After their twin engine plane crashed in the water, the two men on board recorded their survival on an iPad. INSIDE EDITION spoke to the brave men about their horrific ordeal.
Two guys crash landed at sea and they recorded the whole thing on their iPad.
‘We've been in the water for one hour. No sign of the coast guard or emergency services yet,” one of the men said in the video.
Theodore Wright and his friend Raymond Fosdick were flying from Baytown, Texas, to Sarasota, Florida, on business when their twin engine plane caught fire. They crash landed in the Gulf of Mexico, 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana.
Wright's iPad, which he keeps in a waterproof case, survived the crash and as he and Fosdick struggled to stay afloat, he hit the record button.
Before the crash, the men sent out a distress signal and as they waited to be rescued, they appeared remarkably calm, even smiling.
Fosdick said, “Yes, we're calm. We're even jovial, but when you look at our faces, you can see there is a lot of concern.”
INSIDE EDITION caught up with the friends at Vaughn College, a flight school near New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Wright said he made the video to document their time lost at sea.
Their situation was precarious - as nightfall approached their rescue seemed less and less assured.
Wright said, “I knew the search and rescue teams would have our position. We had a transponder on the aircraft that recorded our last position before we went down. But when you see the Gulf of Mexico and this [the plane] is sticking out of the water, it's like a needle in a haystack.”
It's a lot like the 2003 movie, Open Water, the true story of a couple stranded in the shark infested ocean. But, unlike that movie, this story has a happy ending.
Three hours after they crashed, the men were spotted by the Coast Guard and rescued.
Fosdick admits, even now, he finds the video hard to watch.
“It definitely get chills,” said Fosdick.
But they are proud of the one thing that stands out, their remarkable ability to keep calm in a dicey situation.
Fosdick said, “Panic is not an option. You panic, you die.”
Theodore Wright is the Director for Around the World for Life. For more information, please click here.
