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Joseph J. White was on position at PVD and began assisting the pilot,
who was having a hard time staying calm. White told him, "It's OK, we're
going to work with you on this," and took control. Adding to the difficult
situation, the airport surveillance radar antenna (ASR-9) at PVD was out
of service, which prevented radar contact with aircraft below 2,000 feet
in the vicinity of the airport. At that time, coordination with another scope
was established to help White track the aircraft by using long-range radar
(LRR). This helped White identify the aircraft's location at low altitudes.
White: N73S we have a radar mode that will give us radar to about two-
thousand feet so what we're going to try to do is keep radar that way and get
you down to two-thousand and try to get the field in sight for you.
White: N73S when able say fuel remaining and souls on board.
N5773S: Just one soul on board, 73S.
There were low cloud ceilings and IFR conditions that day. The pilot
reported that in addition to the aircraft's gear malfunction, the trims, GPS,
and autopilot were inoperative. White attempted to vector the aircraft
towards the airport for nearly 40 minutes, then initiated no-gyro vectors
for ILS Runway 5 at PVD. The pilot was unable to intercept the localizer,
so White advised the pilot to descend to 1,200 feet — well below the
minimum vectoring altitude in that area.
On April 20, 2015, the pilot of a Mooney M20K
was experiencing a gear malfunction.
JOSEPH J.
WHITE
Providence ATCT
