ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – On February 4, a routine flight turned into a rescue mission for two St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office helicopter pilots.
Just after 7 p.m., the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office (SJSO) Air Unit was contacted about an aircraft that had lost power 3,000 feet over the St. Johns River. The pilot aimed to land at a private airfield in the area, but the lack of runway lighting became an issue.
SJSO Pilot Casey Kumar and Tactical Flight Officer Stephen Reece just landed and had not begun their cool down yet. That’s when they got the call.
“It just so happened that tower reached out to us. The St. Augustine tower called us up and advised us all of this. If they hadn’t had the wherewithal to give us a call or call us in that timely manner, we probably would have shut down and ended up getting called back out,” Reece said.
The situation was tense as the aircraft slowly maintained altitude, losing 200 feet in six minutes.
The helicopter, known as Knight One, played a crucial role in the rescue.
“We are going to maintain 1,500 directly over the airfield. We will provide a spotlight on [the runway],” the pilots said in footage obtained by News4JAX.
The pilots and tower control coordinated to light up the runway using the helicopter’s tracker beam, a powerful lamp on the chopper’s tail.
“It was a lot of coordination between the two of us. I’m operating the light, and he’s maneuvering the aircraft to illuminate the runway,” Reece said.
The teamwork paid off as the aircraft lined up on the runway despite the lack of lighting in the area.
With years of experience, the pilots acknowledged that this situation was out of the ordinary.
“It’s very rare to get a call like that,” Kumar noted.
Despite recent criticisms faced by the aviation industry, this incident showed a successful collaboration from Jacksonville Approach to the St. Augustine Tower and the pilots behind the sticks.