Lost and alone over the Pacific

Jay Prochnow was a veteran US Navy pilot with thousands of hours in the cockpit, but he had never encountered anything like what he faced on December 22, 1978. He had taken off that morning from Pago Pago, American Samoa on the third leg of an overwater ferry flight to deliver a single-engine Cessna 188 from San Francisco to Sydney, but now he had no idea where he was. The plane’s automated direction finder had silently failed at some point that day, and its arrow had led him to open water in the middle of nowhere instead of homing in on a signal from Norfolk Island.

Now it was nearly sunset, there was no land in sight, and he wasn’t sure how he would survive. Let’s dig into how Jay navigated himself out of this mess and see what we can learn from him about navigating our own challenges.