Mark Thiessen set out to write a story of survival about a pilot who had spent a night perched on the wing of his plane after crashing on a not-fully-frozen lake in Alaska. But when he couldn’t reach the pilot for an interview, he stumbled onto a deeper story.
While trying to find out why the pilot wasn’t speaking, Thiessen learned that the National Transportation Safety Board also hadn’t been able to contact him. His source at the NTSB offered a striking bit of speculation: the pilot might only have had a student license.
Thiessen followed the lead, verifying the pilot’s license status through FAA records. When he returned to the NTSB source, the information was confirmed—not only did the pilot hold just a student license, but the FAA had also begun disciplinary proceedings. It wasn’t the pilot’s first violation.
Thiessen’s reporting turned a compelling survival story into a series of scoops that uncovered regulatory violations and accountability questions—an example of how persistent sourcing and curiosity can turn any assignment into a major news break.
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