NEWS

Iowa airman, nurses aid crew after pilot heart attack

Daniel P. Finney
dafinney@dmreg.com
West Des Moines native Mark Gongol helped land a commercial flight to Denver after the pilot suffered a heart attack.

The story begins like the beginning of a script for a bad 1970s disaster movie.

The date was Dec. 30. The United Airlines flight from Des Moines to Denver had slowed to a crawl over Grand Island, Neb.

The captain had suffered a heart attack. He was in bad shape and needed attention now. And the first officer wanted help landing the plane.

Never fear, it was a trio of Iowans to the rescue.

The first call over the airplane intercom asked if there was a doctor was on board.

Amy Sorensen, an emergency room nurse at Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, Wyo., looked up from her seat.

Sorensen saw a slew of passenger call lights flick on. She figured the flight was filled with doctors. She figured she wasn't needed.

Wyoming Medical Center ER nurse Amy Sorensen talks with a coworker. On Dec. 30, she helped care for an airline pilot who suffered an apparent heart attack in flight on the way to Denver from Des Moines.

"Then I overheard the flight attendants telling people over and over that they couldn't tell them anything," said Sorensen, who grew up in Wyoming but whose parents and grandparents are Iowa natives and live in Des Moines and Guthrie Center. "When they called for someone with medical assistance, I decided I'd better go."

Linda Alweiss was on a flight from Des Moines, Iowa, to Denver when her background as a nurse became handy helping an incapacitated pilot.

Sorensen was joined by another registered nurse, also an Iowan. Her name Linda Alweiss. She grew up in Des Moines, but had lived in Southern California since 1984. She was in Des Moines to visit her mother, Mary Anderson, for Christmas.

In the cockpit, they found a pilot stricken with a heart attack. His face was pale. His lips were blue. And he had trouble breathing, Sorensen recalled.

Alan Alweiss, Linda's husband, and another passenger helped extract the captain from the crowded cockpit.

The nurses made a makeshift cot in the galley. The first officer decided to divert back to Omaha. It's a job she could do alone if she had to, but she it goes smoother with backup.

Another call went out to the cabin: Is there a pilot on board?

Mark Gongol already knew something was wrong.

The West Des Moines native and U.S. Air Force captain had flown from Des Moines to Denver many times.

But when the engine slowed and the plane began to turn about a half-hour into the flight, he knew they weren't in Denver yet.

Nobody answered the first call for a pilot. A second call asking for anyone with flight experience.

Gongol looked at his wife, Stacy, and 1-year-old daughter, Elena. They had been in Des Moines to visit Gongol's parents, Verne and Mary Gongol, for Christmas.

They were on their way back to Fort Carson, near Pueblo, Colo., when the intercom called for pilots.

You'd better go, Stacy Gongol told her husband. He made his way to the front of the plane.

Gongol saw Alweiss and Sorensen working on the pilot.

"He looked like he was hurting pretty bad," Gongol recalled. "I had a lonely moment standing there realizing there wasn't anything I could do for that man."

The first officer looked at Gongol.

She asked him who he was. He explained he was an Air Force pilot. He had flown supersonic aircraft and nuclear bombers. Though he'd never flown a Boeing 737, he knew his way around the cockpit.

"She asked me a couple of questions and looked at me for a second deciding whether I would be any use to her," Gongol said. "She said, 'OK, sit down and close the door.' "

The first officer ordered him to work the radios and back up her flight plan. She decided to take the plane back to Omaha.

The Omaha airport is near two major hospitals. The rest of the flight was uneventful.

They landed without incident. An ambulance crew met the plane on the tarmac and rushed the pilot to the hospital. The pilot survived.

All 157 passengers and crew members disembarked without further trouble, thanks in no small part to the fast action of three with Iowa roots.

Because of United Airlines company rules, neither the captain nor the first officer is allowed to speak publicly about the incident five months ago.

Talking about pilots having heart attacks while in the cockpit is not good for business.

But Gongol had high praise for the United crew.

"I talked to the captain later, and he said it was a case where one thing went wrong, but everything else went exactly right," Gongol said. "Everybody was absolutely professional, from the flight crew to the first officer to the nurses who came forward to help the captain."

The three went on with their lives, none knowing their mutual connection to the Hawkeye State.

Alweiss is back to nursing in California.

"She is a good nurse," her mother, Mary Anderson, said. "I'm very proud of her."

Sorensen is a civilian nurse and a member of the Wyoming National Guard.

Gongol has separated from the Air Force. He's now with the Ohio Air National Guard.

He hopes to become a commercial airline pilot when his military career ends.

He's got a pretty good answer if an interviewer asks him how he handles stress in emergency situations.

"Hopefully, it will help get my foot in the door," he said.