Pilot Alerted Passengers Before Lake Mich. Crash
The pilot who was the lone survivor of a small plane crash in Lake Michigan says he had time tell his four passengers to don life vests but couldn't find them after impact.
The National Transportation Safety Board says in a preliminary report the plane's engine lost power over the middle of Lake Michigan on July 23.
The 66-year-old pilot Jerry Freed reversed course but crashed about five miles off Ludington.
After the plane crashed and flipped, Freed says he got out and saw two passengers in the water. Then, a wave hit him and he says in the report that "everything was gone.''
Freed volunteered to fly a man with cancer, his wife and a doctor from the mid-Michigan community of Alma to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
The report was released last week.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
