"They were found. Airplane intact and passengers ok. Lost motor but managed to land, however one of very few places in Iceland that does not have GSM coverage. The plane was found near the last location from SafeSky. Thank you very much for the help, very much appreciated. More and more pilots are using SafeSky in Iceland and it works very well."
Jonas - Iceland
This story literally took our breath.
Last week, two pilots encountered an engine failure while flying above Iceland. The pilot radioed an emergency but the SAR Services didn't have a clear notion of his location. Moreover, ATC Radio contact got broken. One of their friends waiting for their arrival, Jonas, immediately got in touch with our team to check whether we could trace the flight and find the aircraft. Which we did ! The SafeSky crew immediately intervened and got in touch with the Icelandic SAR to give them the flight paths of the missing aircraft. (see picture)
WHAT IF ... SafeSky's SAR function would have been enabled? Despite being very loyal SafeSky users, the pilots had not set up the SAR in the app.
How would things have gone if the SAR had been set up in the application?
3 simple lifesaving steps
1. When the engine fails, the pilot activates the SAR by clicking the mayday icon in the application.
2. At reception of the alert, our system sends an email and SMS to the contact people registered in the app. Jonas would undoubtedly have been one of these contacts.
3. In this email/SMS, the contact people are informed of the SAR activation location received by our server that they then simply need to forward to the appropriate SAR services mentioned in that same email.
In other words, with SafeSky, SAR services could have had an additional chance of finding the aircraft within a short(er) period of time, hence increasing the likelihood that the occupants would survive in the event of a major accident.