Hi all,
In case I can be of any help I was PIC of the Mojave mentioned in "assymetric's" post. I was at FL170 somewhere south west of Young and, as it happens, Kathy was my flight nurse, we also had a patient on board.
It was a catostrophic failure of the left engine. After carrying out my engine out drills I informed ATC of my predicament (I think I declared a pan), requested a descent to 10,000' and told them I'd get back to them when I'd decided what to do. When the failure occured I applied some rudder and put the AP in VS mode to maintain airspeed and drifted down to 10,000', the auto pilot didn't even disconnect. By the way I had decided on ten thousand because I wasn't sure if I could remain pressurised on one engine. I found that slightly increasing the power on the good engine was adequate to maintain 10,000' so I opted to fly to bankstown. I requested a track direct to bankstown, airspace and traffic were never an issue I tracked and decended as I needed merely informing ATC of my intentions. Of course I passed many adequate airfields along the way but the aircraft performed well and I never had a doubt that we wouldn't make BK.
You may ask why go all the way to BK? Why not? This, as far as I was concerned, was a non normal situation and not an emergency.
I was asked a number of times by ATC if I required the services on standby at BK fro my arrival, I said no until the last time because on consideration I thought I may do something dumb trying to taxi the Mojave on one donk, if anyone hase ever tried you would understand. The rest of the flight was uneventful and no I couldnt' taxi on one donk, they had to bring a tug to the runway.
All of this time I comunicated with Kathy keeping her informed of my intentions and she continued her job unquestioningly caring for her patient.
I have tried to remain factual I my post so apologies if I have waffled on in places but this incident has affected me, firstly because Kathy was a good friend and like many of you she has flown with me on numerous occasions. Kathy was a wonderful lady commited to her Job and her family. She will be missed. I did not know the pilot, however, from reading some of the above posts he sounds like a professional young man trying to do his job in difficult circumstances.
My deepest condolances to both families.