This petition is part of an ongoing effort to raise awareness and generate interest in the flight plan requirement, upgrades to existing ELTS and PLBS.
Let me tell you the story of a 9 year old angel and her loving mother. Trista Meyer and our daughter Shyann Lenz, took off from the airport in a plane owned by Trista's boyfriend. The plane crashed 11 miles from the airport in some rugged terrain. The pilot, Matt, died a short time after the crash, Trista suffered extensive burns and damaged legs and succumbed to hypothermia within 3 to 4 hours according to the medical examiner. Shyann Lenz was largely uninjured during the crash, she had some minor scrapes and burns but still ended up dying of hypothermia, her time of death was calculated as 3 hours to 5 days. My little angel died alone, cold and scared in those Utah canyons. This could have been prevented. The ELT or emergency locater transponder was of the old and ineffective 121.5 mHz variety and never went off, many pilots utilize this same transponder and do not realize the danger. There was no flight plan filed so the search grid was 2400 square miles, no PLBS or Personal Locater Beacons were available so due to these variables the search took 7 days to locate them, the length of the search claimed the life of my daughter and this could have been avoided through awareness programs and perhaps legistation. I have contacted Senator Enzi from Wyoming but he is afraid to take this issue on without congressional support so I need as many signatures as possible to propel this issue forward.
This plan could save lives, flight plans allow searchers to have a general idea where to look, better beacons enable searchers to locate survivors more quickly, flight tracking allows for accurate paths to be tracked. These are needed changes and unfortunately this is not an uncommon issue it occurs alot. We can make changes needed to save lives this is an important issue. I love you Shyann.
