back and I said, I filled a lot
of prescriptions for cardiologists, but I've never been to one.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Who am I gonna go? See?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, this one guy's name popped out that I filled
a lot of prescriptions for in local areas.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I went, made the pointing over them.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
He got me in two days and he said, you
just bought yourself caaf.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I saw, okay, he goes in.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I had an eighty percent blockage, a ninety percent blockage,
and one hundred percent blockage, and one hundred percent the
Good Lord, and my body had come out above the blockage,
come out of the artery on both sides, grown two
new arteries down beside the blockage, and then tied back
in below the blockage. So to this day, I've got
(04:28):
one hundred percent blockage in me, but it's got two
arteries going around it. But all that was done with
no symptoms, riding a bicycle ten miles a day, no
shortness of breath, no nothing. I was fifty three years old,
all right, So go see my brother. I had one sibling,
brother named Jeff. He was two years younger. When he
(04:50):
was about fifty one. I want to see him and
I said, Jeff, you need to go get a stress
test done. I said, I had two stints put in
when I fifty three, And I said, we had two
fifty three year old cousins had heart attacks on one
on each side of the family.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Thirty nine year old uncle had triple.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Bypass, his forty five year old brother dropped dead of
a heart attack, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I said, you need to go get a stress test.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
You're fifty one, and all these other things happened at
fifty three.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
In our family.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Well, IQ wise, my brother was probably genius, and he
worked with a bunch of doctors in an oncology clinic.
He was a radiation health physicist. He's the one that
calibrated and set up treating my programs for the radiation
machines and.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
The gamma knife radiation machines.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
He would calibrate all that, and he worked with a
bunch of doctors, and IQ wise, he probably was smarter
than they were, but sometimes he lacked in common sense.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I said, so you need to go get that check.
He say, they're not gonna do anything.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Check your temperature, maybe get your blood or something. He
rubbed his forehead, you know, and I said, no, it's more.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Plus his wife was a nurse. Well, he never did
go and he dropped dead of a heart attack. And
guess how old he was? Fifty three.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So I get word on a Sunday or a Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
That he had died.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
My mother was there because she spent two or three
months in the winter down in Naples, Florida, and his wife.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Was there, and so I had to hurry up.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And I found a way to get to Naples and
helped tend to that. So Monroe, Louisiana was not a
good connection that on that short of notice. So I
went to Jackson, Mississippi, because that's probably two hours to
the airport from me, and flew down there on Sunday.
My family came down in the middle of the week.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And you've been listening to Doug Waite tell his story.
And by the way, there's a movie based on his story.
On a Wing and a Prayer and Dennis Queed. Please
Doug Waite, when we come back, more of this remarkable story,
a remarkable and rich voice from a part of our country. Oh,
there just aren't enough stories about more of Doug White's story.
(07:10):
When we continue here on our American Stories. Liehabibe here
(07:33):
the host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:55):
a lot. Go to Alamericanstories dot com and give, And
we continue with our American Stories and Doug Waite's story.
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So we buried my brother on Good Friday, and I
remember Friday afternoon being in his house, all the keen
folks and all the friends stuff, family friends. But from
Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon, about one thirty, I don't
remember anything. Don't remember anything to this day. That was
(08:40):
in two thousand and nine. Somebody said, you remember going
out to the Japanese restaurant that night on Saturday night.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Don't you?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I said no, I couldn't tell you. Easter Sunday they
all went to Sunrise Church. I went to the regular
time service.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I don't remember any of that.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
So I knew that a King airplane from my home
airport had been chartered to the final day of the
Master's Golf Tournament to the Master's Final Sunday in Augusta, Georgia.
So I made a call to my buddy up there,
and I said, well, after you drop those people off
(09:16):
in Georgia, can you swing down here to Marco Island,
Florida and pick me and my family up flies back
to Monroe, and then I'll just pay you the difference
in the gasoline between a straight shot back to Monroe
and y'all looping down here. Because the charter people had
already paid for the airplane and the and the pilot
(09:36):
and all that, said yeah, we can do that, So
they flew down there. Of course, we were gonna come
back to Jackson first and drop me off, and then
he would go ahead and bring the girls on back
to Monroe.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Joe K. Bucks c A.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
B Uk was retired Fulbird colonel and Air Force was
the pilot of the airplane. He flew down from Augusta, Georgia,
and he landed. I got on the airplane he was
going because we didn't have any return tickets from the
time we went down to my brother's funeral because we
didn't know what time would be coming.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Home or when. I said, you care if I sit
up front? He said, no, sit right up here. Here,
here's a.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Headset, because I said, I like looking out the window
and I like to.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Listen to the radio communication chatter.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I'd only been on that King Air one time in
my life before, and that was a couple months earlier,
and I'd asked the pilot, not Joe, but another fellow,
how do you talk on the radio, And he reached
over and showed me which button to push on the
yoke there at the steering wheel, if you will. So
I knew which button to push. So I got on
(10:42):
two months later, and Joe was such a pro that
he had both sets of radios already tuned in and
died to the next frequency that we were going to
need to talk to.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
So we take off.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
We head the south towards Key West. He makes a
one to eighty and we fly up through some clouds
because we're getting beat up pretty good and getting kicked around.
He said, don't remember. Joe said, it'll smooth out when
we get up on top here. So we popped out
on top and it did smooth that.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Well.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
He's about when he checks in with Miami Center at
eighty five hundred feet, and you can hear it on YouTube.
You can hear him just run out of breath on
the radio because he had his finger on the push
to talk switch.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
And he dies right there.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And we're on a two thousand foot per minuted climb
on autopilot, and I don't have a clue. Every two
and a half minutes we're another mile higher. So I
don't know if we're gonna run out of oxygen, if
we're gonna get to a certain heights and quit flying
and just stall and come out of the sky, which
we would have happened. I don't know, but I do
know where to push the talk button is because I'd
(11:50):
ask the guy two months previous, and I remember, and
I pushed the button and Joe would set the radio
frequencies up where I didn't have to try to find
how to get to Miamis because I wouldn't have a
clue and it would have been dead quiet up there.
So I pushed the button and told them what was
going on, and we had an emergency, and I immediately
moved to the head of the head of the line.
(12:11):
When you're an airplane and you declare an emergency, you
moved to the head of the class quickly.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
I got declared emergency pilot to see Simon, I need
help up here. I mean, I need a can air
of pilot to talk to.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
So they I started.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
The first fellow was not helping me too bad, too much,
because I just wanted to stop the climb and went.
It was supposed to stop at ten thousand feet and
level out, but evidently there was a glitch or something
because we blew right through ten thousand feet. So here's
eleven thy, twelve thousand, fourteen thousand, little.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
Pilot so once again says ten thousand. I've already busted
ten thousand on a steady climbing. I need to stop
the climb. I can say, went everybody up, and I say,
you got it? N thatth the whiskey I'm here, don't.
I would kind of finding a solution to that as
stand by one.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
So they go get another controller in Miami named Lisa Grimm,
who also has some piloting experience. They bring her down
and they set her down beside the first guy I
was talking to and he's working all these airliners full
of people because it's Easter Sunday, it's International Airport in Miami,
and people coming in and flying out to visit family
(13:21):
and going home and all that.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It was busy.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
So while he's working five or six seven aircraft full
of hundreds of people, she'll give him a hand signal.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
So I gotta work this guy.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So she'd take over and say something to me for
a couple of seconds, then hand it back to him.
So she convinced me to disconnect the autopilot.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Not if I does a whiskey, just need to be autopilot.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
We're going to have you. We're gonna have you hand
fly the plane.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
So she showed me where it was at and I
flipped the switch to disconnect it.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
I disengaged it. I'm flying the airplane in my hand.
You find me along with the way you can laws.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Well, I know all this now, I didn't know it then,
but the airplane was trimmed to climb at two thousand
foot per minute, so the rudders and alley runs and
everything were set to climb.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
The nose was up. Well, just because I turned off.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The autopilot, none of that changes. So As soon as
I clicked that autopilot off, that nose that King Air
was sticking straight up in the air. And that was
the heaviest thing I'd ever grabbed a hold of my life.
I thought I'd grabbed a hold of a thousand pound gorilla.
So I tried to push the yoke forward as hard
(14:36):
as I could with my right hand. And I didn't
know it at the time, but there was a little
switch by my thumb. My left thumb is an electric
trim switch. I could have just pushed it and gave
myself some immediate, immediate release, but I didn't know anything
about that. But I knew there was a trim wheel
way over on the other side of the airplane, so
I reached over there with my left hand. While I
(14:59):
was with my right hand, I was shoving to go
forward as hard as I could to keep the nose
from going straight up.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
And stalling an airplane.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
And I reached between the pilot's dead leg and the
panel over there, and I got one finger on the
trim control wheel, and I was able to give myself
a little bit of relief where I could handle the airplane.
So they take me over out over the golf of Mexico.
I guess maybe not gonna make as big of an
explosion or something. So I'm going out over the Golf
(15:26):
of Mexico heading west. I've got a baby blue sky
going into baby blue water, so I have no visual reference.
I mean, it's instruments like conditions at two o'clock in
the afternoon, and he's wanting me to make a one
to eighty and turn back towards land. I know that,
but I'm afraid to turn the airplane. I'm afraid of
(15:49):
upset it and flip it upside down. So what should
have been a maybe a one minute turn probably took
me ten or twelve minutes because I was all tensed up.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
You show me in a turn. I'm up moving very
good here, I know.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
Still, let's take a southwest down and no turn yet.
The opportude still look good, but you're still southwest down
pill turn right to left.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Okay, hold on.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So I'm out over the Golf of Mexico and I said, well,
if I turn this auto pilot back on, well that
helped me fly. And he said, yeah, you can. You
can turn that back on if you want to. So
I reached down there on the same switch and I
flipped it on. Well, what I didn't know was when
Joe had got ready to take off, he had set
the autopilot to fly due north out of South Florida,
(16:36):
do north towards the Panhandle of Florida. That hadn't changed either,
just because I turned it off. So I'm heading due
west out over the Gulf. When I turned the auto
pilot back on, that thing yanks around to the right
and yaws to the right real hard, wanting to fly
north like it was set to. And that kind of
scared me. So I turned it back off real quick, and.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I said, no, I can't do that, messes up my heading.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
And you're listening to Doug White tell one heck of
a story. The movie is on a wing and a prayer.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I see it.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
By all means, it's the story of Doug White. And
by the way, Dennis Quaid does a heck of a
job playing Doug White. But this is Doug White, and
you're hearing real life audio from the tower, and my goodness,
he sounds calm, and I guess in those circumstances that's
all you've got. But how he handled himself in the cockpit,
(17:27):
it's just remarkable listening to it. My pilot is deceased,
and I need a King Air pilot to talk to.
He asks or commands. I need to stop the climb,
he says. A bit later when we come back more
of Doug White. What happens next here on our American
stories and we continue with our American stories and Doug
(18:11):
Waite's story. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, the people in Fort Myers, which is on the
west side of the state, at the airport, they hear
that we're coming. Miami hands them off to us to
Fort Myers and they hear we're coming. So the Fort
Myers Airport gets shut down. Nobody's coming in and nobody's leaving.
Dan Fabio is one of the controllers at Fort Myers.
(18:39):
Fav is in Victor I O Dan FOGBYO FAVO. He
hears the's a King Air coming in. The King Airs
in trouble, and he remembers that he has a good
friend in Danbury, Connecticut. There's a lot of King Air experience.
That's where Dan used to work. His friend in Connecticut's
name is Carrie K. A R I Kerry Sorenson. He
(19:00):
gets on his cell phone calls Carrie Sorenson.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Carrie's, hey, buddy, what's going on? Carrie? I don't have
time to chat right now. I got a King Air
in trouble. I need your help.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Carrie had been riding around dan Berry, Connecticut that day,
and he's old. He's got old model t or a model,
a antique car, and he was a pretty day and
he's riding around his girlfriend Ashley. He wasn't even at
the house, but he had to come back by the
house for something, use the restroom or get something. And
that exact moment when he's at his house is when
(19:32):
Dan calls him. He said, what can I do for you?
He said, he doesn't know anything about a King Air.
So Carrie runs down to his basement in Danbury, Connecticut.
He's got a King Air poster of the cockpit of
a King Air on the wall.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Of his office. So he sits down.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
He's looking at the exact same thing I'm looking at.
And Brian Norton is another controller in Fort Myers. He's
his shift is over, he's leaving the tower. I think
it's two o'clock local time. He's out in the park
a lot, but he's got a little bit of piloting experience.
Nothing as complex as a King Air, but little cherokees
and cessing one seventy two's and such.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
He's going home.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
His supervisor runs out of the tower, runs out in
the parking lot and gets Brian and ask him to
come back in and sit down and help work us.
So Brian's sitting there talking to me in the radio.
Dan Fabio is sitting beside Brian talking to Carry Sorenson
twelve hundred miles away in a cell phone. So Carrie
(20:36):
would say, tell him he needs to drop flaps when
he gets ready to land, and the flap setting is
right beside his left luck, So he'd tell Dan that.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Dan would tell Brian that.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Brian would tell it to me, and I'd say, got it,
And I said, well, how fast do I need to
go without stalling this airplane to stand by it? Yess,
Danny's how fast they have to go without stalling this airplane?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
He does care and Carry would tell him.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Dan would tell Brian, and Brian wan tell me that's
how they went back and forth for twenty or twenty
five minutes.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
That's how they just thinking on their feet.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I was told later that the NTSB that investigates crashes
had already released a crash a rescue not a rescue plane,
a recovery plane maybe out of Atlanta, was en route,
and they turned the airplane around later and sent them
back home. And it's the first time in history that
(21:30):
the NTSB had ever turned the recovery plane around.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
So we come in.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
When I finally get turned around and I can see land,
I'm getting a little bit more comfortable. I can see
a strip of a runway out there at ten or
twelve miles, looks like a little one inch strip. But
now it's all gonna be just depth perception and I
hand coordination. Don't get too slow, don't get too low,
and all that. So they tell me where the knob is,
(22:00):
just to drop the landing gear, and when to drop
the landing gear and all that.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Now, when I would charge these trottle here in a minute,
I need to know what's indicated.
Speaker 6 (22:08):
To go to nine Delawhitski Roger. We'll just return them slowly.
You could start now, in your discretion, a little bit
at a time, and when you get to one hundred
and fifty knights, I'm told you can drop the gear
in the.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Flights and They said later that I was coming in
too low. A matter of fact, Brian told me one
time in the radio, said, you've got twelve thousand feet
a runway if you want to add some more power
to it, because they see I could my attitude or
my angle.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Descent was too low. Well, the reason for that.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Was, and I know all this now, I didn't know
it then, those big white marks on the end of
a runway, or a thousand feet from down from the end,
and that's what your landing point is. That's where all
the black tire marks are. That's where all the airliners dry.
The land is one thousand foot from the end. Well,
I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
Nine Delawhitski radger. It looks good from here. Good job.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
It ain't no where tilt ober round my landing point.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
My focus was on the very first inch of concrete
of that runway. That's what I was looking at, not
a thousand foot down road. So that's why my angle
of decent was so uh shallow compared to normal.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Well, I touch down, if I ever touch down, I
just kill.
Speaker 6 (23:19):
A trottle for what that's correct, When you touchdown, slowly
kill the trottle here.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So we finally got it down and now I can
tax it off the runway.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
Named del the whiskey. When you're ready, you can go
to ground frequency one two one point nine.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
That's worth one two one point nine. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
And I'm sitting there and my headsets moving back and forth.
So I tell the controller, the ground controller who I'm
talking to, Now, look, can you have those airliners move
or can I turn sideway or something? Because they're they're
prop blasted or jet blast is blowing my headset back here.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
He said, Now you're fine, just stay right where you're at.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
What I didn't realize I had a double inch, double
pain insulated windshield in front of me. That wasn't a
yet blast. It was coming through that windshield blowing my headset.
It was my pulse beating so hard it was actually
literally moving my headset back and forth. So one of
the EMTs and one of the firemen gets out in
front of the King air and he starts giving a
(24:24):
signal across his neck. You know, cut the engines, cut
the engines. Okay, I get it, but guess what, I
don't know how to cut.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
The engines off. So I said, we just went through
all this.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Thing for forty five or fifty minutes. Now I'm going
to cut somebody's head off. So one of the airline
pilots that was waiting to take off was listening to
all this. He came on the radio with the controller
and volunteered. He said, look, I've got a lot of
time in the king here. I can help him turn
those engines off if you want me to. And he says, yeah,
go ahead, So he walked me through how to turn
(24:55):
the engines off. I just started the fuel and we
got the door open, and EMTs came in and got
Joe and took him off, started working on him.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
But when I.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Came I remember I told you I came through those
clouds on the way up because it's so bumpy. Well,
when I was at altitude out over the Gulf of
Mexico and I finally got turned around heading towards land,
you know I'm eleven twelve thousand feet high. I've got
to come back down to land. Obviously in that part
of the state, that part of the country's at sea level.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Well, when I.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Come back down, I did not come back down through
in the clouds, because if I would have, might have
been a duster because that's instrument flying conditions. You can't
see inside of a cloud, so you have to do
everything by instruments, and which would have been, you know,
way out of my leg.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
But when I started to.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Come back down, the clouds were not off there. We
just gone through them thirty minutes ago, and when I
started to descnth they disappeared.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And we're on final approach.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
In Florida at the beach in April, in the middle afternoon,
and there's no win none a matter of fact. Brian
Nortony says, this win's virtually calm because I asked him
two or three times about to win, because been a
regular win, I mean, I wouldn't even hit the concrete.
And Dan faveyos talking to Carry up in Connecticut and
(26:20):
he says they're down, buddy, I'll call you back and
he hangs up. Well, that leaves carrying a lurch up
in Connecticut. Because when you're dealing with an airplane, somebody
says they're down, that could mean two or three different thoughts.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
And we're listening to Doug White. He's just successfully landed
a King Air and by the way, his family was
on the plane and all of us listening to this,
kept wondering to ourselves, could we have done this? Something
tells me, when you're the dad and you got to
bring it home, you bring it home. And something kicked in,
some gear kicked in where he knew he had to
(26:52):
do it. When we come back, more of this remarkable story,
Doug White's story. If the movie is On a Wing
and a Prayer, Dennis Quaid plays Doug White. When we
come back, more of the real life Doug White, with
the rest of this story here on our American stories,
(27:37):
and we return to our American stories and to Doug White,
whose stories spawned the Hollywood motion picture On a Wing
and a Prayer starring Dennis Quaid. We will also be
listening to Doug after receiving an Archie League Medal of
Safety Award. The Archie League Award is considered to be
the highest honor in the air traffic control profession. Here's
(27:59):
Doug picking up a story of the chain of King
Air airplane experts helping Doug control and land after his
pilot unexpectedly died.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
And Dan five ye oh is talking to Carry up
in Connecticut and he says, they're down, buddy, I'll call
you back and he hangs up. Well, that leaves Carrying
alerch up in Connecticut. Because when you're dealing with an airplane,
somebody says they're down, that could mean two or three
different thoughts. Well, when it's over with, Dan gets ready
(28:32):
to call carry back and his cell phones did. I
don't mean he had to go charge his battery up
or get a new battery. He had to get a
new cell phone. But he didn't even know Carry's phone number,
and Brian Norton, sitting beside him, didn't even know Carrie's name.
But Dan's cell phone stayed charged up just long enough
(28:54):
for Carrie to help us get down land safely.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
And there's no wind and the clouds disappeared.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
But I know who's the control of the weather, and
I know who was in control of that whole event.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I know God's not done with us yet.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
The American people buying large are very resourceful people. The
great majority of people in this country have a lot
of individual initiative. There are exceptions. We know who they
are because our taxpayer dollars help.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Them be that way.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
But over the years, the American people have seen problems,
and they've seen issues, and we've worked ourselves around them
over them. We've been venting things to make our life
easier and fixed stuff. We've invented things like well they airplane,
for instance, because you know, help us get around better.
And cars and telephones and televisions and whatnot, because we
(29:56):
have initiative. But there's one thing that I found in
my lifetime that will knock down the resourcefulness of an
individual quickly. It will absolutely bury individual initiatives every time,
and that is bureaucracy of any sort. You see, bureaucrats
(30:18):
think they're smarter than us regular joes. Bureaucrats see a
problem like y'all do, and they have to form a
committee to figure out what to do. A month down
a road, the problem is still there, and they've got
to form another committee to oversee the first committee, and
the problem is still there. Then they've got to pass
the resolution to give themselves permission to study the problem
(30:40):
that they got there with the first place, and then
they have to have quorums. It takes bureaucrats an hour
and a half to watch sixty minutes. But this bunch
on Easter Sunday, these folks had a problem that they
faced on that day, and they didn't form a committee
(31:04):
to figure out what to do.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
They just got it done. They didn't pass the resolution.
That's where they are.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
You can't train for this people. I guarantee you in
your OPS manual. That's found sounds fancy. I assume you've
got something like an OPS manual. It doesn't say when
king air pilot dies. Go down to another sector. Get
(31:39):
a woman who has some piloting experience, bring her up here,
sit her down beside you, and while you're working all
these airliners full of hundreds of people. When she gets enough,
make a signal and let her working, and let convince
them to take care of take the autopilot off. If
that doesn't work, go to subsection. Be get on a
(32:02):
cell phone and call a buddy that lives one thousand miles.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
From here.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
That has ching hair experience, and talk to him on
a cell phone.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
That is not there.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
It's individual initiative that gets it done. Those are some
of the divine things fell into place. So we fast
forward to now, well back it up four or five
(32:37):
years ago. Brian Eggiston E G. E. S. T. A
Win He to he was a writer. He used to
write for the Tyler Perry Show.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
But he's.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Was wanting to learn how to fly, so he took
two or three hours of flying lessons and they said, well,
you don't need to fly in more for a while.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
You need to learn how to talk on the radio.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
First, and then we'll get back in the air for
So he's in the room over there in the land
and on his flight training and they put air traffic
control conversation on. He's got to listen to it, listen
to how the lingo is and how they talk and
all that.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
What he ends up listening to is the.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Actual forty five minute recording of our incident. And that
enthralled him so much that he made an effort to
try to get a hold of me. Well, he went
to the old standard route of trying to find me.
He found me through one of my kids on Facebook.
He said, are you the one you and your dad
and mama were on the airplane that the pilot passed
(33:35):
away and londy dotty dotty and yes, sir, would you
give me your dad's mailing address? So Brian sent me
a real nice letter about five years ago, told me
who he was, said he's a screenwriter. I said he
was a fledgling pilot and he's a Christian, and he
wanted to know if I cared if he wrote a
screenplay about the event. I said, no, I don't care.
(33:57):
And by the way, that air traffic control tape, that
recording of forty something minutes is used today and has
been used for several years now in training by the
FAA when they're training new controllers and also when they're
re certified him. It's training what to do and what
not to do an emergency situation like that.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
So Brian, I said, yeah, that'd be fine. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
So he said, would you mind if I come to
your house interview you? And I said no, I don't
care about that either. So he loaded up. He drove
to Arch of All Louis INNA, and he's pickup truck,
and he spent about three days with us, and he
had his tape recorder, and he'd asked me a question,
sometimes he'd push record. He wouldn't say anything for two hours,
(34:39):
and he just recorded everything. I took in my little
golf course and took him to our little church and
fed him and all that, and we ended up being
real close and we talked about a few things we'd
like to have in the film, and a few things
we didn't need in the film.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
We're all agreed with that.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
And he went back and got busy. In six weeks
or so late, he sent me a script. It was
called Flying by Faith was the title he put on.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
And I liked it. I said, let's go with it.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So he spent the last four or five years trying
to sell that, and he'd just get pretty close with
one of the studios and the guy would retire or
he'd get fired, or he change jobs or something, so
we have to start all over again. As a matter
of fact, MGM turned it down two or three years ago. Well,
then they got across on Roma down his desk. Roma
(35:30):
and her husband, Mark Burnett run the faith based section
of MGM called Light Workers, and she fell in love
with the script and she went home. She told Mark,
she said, you need to read this, and she said,
Mark Burnett has never read a script, can't stand to
read the movie script.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
But he read this one and he fell in love
with it. And they picked it back up.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
And they made the film as MGM, even though they
turned it down. A couple of years a different department
of MGM and turned it down a couple of years previous.
In the meantime, she gets ahold of Dennis Quaid. He
was working on another project with her. She said, Dennis,
I think you'd be perfect to play Doug White in
this film. He said, you're a pilot, you're from the South,
(36:11):
et cetera. He said, what, yeah, let me read it.
So he came back he said, I'd love to do
that film. So they got Dennis Quaid on board. And
in the meantime, Amazon has since bought MGM, so Jeff
Bezos and Amazon owns MGM now and they we're gonna
release this film last August or so, but it got
(36:34):
moved up and I think by divine intervention it's a
lot better idea anyway. And it's gonna be released on
Easter weekend this year under the name of On a
Wing and a Prayer. MGM changed it to the title
of On a Wing and a Prayer, So that's gonna
be released on Good Friday, which is April seventh, twenty
three this year. Because the whole incident originally took place
(36:56):
on Easter Sunday, and the papers in South Florida called
it the Eastern America. So fourteen years after the fact,
we're still here. We got three granddaughters later, and the
movie's coming out, and we hope it is a home
run for the studios, and we hope it's a home
(37:17):
run for the church throughout the world, and we hope
it's a home run for Brian Naguson's professional career. I'm
hoping it does real well for Amazon. Thank you for listening, and.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
A terrific job on the production editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Angler, and a special thanks to Doug
Waite for sharing his story. The movie based on this
story on a Wing and a Prayer with Dennis Quaid
playing Doug Waite, and my goodness, what an authentic voice
and what an authentic sounding solution.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
To a problem.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
And we know what he's talking about when he talks
about how Americans can just well get things done. And
we all know what bureaucracies look and feel like in
the public and the private sector, and it's not pleasant. Heck,
what's the theories the office about, if anything, but how
silly and goofy working in large bureaucracies can be and
what they can feel like. Doug White's story here on
(38:13):
our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love hearing your story. Send them to our
American Stories dot com. They're some of our favorites. The
motion picture On a Wing and a Prayer follows passenger
Doug White's arrowing journey to safely land a plane and
(00:32):
save his entire family from insurmountable danger after their pilot
dies unexpectedly mid flight. By the way, the role is
beautifully played by Dennis Quaide. Here to share the story
is the man who lived it, Doug White. Let's take
a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Nineteen eighty nine, I was running a drug store in
little town of Mangam, Louisiana m A n G h
A M. We had no doctors there, so we had
to depend on people to come from larger cities like
Monroe after they've seen the doctor and bring the prescriptions
thirty miles back to our store. Well, my store was
(01:12):
literally right the side a drug store that had been
there for one hundred years, and it was called Mangham
Drug been there Salon. Well, I wasn't out of town
or I lived thirty miles away, and I was originally
wasn't from this area.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
And the lady that was running.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
The drug store next to me was born and raised here.
Her daddy owned the cotton gin there. She graduated from
high school there.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
So, to say the.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Least, she was killing me in business, we were just
about to starve to death. So rather than try to
beat her in business, I just married her.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
We made one big drug.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Store, and two kids and three granddaughters later, here we are.
So fast forward to two thousand and six. I was
having a conversation with a friend of mine and he
had just come back from the Cooper Clinic in Dallas,
and I said, what's the Cooper Clinic?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
He said, you know the guy that.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Invented or started aerobics, doctor Ken Cooper, And I said yeah.
He said, well, he's got a big clinic out there
in Dallas. They don't accept insurance, they don't do any treating,
but they it's a diagnostic clinic. They just diagnose and
they've got this one test that I went through.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
He said that we'll give you a good.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Indication if you've got any blockages in your cardiac art
reason it's non invasive like a heart caf is.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
I said that sounds interesting to me. I said, I think.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I'll look into that because I've got a lot of
heart trouble in my family on both sides. So I
talked to my wife and I said, you want to
go to Dallas for the weekend. She said yeah. Well
we went out there on Friday and I made the deployment,
went through all the tests and everything. Of course, I've
been riding a bicycle a pretty good bit, so I
had some good cardio training under my belt, and we
(03:00):
just all figured I was gonna acea all that. Well,
the lady comes out on after the treadmill. She said,
well it was a positive test.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I said, that's good.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
She said, no, that's not good. Positive is bad. It
means you flunked it. I said, oh, I flunked.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
It, yep, and.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I think you need to have a further exam. So
we did the test where they checked your calcium in
your arter is the one my buddy was telling me about.
And I flunked that one. And then they had me
go do a heart sea tea and I flunked that.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
One.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Guy said you need to find a cardiologist. I said, man,
So I came back. That's made for a long weekend.
I came back and I said, I filled a lot
of prescriptions for cardiologists, but I've never been to one.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Who am I gonna go? See?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, this one guy's name popped out that I filled
a lot of prescriptions for in local areas.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I went, made the pointing over them.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
He got me in two days and he said, you
just bought yourself caaf.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
I saw, okay, he goes in.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I had an eighty percent blockage, a ninety percent blockage,
and one hundred percent blockage, and one hundred percent the
Good Lord, and my body had come out above the blockage,
come out of the artery on both sides, grown two
new arteries down beside the blockage, and then tied back
in below the blockage. So to this day, I've got
(04:28):
one hundred percent blockage in me, but it's got two
arteries going around it. But all that was done with
no symptoms, riding a bicycle ten miles a day, no
shortness of breath, no nothing. I was fifty three years old,
all right, So go see my brother. I had one sibling,
brother named Jeff. He was two years younger. When he
(04:50):
was about fifty one. I want to see him and
I said, Jeff, you need to go get a stress
test done. I said, I had two stints put in
when I fifty three, And I said, we had two
fifty three year old cousins had heart attacks on one
on each side of the family.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Thirty nine year old uncle had triple.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Bypass, his forty five year old brother dropped dead of
a heart attack, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I said, you need to go get a stress test.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
You're fifty one, and all these other things happened at
fifty three.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
In our family.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Well, IQ wise, my brother was probably genius, and he
worked with a bunch of doctors in an oncology clinic.
He was a radiation health physicist. He's the one that
calibrated and set up treating my programs for the radiation
machines and.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
The gamma knife radiation machines.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
He would calibrate all that, and he worked with a
bunch of doctors, and IQ wise, he probably was smarter
than they were, but sometimes he lacked in common sense.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I said, so you need to go get that check.
He say, they're not gonna do anything.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Check your temperature, maybe get your blood or something. He
rubbed his forehead, you know, and I said, no, it's more.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Plus his wife was a nurse. Well, he never did
go and he dropped dead of a heart attack. And
guess how old he was? Fifty three.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So I get word on a Sunday or a Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
That he had died.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
My mother was there because she spent two or three
months in the winter down in Naples, Florida, and his wife.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Was there, and so I had to hurry up.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And I found a way to get to Naples and
helped tend to that. So Monroe, Louisiana was not a
good connection that on that short of notice. So I
went to Jackson, Mississippi, because that's probably two hours to
the airport from me, and flew down there on Sunday.
My family came down in the middle of the week.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And you've been listening to Doug Waite tell his story.
And by the way, there's a movie based on his story.
On a Wing and a Prayer and Dennis Queed. Please
Doug Waite, when we come back, more of this remarkable story,
a remarkable and rich voice from a part of our country. Oh,
there just aren't enough stories about more of Doug White's story.
(07:10):
When we continue here on our American Stories. Liehabibe here
(07:33):
the host of our American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:55):
a lot. Go to Alamericanstories dot com and give, And
we continue with our American Stories and Doug Waite's story.
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
So we buried my brother on Good Friday, and I
remember Friday afternoon being in his house, all the keen
folks and all the friends stuff, family friends. But from
Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon, about one thirty, I don't
remember anything. Don't remember anything to this day. That was
(08:40):
in two thousand and nine. Somebody said, you remember going
out to the Japanese restaurant that night on Saturday night.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Don't you?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I said no, I couldn't tell you. Easter Sunday they
all went to Sunrise Church. I went to the regular
time service.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
I don't remember any of that.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
So I knew that a King airplane from my home
airport had been chartered to the final day of the
Master's Golf Tournament to the Master's Final Sunday in Augusta, Georgia.
So I made a call to my buddy up there,
and I said, well, after you drop those people off
(09:16):
in Georgia, can you swing down here to Marco Island,
Florida and pick me and my family up flies back
to Monroe, and then I'll just pay you the difference
in the gasoline between a straight shot back to Monroe
and y'all looping down here. Because the charter people had
already paid for the airplane and the and the pilot
(09:36):
and all that, said yeah, we can do that, So
they flew down there. Of course, we were gonna come
back to Jackson first and drop me off, and then
he would go ahead and bring the girls on back
to Monroe.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Joe K. Bucks c A.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
B Uk was retired Fulbird colonel and Air Force was
the pilot of the airplane. He flew down from Augusta, Georgia,
and he landed. I got on the airplane he was
going because we didn't have any return tickets from the
time we went down to my brother's funeral because we
didn't know what time would be coming.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Home or when. I said, you care if I sit
up front? He said, no, sit right up here. Here,
here's a.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Headset, because I said, I like looking out the window
and I like to.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Listen to the radio communication chatter.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I'd only been on that King Air one time in
my life before, and that was a couple months earlier,
and I'd asked the pilot, not Joe, but another fellow,
how do you talk on the radio, And he reached
over and showed me which button to push on the
yoke there at the steering wheel, if you will. So
I knew which button to push. So I got on
(10:42):
two months later, and Joe was such a pro that
he had both sets of radios already tuned in and
died to the next frequency that we were going to
need to talk to.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
So we take off.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
We head the south towards Key West. He makes a
one to eighty and we fly up through some clouds
because we're getting beat up pretty good and getting kicked around.
He said, don't remember. Joe said, it'll smooth out when
we get up on top here. So we popped out
on top and it did smooth that.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Well.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
He's about when he checks in with Miami Center at
eighty five hundred feet, and you can hear it on YouTube.
You can hear him just run out of breath on
the radio because he had his finger on the push
to talk switch.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
And he dies right there.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
And we're on a two thousand foot per minuted climb
on autopilot, and I don't have a clue. Every two
and a half minutes we're another mile higher. So I
don't know if we're gonna run out of oxygen, if
we're gonna get to a certain heights and quit flying
and just stall and come out of the sky, which
we would have happened. I don't know, but I do
know where to push the talk button is because I'd
(11:50):
ask the guy two months previous, and I remember, and
I pushed the button and Joe would set the radio
frequencies up where I didn't have to try to find
how to get to Miamis because I wouldn't have a
clue and it would have been dead quiet up there.
So I pushed the button and told them what was
going on, and we had an emergency, and I immediately
moved to the head of the head of the line.
(12:11):
When you're an airplane and you declare an emergency, you
moved to the head of the class quickly.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
I got declared emergency pilot to see Simon, I need
help up here. I mean, I need a can air
of pilot to talk to.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
So they I started.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
The first fellow was not helping me too bad, too much,
because I just wanted to stop the climb and went.
It was supposed to stop at ten thousand feet and
level out, but evidently there was a glitch or something
because we blew right through ten thousand feet. So here's
eleven thy, twelve thousand, fourteen thousand, little.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
Pilot so once again says ten thousand. I've already busted
ten thousand on a steady climbing. I need to stop
the climb. I can say, went everybody up, and I say,
you got it? N thatth the whiskey I'm here, don't.
I would kind of finding a solution to that as
stand by one.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
So they go get another controller in Miami named Lisa Grimm,
who also has some piloting experience. They bring her down
and they set her down beside the first guy I
was talking to and he's working all these airliners full
of people because it's Easter Sunday, it's International Airport in Miami,
and people coming in and flying out to visit family
(13:21):
and going home and all that.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
It was busy.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
So while he's working five or six seven aircraft full
of hundreds of people, she'll give him a hand signal.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
So I gotta work this guy.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So she'd take over and say something to me for
a couple of seconds, then hand it back to him.
So she convinced me to disconnect the autopilot.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Not if I does a whiskey, just need to be autopilot.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
We're going to have you. We're gonna have you hand
fly the plane.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
So she showed me where it was at and I
flipped the switch to disconnect it.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
I disengaged it. I'm flying the airplane in my hand.
You find me along with the way you can laws.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Well, I know all this now, I didn't know it then,
but the airplane was trimmed to climb at two thousand
foot per minute, so the rudders and alley runs and
everything were set to climb.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
The nose was up. Well, just because I turned off.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The autopilot, none of that changes. So As soon as
I clicked that autopilot off, that nose that King Air
was sticking straight up in the air. And that was
the heaviest thing I'd ever grabbed a hold of my life.
I thought I'd grabbed a hold of a thousand pound gorilla.
So I tried to push the yoke forward as hard
(14:36):
as I could with my right hand. And I didn't
know it at the time, but there was a little
switch by my thumb. My left thumb is an electric
trim switch. I could have just pushed it and gave
myself some immediate, immediate release, but I didn't know anything
about that. But I knew there was a trim wheel
way over on the other side of the airplane, so
I reached over there with my left hand. While I
(14:59):
was with my right hand, I was shoving to go
forward as hard as I could to keep the nose
from going straight up.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
And stalling an airplane.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
And I reached between the pilot's dead leg and the
panel over there, and I got one finger on the
trim control wheel, and I was able to give myself
a little bit of relief where I could handle the airplane.
So they take me over out over the golf of Mexico.
I guess maybe not gonna make as big of an
explosion or something. So I'm going out over the Golf
(15:26):
of Mexico heading west. I've got a baby blue sky
going into baby blue water, so I have no visual reference.
I mean, it's instruments like conditions at two o'clock in
the afternoon, and he's wanting me to make a one
to eighty and turn back towards land. I know that,
but I'm afraid to turn the airplane. I'm afraid of
(15:49):
upset it and flip it upside down. So what should
have been a maybe a one minute turn probably took
me ten or twelve minutes because I was all tensed up.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
You show me in a turn. I'm up moving very
good here, I know.
Speaker 6 (16:02):
Still, let's take a southwest down and no turn yet.
The opportude still look good, but you're still southwest down
pill turn right to left.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Okay, hold on.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
So I'm out over the Golf of Mexico and I said, well,
if I turn this auto pilot back on, well that
helped me fly. And he said, yeah, you can. You
can turn that back on if you want to. So
I reached down there on the same switch and I
flipped it on. Well, what I didn't know was when
Joe had got ready to take off, he had set
the autopilot to fly due north out of South Florida,
(16:36):
do north towards the Panhandle of Florida. That hadn't changed either,
just because I turned it off. So I'm heading due
west out over the Gulf. When I turned the auto
pilot back on, that thing yanks around to the right
and yaws to the right real hard, wanting to fly
north like it was set to. And that kind of
scared me. So I turned it back off real quick, and.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I said, no, I can't do that, messes up my heading.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
And you're listening to Doug White tell one heck of
a story. The movie is on a wing and a prayer.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
I see it.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
By all means, it's the story of Doug White. And
by the way, Dennis Quaid does a heck of a
job playing Doug White. But this is Doug White, and
you're hearing real life audio from the tower, and my goodness,
he sounds calm, and I guess in those circumstances that's
all you've got. But how he handled himself in the cockpit,
(17:27):
it's just remarkable listening to it. My pilot is deceased,
and I need a King Air pilot to talk to.
He asks or commands. I need to stop the climb,
he says. A bit later when we come back more
of Doug White. What happens next here on our American
stories and we continue with our American stories and Doug
(18:11):
Waite's story. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, the people in Fort Myers, which is on the
west side of the state, at the airport, they hear
that we're coming. Miami hands them off to us to
Fort Myers and they hear we're coming. So the Fort
Myers Airport gets shut down. Nobody's coming in and nobody's leaving.
Dan Fabio is one of the controllers at Fort Myers.
(18:39):
Fav is in Victor I O Dan FOGBYO FAVO. He
hears the's a King Air coming in. The King Airs
in trouble, and he remembers that he has a good
friend in Danbury, Connecticut. There's a lot of King Air experience.
That's where Dan used to work. His friend in Connecticut's
name is Carrie K. A R I Kerry Sorenson. He
(19:00):
gets on his cell phone calls Carrie Sorenson.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Carrie's, hey, buddy, what's going on? Carrie? I don't have
time to chat right now. I got a King Air
in trouble. I need your help.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Carrie had been riding around dan Berry, Connecticut that day,
and he's old. He's got old model t or a model,
a antique car, and he was a pretty day and
he's riding around his girlfriend Ashley. He wasn't even at
the house, but he had to come back by the
house for something, use the restroom or get something. And
that exact moment when he's at his house is when
(19:32):
Dan calls him. He said, what can I do for you?
He said, he doesn't know anything about a King Air.
So Carrie runs down to his basement in Danbury, Connecticut.
He's got a King Air poster of the cockpit of
a King Air on the wall.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Of his office. So he sits down.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
He's looking at the exact same thing I'm looking at.
And Brian Norton is another controller in Fort Myers. He's
his shift is over, he's leaving the tower. I think
it's two o'clock local time. He's out in the park
a lot, but he's got a little bit of piloting experience.
Nothing as complex as a King Air, but little cherokees
and cessing one seventy two's and such.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
He's going home.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
His supervisor runs out of the tower, runs out in
the parking lot and gets Brian and ask him to
come back in and sit down and help work us.
So Brian's sitting there talking to me in the radio.
Dan Fabio is sitting beside Brian talking to Carry Sorenson
twelve hundred miles away in a cell phone. So Carrie
(20:36):
would say, tell him he needs to drop flaps when
he gets ready to land, and the flap setting is
right beside his left luck, So he'd tell Dan that.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Dan would tell Brian that.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Brian would tell it to me, and I'd say, got it,
And I said, well, how fast do I need to
go without stalling this airplane to stand by it? Yess,
Danny's how fast they have to go without stalling this airplane?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
He does care and Carry would tell him.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Dan would tell Brian, and Brian wan tell me that's
how they went back and forth for twenty or twenty
five minutes.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
That's how they just thinking on their feet.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I was told later that the NTSB that investigates crashes
had already released a crash a rescue not a rescue plane,
a recovery plane maybe out of Atlanta, was en route,
and they turned the airplane around later and sent them
back home. And it's the first time in history that
(21:30):
the NTSB had ever turned the recovery plane around.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
So we come in.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
When I finally get turned around and I can see land,
I'm getting a little bit more comfortable. I can see
a strip of a runway out there at ten or
twelve miles, looks like a little one inch strip. But
now it's all gonna be just depth perception and I
hand coordination. Don't get too slow, don't get too low,
and all that. So they tell me where the knob is,
(22:00):
just to drop the landing gear, and when to drop
the landing gear and all that.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Now, when I would charge these trottle here in a minute,
I need to know what's indicated.
Speaker 6 (22:08):
To go to nine Delawhitski Roger. We'll just return them slowly.
You could start now, in your discretion, a little bit
at a time, and when you get to one hundred
and fifty knights, I'm told you can drop the gear
in the.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Flights and They said later that I was coming in
too low. A matter of fact, Brian told me one
time in the radio, said, you've got twelve thousand feet
a runway if you want to add some more power
to it, because they see I could my attitude or
my angle.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Descent was too low. Well, the reason for that.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Was, and I know all this now, I didn't know
it then, those big white marks on the end of
a runway, or a thousand feet from down from the end,
and that's what your landing point is. That's where all
the black tire marks are. That's where all the airliners dry.
The land is one thousand foot from the end. Well,
I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
Nine Delawhitski radger. It looks good from here. Good job.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
It ain't no where tilt ober round my landing point.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
My focus was on the very first inch of concrete
of that runway. That's what I was looking at, not
a thousand foot down road. So that's why my angle
of decent was so uh shallow compared to normal.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Well, I touch down, if I ever touch down, I
just kill.
Speaker 6 (23:19):
A trottle for what that's correct, When you touchdown, slowly
kill the trottle here.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So we finally got it down and now I can
tax it off the runway.
Speaker 6 (23:31):
Named del the whiskey. When you're ready, you can go
to ground frequency one two one point nine.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
That's worth one two one point nine. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
And I'm sitting there and my headsets moving back and forth.
So I tell the controller, the ground controller who I'm
talking to, Now, look, can you have those airliners move
or can I turn sideway or something? Because they're they're
prop blasted or jet blast is blowing my headset back here.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
He said, Now you're fine, just stay right where you're at.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
What I didn't realize I had a double inch, double
pain insulated windshield in front of me. That wasn't a
yet blast. It was coming through that windshield blowing my headset.
It was my pulse beating so hard it was actually
literally moving my headset back and forth. So one of
the EMTs and one of the firemen gets out in
front of the King air and he starts giving a
(24:24):
signal across his neck. You know, cut the engines, cut
the engines. Okay, I get it, but guess what, I
don't know how to cut.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
The engines off. So I said, we just went through
all this.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Thing for forty five or fifty minutes. Now I'm going
to cut somebody's head off. So one of the airline
pilots that was waiting to take off was listening to
all this. He came on the radio with the controller
and volunteered. He said, look, I've got a lot of
time in the king here. I can help him turn
those engines off if you want me to. And he says, yeah,
go ahead, So he walked me through how to turn
(24:55):
the engines off. I just started the fuel and we
got the door open, and EMTs came in and got
Joe and took him off, started working on him.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
But when I.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Came I remember I told you I came through those
clouds on the way up because it's so bumpy. Well,
when I was at altitude out over the Gulf of
Mexico and I finally got turned around heading towards land,
you know I'm eleven twelve thousand feet high. I've got
to come back down to land. Obviously in that part
of the state, that part of the country's at sea level.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Well, when I.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Come back down, I did not come back down through
in the clouds, because if I would have, might have
been a duster because that's instrument flying conditions. You can't
see inside of a cloud, so you have to do
everything by instruments, and which would have been, you know,
way out of my leg.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
But when I started to.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Come back down, the clouds were not off there. We
just gone through them thirty minutes ago, and when I
started to descnth they disappeared.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And we're on final approach.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
In Florida at the beach in April, in the middle afternoon,
and there's no win none a matter of fact. Brian
Nortony says, this win's virtually calm because I asked him
two or three times about to win, because been a
regular win, I mean, I wouldn't even hit the concrete.
And Dan faveyos talking to Carry up in Connecticut and
(26:20):
he says they're down, buddy, I'll call you back and
he hangs up. Well, that leaves carrying a lurch up
in Connecticut. Because when you're dealing with an airplane, somebody
says they're down, that could mean two or three different thoughts.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
And we're listening to Doug White. He's just successfully landed
a King Air and by the way, his family was
on the plane and all of us listening to this,
kept wondering to ourselves, could we have done this? Something
tells me, when you're the dad and you got to
bring it home, you bring it home. And something kicked in,
some gear kicked in where he knew he had to
(26:52):
do it. When we come back, more of this remarkable story,
Doug White's story. If the movie is On a Wing
and a Prayer, Dennis Quaid plays Doug White. When we
come back, more of the real life Doug White, with
the rest of this story here on our American stories,
(27:37):
and we return to our American stories and to Doug White,
whose stories spawned the Hollywood motion picture On a Wing
and a Prayer starring Dennis Quaid. We will also be
listening to Doug after receiving an Archie League Medal of
Safety Award. The Archie League Award is considered to be
the highest honor in the air traffic control profession. Here's
(27:59):
Doug picking up a story of the chain of King
Air airplane experts helping Doug control and land after his
pilot unexpectedly died.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
And Dan five ye oh is talking to Carry up
in Connecticut and he says, they're down, buddy, I'll call
you back and he hangs up. Well, that leaves Carrying
alerch up in Connecticut. Because when you're dealing with an airplane,
somebody says they're down, that could mean two or three
different thoughts. Well, when it's over with, Dan gets ready
(28:32):
to call carry back and his cell phones did. I
don't mean he had to go charge his battery up
or get a new battery. He had to get a
new cell phone. But he didn't even know Carry's phone number,
and Brian Norton, sitting beside him, didn't even know Carrie's name.
But Dan's cell phone stayed charged up just long enough
(28:54):
for Carrie to help us get down land safely.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
And there's no wind and the clouds disappeared.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
But I know who's the control of the weather, and
I know who was in control of that whole event.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I know God's not done with us yet.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
The American people buying large are very resourceful people. The
great majority of people in this country have a lot
of individual initiative. There are exceptions. We know who they
are because our taxpayer dollars help.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Them be that way.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
But over the years, the American people have seen problems,
and they've seen issues, and we've worked ourselves around them
over them. We've been venting things to make our life
easier and fixed stuff. We've invented things like well they airplane,
for instance, because you know, help us get around better.
And cars and telephones and televisions and whatnot, because we
(29:56):
have initiative. But there's one thing that I found in
my lifetime that will knock down the resourcefulness of an
individual quickly. It will absolutely bury individual initiatives every time,
and that is bureaucracy of any sort. You see, bureaucrats
(30:18):
think they're smarter than us regular joes. Bureaucrats see a
problem like y'all do, and they have to form a
committee to figure out what to do. A month down
a road, the problem is still there, and they've got
to form another committee to oversee the first committee, and
the problem is still there. Then they've got to pass
the resolution to give themselves permission to study the problem
(30:40):
that they got there with the first place, and then
they have to have quorums. It takes bureaucrats an hour
and a half to watch sixty minutes. But this bunch
on Easter Sunday, these folks had a problem that they
faced on that day, and they didn't form a committee
(31:04):
to figure out what to do.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
They just got it done. They didn't pass the resolution.
That's where they are.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
You can't train for this people. I guarantee you in
your OPS manual. That's found sounds fancy. I assume you've
got something like an OPS manual. It doesn't say when
king air pilot dies. Go down to another sector. Get
(31:39):
a woman who has some piloting experience, bring her up here,
sit her down beside you, and while you're working all
these airliners full of hundreds of people. When she gets enough,
make a signal and let her working, and let convince
them to take care of take the autopilot off. If
that doesn't work, go to subsection. Be get on a
(32:02):
cell phone and call a buddy that lives one thousand miles.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
From here.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
That has ching hair experience, and talk to him on
a cell phone.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
That is not there.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
It's individual initiative that gets it done. Those are some
of the divine things fell into place. So we fast
forward to now, well back it up four or five
(32:37):
years ago. Brian Eggiston E G. E. S. T. A
Win He to he was a writer. He used to
write for the Tyler Perry Show.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
But he's.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Was wanting to learn how to fly, so he took
two or three hours of flying lessons and they said, well,
you don't need to fly in more for a while.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
You need to learn how to talk on the radio.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
First, and then we'll get back in the air for
So he's in the room over there in the land
and on his flight training and they put air traffic
control conversation on. He's got to listen to it, listen
to how the lingo is and how they talk and
all that.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
What he ends up listening to is the.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Actual forty five minute recording of our incident. And that
enthralled him so much that he made an effort to
try to get a hold of me. Well, he went
to the old standard route of trying to find me.
He found me through one of my kids on Facebook.
He said, are you the one you and your dad
and mama were on the airplane that the pilot passed
(33:35):
away and londy dotty dotty and yes, sir, would you
give me your dad's mailing address? So Brian sent me
a real nice letter about five years ago, told me
who he was, said he's a screenwriter. I said he
was a fledgling pilot and he's a Christian, and he
wanted to know if I cared if he wrote a
screenplay about the event. I said, no, I don't care.
(33:57):
And by the way, that air traffic control tape, that
recording of forty something minutes is used today and has
been used for several years now in training by the
FAA when they're training new controllers and also when they're
re certified him. It's training what to do and what
not to do an emergency situation like that.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
So Brian, I said, yeah, that'd be fine. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
So he said, would you mind if I come to
your house interview you? And I said no, I don't
care about that either. So he loaded up. He drove
to Arch of All Louis INNA, and he's pickup truck,
and he spent about three days with us, and he
had his tape recorder, and he'd asked me a question,
sometimes he'd push record. He wouldn't say anything for two hours,
(34:39):
and he just recorded everything. I took in my little
golf course and took him to our little church and
fed him and all that, and we ended up being
real close and we talked about a few things we'd
like to have in the film, and a few things
we didn't need in the film.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
We're all agreed with that.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
And he went back and got busy. In six weeks
or so late, he sent me a script. It was
called Flying by Faith was the title he put on.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
And I liked it. I said, let's go with it.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So he spent the last four or five years trying
to sell that, and he'd just get pretty close with
one of the studios and the guy would retire or
he'd get fired, or he change jobs or something, so
we have to start all over again. As a matter
of fact, MGM turned it down two or three years ago. Well,
then they got across on Roma down his desk. Roma
(35:30):
and her husband, Mark Burnett run the faith based section
of MGM called Light Workers, and she fell in love
with the script and she went home. She told Mark,
she said, you need to read this, and she said,
Mark Burnett has never read a script, can't stand to
read the movie script.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
But he read this one and he fell in love
with it. And they picked it back up.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
And they made the film as MGM, even though they
turned it down. A couple of years a different department
of MGM and turned it down a couple of years previous.
In the meantime, she gets ahold of Dennis Quaid. He
was working on another project with her. She said, Dennis,
I think you'd be perfect to play Doug White in
this film. He said, you're a pilot, you're from the South,
(36:11):
et cetera. He said, what, yeah, let me read it.
So he came back he said, I'd love to do
that film. So they got Dennis Quaid on board. And
in the meantime, Amazon has since bought MGM, so Jeff
Bezos and Amazon owns MGM now and they we're gonna
release this film last August or so, but it got
(36:34):
moved up and I think by divine intervention it's a
lot better idea anyway. And it's gonna be released on
Easter weekend this year under the name of On a
Wing and a Prayer. MGM changed it to the title
of On a Wing and a Prayer, So that's gonna
be released on Good Friday, which is April seventh, twenty
three this year. Because the whole incident originally took place
(36:56):
on Easter Sunday, and the papers in South Florida called
it the Eastern America. So fourteen years after the fact,
we're still here. We got three granddaughters later, and the
movie's coming out, and we hope it is a home
run for the studios, and we hope it's a home
(37:17):
run for the church throughout the world, and we hope
it's a home run for Brian Naguson's professional career. I'm
hoping it does real well for Amazon. Thank you for listening, and.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
A terrific job on the production editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Angler, and a special thanks to Doug
Waite for sharing his story. The movie based on this
story on a Wing and a Prayer with Dennis Quaid
playing Doug Waite, and my goodness, what an authentic voice
and what an authentic sounding solution.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
To a problem.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
And we know what he's talking about when he talks
about how Americans can just well get things done. And
we all know what bureaucracies look and feel like in
the public and the private sector, and it's not pleasant. Heck,
what's the theories the office about, if anything, but how
silly and goofy working in large bureaucracies can be and
what they can feel like. Doug White's story here on
(38:13):
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com