'WE WERE GEARING UP FOR AN EMERGENCY'

It was about 8:30 p.m. Sunday when Okaloosa County Airports Director Greg Donovan took the call.

A single-engine plane over northern Alabama was on autopilot with an unresponsive pilot and was closing in on the city.

A tense 40 minutes followed for Donovan, who oversees Destin Airport.

“We were one stage away from having local fire rescue officials onsite at the airport,” said Donovan.

The incident turned out to be an elaborate attempt by Indiana businessman Marc Schrenker, 38, to convince the world he had died in a plane wreck, law enforcement officials believe. Deputies are now searching near Harpersville, Ala., where they believe he parachuted out of his six-seat Piper PA-46 after radioing FAA controllers that his windshield had “imploded” and he was bleeding severely.

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To see a photo gallery of the crash scene, click here.

To read the original story on the incident, click here.

To read a stroy about the e-mail Schrenker sent to his friend click here.

To read about how Schrenker was found in Florida with his wrists cut, click here.

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After the call went out to Donovan, he jumped into his car and headed to the airport. En route, he heard the news that the plane was tracking to the west, where it ultimately crashed in a swampy area in East Milton. Donovan thinks it may have run out of gas.

“When autopilot is engaged and a crew is incapacitated, that aircraft is gonna fly till it hits something or runs out of gas,” he said.

The incident may have been one man’s hoax, but the threat was very real to Donovan and his crew.

“We were gearing up for an emergency,” he said.

Donovan said if the plane had reached Destin it would have been allowed to continue out to sea where it would have eventually crashed.

He did not know why Schrenker was flying to Destin, but published reports state that his mother lived in Baytowne Wharf. Tuesday night, Schrenker was found with near Quincy Donovan said at the time the case seemed eerily similar to the in-flight accident that claimed the life of pro golfer Payne Stewart and four others.

In that incident on Oct. 25, 1999, the group’s Learjet became depressurized and the pilot and crew lost consciousness and ultimately died from a lack of oxygen. An F-16 from Eglin Air Force Base and other military planes escorted the plane until it ran out of fuel and crashed into a field in South Dakota.

Like that case, military jets picked up and escorted the Piper about 12 miles north of NAS Whiting Field in Santa Rosa County.

“We had military aircraft on that target quickly,” he said. “That says a lot. If something like this happened before 9-11 … I don’t know what the capabilities would have been.”

At the end of the day, Donovan said the case was an excellent example of excellent “continuity” between local and federal officials.

 “I have been doing this for 19 years, and I cannot recall this ever happening. All that time I never had a circumstance where I had an incapacitated flight crew,” he said. “I have worked at least 100 alerts, and it’s always very methodical work as you are talking to the flight crew. When you lose that contact with the flight crew, though, it’s a reactionary role you play.”