Buzz
Ron Wagner:
Indeed, they do, and I encountered it myself. It was a rather terrifying experience.
BLYTHEVILLE AFB CIRCA 1978
I was piloting a VIP jet from Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, heading to Blytheville Air Force Base, Arkansas, to pick up a passenger, likely a member of Congress. It was nighttime, and the sky was fully covered with clouds, the ceiling sitting around 3000 feet.
We were in communication with and being directed by approach control, and inside the clouds, all we could see was black—it was as if the cockpit windows had been painted over.
Then, out of nowhere, we broke through the cloud layer. Below, everything was clear, and we could spot lights for miles, including the runway lights and the base's rotating beacon. We informed approach control that we had the airport in sight, received clearance for a visual approach, and began heading toward the runway.
But just as quickly as the lights had appeared, everything went dark once again.
As the windows went black, we assumed we'd entered another cloud, so we called approach to let them know we'd lost the visual and requested to resume vectoring.
No response.
We checked our position on the navigation instruments, but saw red flags indicating the ground signal had been lost.
We tried calling again. No response.
We then realized our transponder had stopped blinking, meaning we were no longer visible on radar.
We called once more. No response.
We considered climbing and switching to our last en route frequency, but we tried calling once more first. No response.
Just as I was about to switch frequencies, a very excited controller reached out to us.
They had just experienced a massive earthquake, which had knocked out all power. It took them a few minutes to get their emergency backup running, but the radio was finally working.
He asked us to orbit visually on our own while they got their systems back online. That was the unsettling part because all we could see was darkness.
We could only pray there wasn’t a tall antenna in the vicinity—now unlit due to the power failure. We called him, and he confirmed that his radar was still down, but he was familiar with the area, and at our altitude, we were clear. We continued to circle—seeing nothing but the eerie red glow of our flight instruments.
At last, the runway lights came back on. The controller then instructed us to keep orbiting while they sent trucks down the runway to inspect for cracks.
A few minutes later, we were informed that the runway was clear, so we finally made a visual approach and landed.
So yes, earthquakes can definitely impact pilots!
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