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Where the Airplane and the Ocean Met: No matter where in the world he lands, Nathaniel Johansson ’14 stays close to RE
Aviators use the term “equal time point” to describe the moment on a flight when you don’t have enough fuel to turn back. The point of no return.
On November 6, 2020, pilot Nathaniel Johansson ’14 and his co-pilot, Kelly Michaels, had just reached the “equal time point” on a 2,200-mile flight from Santa Monica to Honolulu, and they were feeling good. They were delivering a brand-new, $9 million Pilatus turboprop to its new owner in Australia. At 28,000 feet, the plane was humming along, 20 minutes ahead of schedule. Michaels crawled into the back, squeezing past two extra 150-gallon fuel tanks to fetch some “celebratory” packs of hummus that they had saved for the halfway point.
That’s when the instrument panel started dinging with warnings no aviator wants to see. Fuel low pressure. Engine failure.
That’s when the instrument panel started dinging with warnings no aviator wants to see. Fuel low pressure. Engine failure.
The propeller came to a stop.
Not long after, the plane was in the ocean. Johansson and Michaels were in a life raft, hoping to be saved.In a riveting upper school assembly last April, Johansson, a seasoned aviator who now trains pilots for Atlas Air, told this story to Ransom Everglades students. Despite the 28,000-foot drop, the life-or-death stakes, the make-it-or-break-it decision points, he emphasized how much it was just another day on the job, structured by routines and procedures that he’d practiced a thousand times before. But his eventful and varied career in aviation wasn’t the only thing that prepared him for that moment. As he steeled himself for a water landing 1,000 miles from any landmass, he found himself tapping into muscle memory from his time on the Ransom Everglades sailing team. In more ways than one, he found himself relying on skills and habits of mind that he’d gained at RE, a school that stays close to his heart no matter how far afield his career takes him.
From that point on, Johansson began the grind that awaits any aspiring pilot, cramming as many flight hours as he could into his busy RE schedule. He had barely logged 20 when one flight in particular, one life-threatening trip over the Everglades, changed his approach to aviation forever.
“My sailing, boating, being out on the water – they all came together to help me on one very critical day where the airplane and the ocean met,” he said.
Johansson’s fascination with planes began at an early age. His father, born in Sweden, came from a long line of sailors and shipbuilders, and encouraged Johansson when he started showing an interest in “planes, big machinery – anything that moves,” as he told me.
After he started middle school at RE, he immediately began sailing, a sport that formed the cornerstone of both his RE experience and his interest in aviation. In the seven years that he sailed for RE’s team, he learned principles that he still applies in his daily life as a pilot.
“It’s just fluid dynamics on a different level. Sailing is producing lift. That’s what makes the boat go from point A to point B,” he said.
Being on – and eventually becoming captain of – the sailing team also taught him how to do more with less time. “The more I had to do sailing-wise, the tighter the schedule, the better I was performing academically, because there was no time to goof off,” he said.
His time management skills came in handy when, toward the end of middle school, he decided he wanted to fly – an interest that required significant time, money and, most importantly, hustle. Johansson mowed lawns, gave sailing lessons, even sold lemonade. (“It’s cuter when you’re a kid. Not so much a 13-year-old.”) He bought his first flight books and a USB plug-in flight yoke. He started logging so many hours on the flight simulator that, by the time he had his first flight lesson, the experience felt familiar. On the day of his 16th birthday, the earliest possible moment allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration, he was in the cockpit of a propeller plane, flying solo.
“My sailing, boating, being out on the water – they all came together to help me on one very critical day where the airplane and the ocean met.”
Nathaniel Johansson ’14
From that point on, Johansson began the grind that awaits any aspiring pilot, cramming as many flight hours as he could into his busy RE schedule. He had barely logged 20 when one flight in particular, one life-threatening trip over the Everglades, changed his approach to aviation forever.
He was flying solo on his way back from Tampa to Tamiami Airport. Seeing thunderstorms on the horizon, he delayed the return flight. He hadn’t flown at night before, and he assumed the process was similar.
“I figured, the airplane doesn’t know it’s night. So let’s go,” he said.
The lesson he hadn’t learned yet, from either flight school or practical experience, is that flying at night can leave you spatially disoriented. The plane entered a descending spiral. Johansson struggled to regain control.
He was eventually able to right the plane by finding the true horizon, but he never forgot what it felt like to be in that position and unprepared. Later on, he would write his college essay about how the experience changed him, instilling both skepticism and a spirit of self-reliance.
“I stepped out [of that plane], and I was an adult,” he reflected. “[Before that,] my instructor was everything, and whatever my instructor said was truth. It was an almost spoon-feed mentality: ‘Hey, this is the experienced person. They’re going to give you everything you need, and don’t worry about the rest.’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ I’m the one who’s responsible for my training.”
When he booked the Pilatus job that would land him in the middle of the ocean two years later, it was indisputably an upgrade over that Cessna. The plane was state-of-the-art, fresh from the factory, and he recruited the 66-year-old Michaels, his old flight instructor and a Pilatus veteran with extensive knowledge of the company’s previous models, to help him devise a solution for taking the small plane across huge, uninterrupted swaths of the Pacific. The plane had 1,700 miles of range; Johansson removed the eight leather seats, shipped them to the customer, and added two huge, 150-gallon fuel tanks that increased it to 3,000. He worked with engineers from the company to anticipate any possible issue, even coming up with a “janky” solution for overpressurization – an unlikely, but still possible, occurrence – that involved duct tape and a water bottle.
The Tamiami incident inspired him not only to take a firmer hand in his own training, but also to share the value of training with others. With the encouragement of RE visual art teachers Astrid Dalins and Matt Stock, he started the RE Flyers club, hosting guest speakers from the industry and giving students a space to do their own flight simulator training. Stock, the club sponsor, carved out a space in the photography lab for a state-of-the-art simulator purchased with generous donations from RE alumni involved in aviation.
“Nathaniel was a rockstar,” Stock said. “He blended his passion for aviation and photography in ways I haven’t seen since. [His] leadership allowed students to step into aviation in a way that would not be possible otherwise.”
During his student years at RE, he also helped found the Ransom Everglades Epic Fishing (REEF) tournament, an event that for more than a decade has brought seafaring alumni together to raise money for RE’s waterfront and Breakthrough Miami.
After graduation and while he was at Dartmouth, Johansson’s career as an aviator quite literally took off. He started his own ferry flight business, delivering single-engine planes to their buyers everywhere in the world. The first opportunity arrived when he got a call from a man who had bought a plane on Craigslist and needed it delivered to The Bahamas. It was a 1953 Cessna 150: 60 horsepower, falling apart, still smelling like mid-century cigarettes. Between classes at Dartmouth, he spent a day fixing it up and another day praying it would hold together.
“There’s a special word in the dictionary for these,” he said at the assembly, gesturing toward a picture of the beat-up plane. “This is called a piece of garbage. But I was excited. I was desperate to get my first delivery.”
“Nathaniel was a rockstar. He blended his passion for aviation and photography in ways I haven’t seen since.”
Matt Stock, photography teacher
When he booked the Pilatus job that would land him in the middle of the ocean two years later, it was indisputably an upgrade over that Cessna. The plane was state-of-the-art, fresh from the factory, and he recruited the 66-year-old Michaels, his old flight instructor and a Pilatus veteran with extensive knowledge of the company’s previous models, to help him devise a solution for taking the small plane across huge, uninterrupted swaths of the Pacific. The plane had 1,700 miles of range; Johansson removed the eight leather seats, shipped them to the customer, and added two huge, 150-gallon fuel tanks that increased it to 3,000. He worked with engineers from the company to anticipate any possible issue, even coming up with a “janky” solution for overpressurization – an unlikely, but still possible, occurrence – that involved duct tape and a water bottle.
Even so, the worst-case scenario came to pass. The engine failed, it wouldn’t come back, and Johansson uttered words he’d never thought he’d have to utter: “Ditching checklist.” He took the plane into a dive to pick up airspeed and then began their final descent, gliding at around 700 feet per minute.
At 50 feet above sea level, Johansson confronted the reality of what was happening. “I had never heard ‘50’ and not seen a runway. Looking out there, we were 1,000 miles from the coast. There was not a single man-made thing in sight.”
Adrenaline kicked in. And then something beyond knowledge, deeper than knowledge, told Johansson what to do.
“I subconsciously started turning the airplane to hit the waves at a different angle than what the book said, and whether I was right or wrong, I don’t know. But we survived it, and we made it out without injuries,” he said.
When they got out of the plane, the moment was calm, surreal. “We’re just kind of looking out at this $9 million asset sitting on the water, and we’re thinking, ‘Okay, did you get the hummus?’” Johansson recalled.
But then they had to survive the aftermath. Every flight manual covers ditching. “No one,” said Johansson, “really talks about it beyond that”: the time spent on a life raft praying for a response from the Coast Guard as you’re being battered and tossed by the ocean waves.
Johansson and Michaels spent 22 harrowing hours in that life raft – 22 hours of rescue attempts that were arguably much more dangerous than the original crash landing.
After leaving voicemails for his then-girlfriend (now wife) Riley, his dad and his mom, he texted the Coast Guard and received word that help was on the way. Help was on the way, but not in the form he expected: hours later, after nightfall, an 800-foot oil tanker en route to Japan appeared on the horizon. The behemoth made 12 attempts to intercept the life raft, each time almost running them over. At one point, one of the rope lines cast into the water by the tanker severed the raft’s sea anchor, a drogue on the underside that had kept it from rolling over with the waves. “Once we lost that, we were just soaked in a dish bowl,” he recounted. He spent the entire night trying to keep the raft from capsizing as the ship kept beelining toward them.
They were losing hope when, as morning broke, another ship appeared in the distance: the Horizon Reliance, a 900-foot cargo vessel bound for Honolulu. The ship made a more cautious approach, positioning about a mile upwind to steady the waves around the raft for better visibility. With Michaels holding his belt, Johansson stood up and waved their heat blankets until he couldn’t feel his hands. The ship started firing rope cannons: one, then another, and then another about 50 feet away. “Without even thinking,” Johansson tore off his life vest, dove for it and tied it to the raft, not knowing that it was their last chance.
“They pull us up, and we get on the ship, and the first officer is laughing,” Johansson recalled. “He’s like, ‘Man, you looked like Tarzan swimming away from a shark to grab that line. How did you know that was our last rope cannon?’”
Since the Pilatus incident, Johansson has shifted focus to teaching. He still flies cargo jets – much bigger than a turboprop – and still does the occasional ferry flight for a special client, but training other pilots has become his passion. As a teacher, he often finds himself thinking about the RE faculty who inspired him, including Stock, Dalins, then-physics teacher Greg Nguyen, and math teacher Henry Stavisky ’85. He loves reconnecting with them when he returns to campus, and passing on the most valuable parts of his Ransom Everglades education. His goal, he says, is to give new pilots the spirit of self-reliance and preparedness that RE always encouraged – and that he had to learn the hard way.
“What I always preach to my students is: be prepared for your worst-case scenario, and everything will be fine,” he said. “What happened to us was really bad. But it could have been worse.”
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2045 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 250 6850
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Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.