I found this online today. I was the air traffic controller in Bermuda who finally radar-identified the disabled aircraft and gave precision vectors to the field to get it down safely. The United Airlines representative is full of crap. That pilot was scared and requested the helicopters. I was told by my counterparts in New York ARTCC who worked him prior to the loss of communications that the pilot gave them his wife’s phone number to call to tell her he loves her before he died.
That plane was very close to plunging into the ocean. I’ll never forget the callsign – United 987. It was flying southbound through NYARTCC’s Caribbean area when one engine failed and the other was not doing well. These planes are rated to fly on one engine for a good period of time but in this case, the pilots didn’t believe the other engine would hold up. It was a tense situation. Then the aircraft lost it’s navigation system about 40 miles or so outside of Bermuda and I had to provide a surveillance approach to get them on the ground. Good thing I was a trained approach controller and not just rated for VFR tower.
The NYARTCC controllers released the transcripts to the New York Times because United Airlines kept denying that anything happened. The airline tried to cover up the whole thing. Can’t trust ‘em.
Ray
April 28, 1995
Jet Lost Engine and Air-Controller Contact
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Air traffic controllers lost radio contact with a United Airlines jetliner over the North Atlantic late Tuesday as the Boeing 767, having lost one of its two engines, headed on an emergency course for Bermuda and flew too low to communicate with the controllers' antiquated radios.
The controllers complain that had the plane been forced to ditch in the water, they would not have had a precise location to send rescuers, largely because of limitations of the controllers' radio system and the lack of radar coverage over water.
According to controllers in New York and a transcript paraphrasing radio transmissions that was produced by a private contractor that relays radio messages, the pilot of the flight from New York to Sao Paulo, Brazil, asked controllers to have emergency helicopters sent.
But, the controllers say, they were told by the airport in Bermuda that a rescue helicopter and a Navy P-3 Orion plane on the ground there could not be sent for hours. Instead, the Coast Guard diverted a cutter, a Navy ship and three merchant ships, and had a C-130 rescue airplane sent from Elizabeth City, N.C.
Controllers say they lost radio contact with the jet for stretches of 8 to 10 minutes or longer because their long-distance radios do not communicate well with aircraft flying at low altitudes. But the airline said the plane was in constant contact with United's own dispatchers in Chicago through a satellite link, technology that the Government has not installed for controllers.
United Airlines Flight 987, a nightly nonstop flight from Kennedy International Airport to Sao Paulo, had 111 people on board. It landed safely in Bermuda after the pilot dumped fuel to reduce its weight. According to the airline, many of the passengers slept until the flight attendants told them to buckle their seat belts for landing.
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