Pilot Dies, Passenger Lands Plane—with His Family on Board
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Doug White shares his harrowing story of survival and raw determination after the pilot of the private plane he was on died mid-flight, leaving him suddenly in control of a King Air 200—and responsible for the lives of his wife and two daughters on board. The event would later go on to inspire the film On a Wing and a Prayer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:14.3 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. |
| 0:23.1 | And we love hearing your stories. |
| 0:24.6 | Send them to Our American Stories.com. |
| 0:27.1 | They're some of our favorites. |
| 0:28.9 | The motion picture on a wing and a prayer follows passenger Doug White's harrowing journey |
| 0:34.6 | to safely land a plane and save his entire family from insurmountable danger |
| 0:40.0 | after their pilot dies unexpectedly mid-flight. |
| 0:44.1 | By the way, the role is beautifully played by Dennis Quaid. |
| 0:47.8 | Here to share the story is the man who lived it, Doug White. |
| 0:52.3 | Let's take a listen. |
| 0:55.5 | In 1989, I was running a drugstore in a little town of Mangum, Louisiana, M-A-N-G-H-A-M. |
| 1:02.9 | We had no doctors there, so we had to depend on people to come from larger cities like Munro |
| 1:09.3 | after they've seen the doctor and bring the |
| 1:10.9 | prescription 30 miles back to our store. Well, my store was literally right beside a drug store |
| 1:18.9 | that had been there for a hundred years and it was called Mangum Drug, been there so long. |
| 1:24.8 | Well, I was an out-of-town town or I lived 30 miles away and I was originally |
| 1:28.5 | wasn't from this area. And the lady that was running the drugstore next to me was born and |
| 1:34.6 | raised here. Her daddy owned a cotton gin there. She graduated from high school there. So to say |
| 1:41.3 | the least, she was killing me in business. We were just about to starve to death. |
| 1:46.0 | So rather than try to beat her in business, I just married her. We made one big drugstore. |
| 1:53.7 | And two kids and three granddaughters later, here we are. So fast forward to 2006, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine and he had just |
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