On May 10, Russell Franck, a parishioner at Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Wales, took part in a miraculous emergency landing. “My best friend and pilot, Ken Allen, had called me a week prior and wanted to know if I wanted to fly with him over the Marsh Harbor in the Bahamas to take a fisherman over for a tournament and bring one back,” Franck explained.

Darren Harrison of Lakeland, the return passenger, became someone to whom both Franck and Allen would forever be indebted. “Harrison had flown over to Marsh Harbor the week before and discussed some of the plane’s features with Ken, which would be valuable information in our near future,” Franck said.

(L-R) Babs Franck, Russell Franck, Stanna Allen and Ken Allen on vacation the month before the miracle landing | Photo courtesy of the Franck family

An hour into the flight, Allen said his head was splitting open and he didn’t feel well. “Five seconds later, he leaned toward me,” Franck said. “I tried to revive him. I remember saying, ‘Ken, stay with us,’ and trying to get him back upright in his seat.”

At the same time, Harrison went to the front of the plane. “Darren moved Ken toward the side window and grabbed the yoke [control column]. I did the same,” Franck said. “This is where Darren, having talked to Ken a week earlier, began to come in handy.”

Harrison had learned that if a plane gets into a dive, you must be very careful not to pull up on the yoke too fast. The plane is going so fast that the wings could structurally give out.

“I was probably pulling too hard, but luckily Darren, a much stronger guy, throttled my effort, and he pulled the plane out of the dive deliberately and slowly,” Franck said. The scariest part of their journey was over.

“People ask me if we panicked, and my answer is we didn’t have time,” he added. “God’s plan was starting to take shape. Darren and I both felt a presence that kept our heads clear and focused on getting us all safely down.”

Harrison sat in the pilot’s seat and made contact with a control tower once the two located a working set of headphones. At this point, the plane had lost 5,000 feet in altitude and two computer screens. Neither Harrison nor Franck could find the radio frequency the control tower wanted them to use.

The flight plan of the May 10 flight | Photo courtesy of Russell Franck

“Fortunately, we had a working compass, altitude gauge and ground speed indicator,” Franck said. “For a layman, that’s all you need to land a plane. We could see the coast of Florida, and at some point, the Miami control center gave us to Palm Beach International. The decision was to send us north to Palm Beach International to give us a much larger runway.”

Robert Morgan, a flight instructor who wasn’t even supposed to be working that day, was out on a break when he was summoned to the control tower.

“I don’t know how they picked us up on our frequency, but they had an old yellow radio that could be manually adjusted to our frequency,” Franck said. The tower had also provided Morgan with a diagram of the plane’s controls. Morgan talked Harrison through each painstaking step to land the aircraft.

After Harrison safely brought the plane to a stop, he “let out with the prayer of a lifetime,” Franck said. “He gave thanks to God for our safe landing and prayed for the recovery of Ken. The prayer just flowed out of him. It was then and only then that I saw his hands shaking.”

Emergency vehicles were waiting on the tarmac at PBIA to get Allen to an emergency room and determine what had happened. They took him to St. Mary’s Hospital but soon moved him to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, where he underwent emergency surgery for a torn aorta.

While Franck was on his way to PBGMC in a taxi, he received a phone call from his rector, The Rev. Canon Tim Nunez, who heard about the crisis from Franck’s wife, Babs. “While talking to Father Tim, my emotions flowed out,” Franck said. “I lost it for a bit, but the ride to the hospital was maybe 10 minutes, so I regained composure and went into the emergency entrance. I told them who I was, and they immediately headed me in the right direction.”

Franck was able to see and speak with Allen while the medical team prepared him for surgery. When the surgeon told him his friend had only a 50% chance of surviving the procedure, he responded, “Those are better odds than landing that plane at Palm Beach Airport.”

And God was not through with Allen, who came through the nine-hour surgery “like a champ,” Franck said. He is awaiting FAA clearance to resume flying.

Franck sees God’s hand throughout the ordeal, including his friend’s recovery. “Had Ken been alone, like he was flying back the week before, he would be gone,” he said. “I have told people I don’t believe God was flying that plane, but he was with us and would have been with us either way.

“When you think about it, that’s the way our lives go every day,” Franck added. “We just need to pay more attention to his presence. Don’t let it take an experience like what we went through to open your eyes to his grace and love.”