Lost & found: Pair stranded on island rescued
Call it Lost: The Atlantic.
The plot: A Miami pilot and his passenger crash into the ocean, swim to a deserted island and wait for rescuers to find them.
Along the way, the pilot fashions a makeshift gurney for his badly injured passenger and hikes 15 miles in search of something -- anything -- to help them survive.
But this was no TV show. It was reality for Cutler Bay's Jack Bettencourt, a longtime pilot and U.S. Air Force veteran, and passenger Mark Zdunczyk of Albany, Ga.
Bettencourt, 61, and Zdunczyk, 58, had left Cap-Haitien, Haiti, Saturday morning en route to Exuma, Bahamas, in Bettencourt's twin-engine Piper Aztec propeller plane.
About an hour into the flight, the plane's right engine began taking in too much fuel, Bettencourt said, causing the engine to shut down midair.
Bettencourt changed course to get to the nearest airstrip: the airport on Acklin Islands, about 100 miles southeast of his original destination. But six miles short of the island, the pilot knew the plane wouldn't make it to the airport.
What Bettencourt did next may have saved both men's lives, rescuers said.
He prepared for a water landing and barked out a Mayday signal over the radio.
''I flew seaplanes for years, so I felt more comfortable putting her down in the water than crashing into some rocks,'' Bettencourt said.
Crews aboard three commercial flights heard Bettencourt's distress call and notified the Federal Aviation Administration's Miami center.
''It was all very quick. We heard the gentleman on the Aztec say he was ditching off Acklin Islands, and that was it,'' said Capt. Roland Nicol, who was piloting American Airlines Flight 1345 from Miami to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The 757 was somewhere over Nassau when First Officer Robert Macentee relayed the call to the FAA.
The FAA called the U.S. Coast Guard at 11:44 a.m. Saturday, prompting a 26-hour search over 10,000 square miles of sea.
''If it wasn't for those commercial pilots picking up the Mayday location, this would have been a much more complicated search,'' said Coast Guard Petty Officer James Judge. ``The communication process was successful.''
Meanwhile, Bettencourt slowed the plane to about 40 mph and told Zdunczyk to brace himself.
After the crash, with the plane sinking fast, Bettencourt grabbed a life jacket for Zdunczyk, who had hurt his back in the crash. The two swam several hundred yards to shore, the Coast Guard said.
The men had nothing to eat or drink.
When the tide began to rise, and with Zdunczyk's back pain getting worse, Bettencourt built a gurney out of bamboo, rope and two sticks so he could drag the injured man away from the water.
They slept for a few hours under Saturday night's full moon. At daybreak Sunday, Bettencourt built a low-tech lean-to to keep Zdunczyk out of the sun, then set off on a beach trek to find something that would keep them alive.
''I found a liter of water, can you believe that?'' Bettencourt said. ``It was pretty stale, but I drank it.''
He also found a large red shirt washed up on the sand. Soon after, Bettencourt spotted two fishing boats offshore. He yelled and jumped and waved the shirt, but the boats stayed away.
Bettencourt continued walking until he heard the powerful propellers of a Coast Guard C-130 Hercules rescue plane about 1:45 p.m. Sunday.
'I saw this big, beautiful helicopter come along and it was just like, `Hallelujah,' '' Bettencourt said.
The aircraft's crew spotted Bettencourt's sunken plane, then found his passenger on the beach.
A rescue helicopter swooped in and pulled the men to safety.
Zdunczyk was taken to Government Hospital in Turks and Caicos, where he was discharged Tuesday morning, a spokeswoman said. Efforts to contact Zdunczyk were unsuccessful.
Bettencourt said he had been in Haiti with a group working on an air-service contract for a drilling company there; Zdunczyk had been part of the group and hitched a ride back to Miami. The plan was to refuel in Exuma then continue to Florida.
Although he doesn't know his passenger well, Bettencourt said he was thankful to know Zdunczyk would be all right. And he was utterly grateful for his rescuers and the airline pilots who picked up his distress call.
AA pilot Nicol was happy, too. ''I was worried about them,'' he said.
Tuesday night, Bettencourt was trying to figure out how to rebuild his charter-flight company, JMJ Aviation. His plane was not insured, he said.
And he was still answering phone calls from relieved family members and friends.
''I even heard from my ex-wife,'' he joked.
Bettencourt, an FAA-certified pilot, flight engineer and mechanic, has a blemish-free license history, records show. His certifications are up to date.
Bettencourt laughed when asked whether he watches Lost, whose plot tracks survivors of a plane crash -- including a lead character named Jack -- on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific.
''Yeah, I've seen it,'' Bettencourt said. ``I've been traveling around the world all my life. But this was the first time anything like this happened.''
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Lost & found: Pair stranded on island rescued 
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