When a small Cessna plane suffered engine failure in the skies off the Sunshine Coast and started fast losing altitude, search and rescue efforts were already well underway before it even hit the water.
A Royal Flying Doctor Service plane was circling the skies above the “splashpoint” to offer guidance of where to send help, and a rescue helicopter was on its way.
Twenty minutes after the plane was forced to ditch, the two pilots – who were unharmed – were being winched to safety.
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The extraordinary rescue in November 2023 was thanks in large part to senior search and rescue officer Peter Myers and his team from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
He has been recognised, along with five colleagues at the AMSA Response Centre, with a professional commendation at the Australian Search and Rescue Awards.
As happy as Mr Myers is to shine a light on the important work of professional and volunteer search and rescue workers, he is keen to stress the rescue was a team effort.
“I feel really uncomfortable about recognition because I might be the Johnny on the spot on the day, but I know anyone who had been in that situation would have made the same decisions,” he said.
“There’s a hundred people behind me every day and all of those people are involved in this. I’m very humbled by the whole thing, but at the end of the day this is a victory a lot of people are a part of.”
Mr Myers was a commercial pilot for 10 years and then worked as an air ambulance pilot in the Northern Territory before starting his work with AMSA.
His experience meant he had a crucially quick understanding of events as they unfolded.
“I was watching a steady rate of descent on the aircraft which, as a former pilot myself, raised an alarm with me pretty quickly,” he said.
“I did not have confidence from the early stage that the aircraft was going to make it.”
Mr Myers triggered a “distress phase”, quickly deploying aircraft and vessels to the area.
“I knew putting a plane into the water is extremely dangerous and extremely hazardous thing to do at the best of times,” he said.
“A lot of things have to go right for these people to survive this event: they need to get this aeroplane on the water and get themselves out of it.
“I don’t even know at this stage if they can swim.
“It came down to a combination of training and experience kicking in … assuming that the worst is going to happen and hoping for the best.”
Having eyes on the plane was crucial.
“If I could nail down their ditching position and keep an eye on them, they had a higher chance of surviving the event,” he said.
“And it gives that crew a lot of help and support knowing they’re not alone – they just have to focus on what they have to do and let us do the rest.”
Seventy-five minutes after the initial “Mayday” call, Mr Myers was told the pair were safely in an ambulance on their way to hospital.
“Once it was done, I physically stood back from my desk and tried to process it,” he said.
“Everyone was so professional and so calm in their approach. I was … extremely proud to be a part of the team that I was with.”
He is representing not just his team but a tight-knit search and rescue community.
“This is what we come to work to do… but you don’t get that many incidents when you walk away and you are just so glad that everything has worked out well,” he said.
“What makes the people in this work special is the fact that behind every victory there are a lot of defeats, but they turn up anyway and they keep turning up.”
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