"Is anybody listening? Is anybody listening? Please somebody help me! My husband has collapsed and I do not know how to fly a plane!" These are the words of a desperate North Carolina woman whose husband, an accomplished pilot, had just died suddenly of a heart attack at the controls of their tiny aircraft.

She had not been very enthusiastic about flying in the first place, but it was the great joy of his life. She went along reluctantly, but she had never paid any attention to how he operated the plane. By her own admission, she had never even closed the door of the aircraft by herself before. Now there she was 3500 feet above the ground soaring through the air with no idea of how to keep the plane aloft or even more importantly, how to bring it in for a landing.

Her only thought was to…