Dr. Bridewell is a current instructor here at UND. Over his career he has worked up in Alaska and is a leading researcher and professor for Unmanned Aerial Systems. Due to his experience in Alaska it has given him years of experience flying high altitude operations in mountainous areas. Even though thoroughly experienced pilot can have accidents happen to them as well. For example, the case for Dr. Bridewell last summer when he was flying through Utah with his brother. The events that unfolded were truly impressive and a great learning tool to see how even doing all the planning and following the correct procedures not all landings are ones you can walk away from. The plan for Bridewell was to fly to Alaska with another instructor in grand forks from the Phoenix …show more content…
So instead he decided to take a different plane that was slightly older. Even though they planned everything about this flight. He looked where the best place to stop for fuel was, emergency airport in case something went wrong, the exact route they were going to take and the exact weight of every little thing that wasn’t strapped down in the airplane. He even had to ditch somethings because they would have been over weight. These items included things like the fire extinguishers. The time had finally come to start the trip and Bridewell flew to pick up his brother. It was uneventful and they then checked the weather for the flight through the valley. The weather turned out fine for them to get to the performance he wanted and they departed right away. Everything was going just as planned, flying through the valley, climbing normal, scenery was great with a river down below. Suddenly he noticed the climb rate was decreasing. Suddenly at full power they were holding level, then -100, -200. Bridewell didn’t panic right away. He figured it was a downdraft which is normal followed by an updraft. But the updraft