Airline Captain Heidi A. Porch talks about her memoir Ditching the Sky about a ferry flight engine failure 540 miles from Hawaii, a Cold War rescue, and the long road from ocean ditching to the 747

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Heidi Porch was 540 miles east-northeast of Hawaii when her engine began losing oil pressure.

She was 500 feet above the Pacific when she turned off the master switch and prepared to ditch.

In this episode, Heidi joins me to talk about Ditching the Sky, her gripping memoir of ferrying single-engine Cessnas across the Pacific in the 1980s—and the day her engine quit over open ocean.

We talk about:

• Growing up with a dream of becoming an airline pilot
• Building time as a glider pilot and ferry pilot
• Flying 17-hour legs over open ocean without autopilot
• Trusting your instincts when your “little voice” says something isn’t right
• Calling a Mayday when others aren’t convinced
• Engineering your own ditching plan mid-flight
• Surviving impact
• Climbing into a life raft in the open ocean
• Being rescued during the Cold War by a Soviet refrigeration vessel
• And going on to fly the DC-9, Airbus 320, Boeing 747-400, Airbus 330, and Gulfstream 500

We also talk about writing the book decades later, self-publishing, narrating her own audiobook—and the unexpected recognition that followed.

This is a story about preparation, intuition, resilience, and the long arc of a career that almost ended before it began.

Buy the book: https://literaryaviatrix.com/book/ditching-the-sky/

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Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

-Liz Booker