"Flight"
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The following is a true story - an incident that actually happened to me when I was a young novice flight student. It is dedicated to all that take the occasional leap of faith and the caveat "Look Before You Leap"
The memories today are as vivid as if the "incident" happened just
yesterday. I still have the FAA flight report as proof so it wasn't
all a dream. An "incident" report which matter of factly reports
that a small private aircraft landed without incident on the
grass in front of the approach to the Burbank Airport in Southern California. Where did it start?
While I was growing up, the last thought in my mind was to become
a pilot. It simply was never under consideration. It wasn't
something I had ever contemplated. But, as it turned out,
circumstances dictated I was destined to give it a shot.
It happened when I was in one of my engineering classes in
college. I went through all the routine math, chemistry, physics
and engineering classes having just gotten out of the army. But
after three years of that routine, I became bored. I don't know
why. I just did. One of my classmates who was already taking
flying lessons invited me to come down to one of the local
airport flight schools for a free "demo" ride. I was primed
for something new and the idea was intriguing so I said,
"what the hell" and met him at Santa Monica Municipal Airport
the following Saturday afternoon.
Well, I got into one of those single engine two seater jobs
that, at first blush simply looked too small to get off the
ground and didn't weigh much more than a large Cadillac with
one of the school's instructors. After a quick briefing about
basic aerodynamics and a description of the flight controls,
I was allowed to do the takeoff myself. Well, to make a long
story short, after that brief intro into the wonderful and
wacky world of flying, I was completely and inextricably
hooked. It does that to you.
Having just gotten out of the service I was living at home
with the folks who were out of the country on vacation.
They called on the phone that evening to see
how we were all doing when I got on the phone and told them
I was quitting engineering school to become a pilot.
The brief silence on the other end of the phone was the most
deafening sound I'd ever heard. But the silence was quickly
broken by my father's (expected) reaction..."are you
completely nuts?". I then told them in the calmest most
rationale voice I could muster up at the time that I
absolutely loved it and I was going to do it with the help
of the G.I. bill to assist with the costs.
Well, the following day I signed up for lessons and, to
make another very long story short, within six months of
that date, having obtained all of the usual ratings,
private pilot, commercial, instrument, multi-engine and
instructor's ratings...all in record time, I became a
flight instructor. I simply couldn't get enough of it.
I'm sure it's the same "migod I've become a flight junky"
syndrome that everyone goes through who experiences it
but I followed through.
The "incident" that prompted this story, however, occurred
just after my first solo flight which took place after about
8 hours of actual flying time. Four of us decided it would be fun
to fly up to Las Vegas for an air show that was to take place
at McCaran Field in Las Vegas that Saturday afternoon. Among
the cast and crew were, in addition to myself (an absolute
rookie), an instructor, who was the self-proclaimed "god's
gift to the airways" (we called him "motor mouth") and two
mechanics who were also working on their ratings.
We all knew motor-mouth for what he was; a consummate BS
artist, but at least we did know he was a licensed instructor
so it simply never occurred to me that, what would happen,
did happen.
I don't remember who flew up to Vegas but, when we got up
there in the little Cessna 182 (a four seater, single engine
plane), the air show had been cancelled due to high winds in
the desert. So, we had lunch, topped off the tanks and flipped
a coin to see who would get to fly back. As fate would have it,
I won the toss, and, to say I was thrilled was like saying the
Eiffel Tower is a tall building...understatement of the
century.
The flight out was fairly routine and nothing untoward occurred
until we approached the Palmdale area at about 7500 feet. The
weather up until that point was perfect...it was clear and you
could see forever. But as soon as we approached Palmdale we
could see ominous storm cells ahead of us. They were absolutely
black and we all knew what that meant.....trouble.
I suggested to "motor mouth" who was riding shotgun in the front
seat and working the maps and the radio that I thought it
would be best to re-route and go through San Bernardino instead
of flying into that mess. He, however, assured us all that, since
he was instrument rated, to just keep going; that he would call
in for an instrument approach and we'd have no problem getting
into Burbank. This, of course could very well have been the
beginning of what could've been a very messy end...for all of
us.
It should be noted that, from the minute we left Las Vegas,
the two mechanics, the passengers in the rear seats, were
quiet as church mice. If it was me back there while all this
was going on, I'd have been screaming my head off. Fortunately,
I had other things to do (a lot of other things to do) to keep
my mind off the terror that was to follow.
To begin with, since we were heading into a storm with heavy
head winds, we were using much more fuel than would have been
necessary under normal circumstances. "Motor mouth" called
into Burbank for an instrument approach and, within seconds
of entering that storm cell, everything outside turned an
eerie white. And the sound I heard when we entered it was
something like running through a shower. That sound was ice
accumulating on the plane......in fact, very quickly covering
just about every inch of the plane.
I had, in those brief seconds, completely lost sight of the
ground below and could see absolutely nothing but white. In
fact, the only place I could see out of the airplane was a
circular area of about 12" in diameter directly in front of
me. The rest was quite quickly frozen with what is called Rime
Ice..the kind you used to see accumulate in old freezers.
What I didn't know at that time was that, on a radar screen,
a thunder cell looks pretty much like a big patch of white
cotton. Needless to say, a small aircraft looks pretty much
the same. I think you can see where this is going. Yep,
you guessed it, Burbank approach control lost us. They had
no clue where we were within that white patch. Our plane was
not really equipped to be flown under those conditions (it
had no electronic transponder which could show an electronic
signature that the controllers could see on radar) we were
pretty much up the creek without a paddle.
At about the time the radar controllers told "MM" that
tidbit of bad news, he was starting to get very angry...
screaming into the radio mike "why can't you idiots find
us? What the hell is wrong with you?". He started throwing
maps around the cockpit. That's when I started to worry.
The guys at Burbank control, bless their calm souls, continued
to give us df (direction finding) steers...emergency triangulation directions guaranteed to find us (eventually) along with very
definite altitude assignments because, once we admitted that
we were lost, we declared an emergency (the dreaded "may-day")
and they were then holding up all the commercial flights coming
in and out of Burbank until they could finally locate us.
As I say, throughout the course of this ordeal, I was very lucky
in that I had things to do to keep me very very busy just keeping
the plane in flight. Keep in mind that this little plane had no
de-icing boots either, so the plane was getting heavier and
heavier as we went. That also meant we were using more and more
fuel because of the added weight and added drag on the aircraft.
So, for anyone who knows anything about flying those little sports
jobs, you have to keep both feet on the rudder pedals, left hand
on the yoke to steer, and the right hand was occupied with working
the flaps, the throttle control and the carburetor heat knob to
keep the engine from freezing.
So, I had all I could to do to keep the plane up and flying and
keep "MM" from totally freaking out. At this point, he was
completely loosing it. This is when I was became really frightened
because I had no clue if or when this jerk would really come apart
and then I'd really have my hands full.
Well, as fate would have it, those angels on the ground finally
located us, running only on fumes at this point, over the highest mountains just east of the Burbank airport. That, of course, was
the good news. They gave us radar directions to descend into the
airport area and, when they say "drop to 2,000 feet"; you drop
to 2,000 feet. They lined us up for the final approach to the
east facing runway and, when we finally broke out of the
clouds (about 200 feet off the ground as it turned out) it was
black and raining cats, dogs, and errant planes.
To get a picture in your mind of what I was seeing through this
12" hole in the ice ahead of me (that, at this point in time
was gratefully starting to melt) was a huge green grassy
approach area, beyond that, a chain link fence, then a
street, another chain link fence, then the approach lites
to the runway and then, off in the distance, the runway
itself.
But, as I said, all that was the good news. The bad news was
that, because of what we'd been through on the flight, we
were almost out of gas. And as soon as I got just below the
cloud layer and was lining up on the runway, yep, you guessed
it, the engine sputtered and stopped. Dammit. We were running
out of gas when that wasn't so according to the gauges. As it
turns out, we weren't actually out of gas but because of our
extremely nose-low flight attitude, the fuel pickup line, which
was in the rear of the wing which is NOT where the gas happened to be and NOT in
the forward part (which of course was where it needed to be)
so that the little gas that we did have just wasn't getting
to the engine.
So now you have the picture. Added to this mess was the fact
that "MM", who, in a panic, while trying to take over the
controls, was steering us into a concrete bunker that I could
see on my side but he couldn't see on his. I told him "I've got the
airplane" which, in flying parlance, is a very polite way of
saying "getcher goddam hands off the controls". He would
certainly have killed us if I allowed him to, so, at that
moment of truth, I had literally a split second to decide. Do I,
a pilot with 8 hours of flying time tell an experienced
intructor not to touch the controls or does he know something
I don't. I quickly realized I had no choice but to use a
karate-type chop to the top of both of his wrists with the
outside edge of my right forearm to get his hands off the
controls. I later found out that I had broken his left
wrist. But I could live with that (with "live" being the
operative word)
For the very first time during that ordeal, the mechanic
sitting directly in back of "MM", realizing what going on
and knowing what I was trying to do, grabbed him and held him
while I finished off the approach. "MM" had been trying to
"goose" the plane up over the fence that separated us from
the runway. However, losing power, I could feel that a full
stall was imminent. I just knew from the way the plane felt
that there was just no way we were going to be able to climb
over that fence. So, I committed to a landing on the soft wet
grass.
As it turns out, I managed to put the plane down about 12 feet
short of the first chain link fence with no damage to us or the
plane...just got the tires wet. We then saw the fire trucks
coming down both sides of the runway toward us and it was just
then that we realized we were safe and, most importantly, alive
on the ground.
I opened the door on my side and tried to get out of the plane
but somehow my legs simply buckled under me. In fact it was all
I could do to let go of the steering yoke because I was so
tensed with a death grip on the flight controls but I wound
up sitting down on the left landing gear until the trucks
rolled up to get us...I was convinced I had left my handprints
indelibly imprinted on the steering wheel and never even
bothered looking for stains on the seats that I was convinced
we all left there.
"MM" got out of his side of the plane and proceeded to throw
up all over that nice wet green grass. The other two quickly
exited and did likewise. Personnel from the tower picked us
up and drove us to the control tower where they notified our
flight school that we were down and safe and we all gave them
profound hugs for their help. Were it not for their calming
voice over that radio, we would never had made it out of that
mess alive. Three of us (guess which three) returned to the
control tower a week later and brought them a case of champagne.
They're the best. They saved our lives.
My folks gave me a ride home that night. The next day the chief pilot came out to the site, put in about ten gallons of regular and flew the plane from it's grassy, albeit unauthorized landing spot after looking at me, and where I put the plane down and kind of shook his head in utter disbelief.
"MM" was fired the very next day for using piss poor judgement since we never should've been where we were. The proper thing to do was what my gut told me to do way back in the beginning. Bad weather? Go around it! But, having only 8 hours of actual flight time, a rank beginner, who the hell was I to tell this "instructor" with over 10,000 hours in his log book, what to do.
Well, I guess that's the whole point. The most important thing I learned from all of this thirty minutes of sheer terror - when you know in your gut that your right, to hell what other people say. Just do it. I've been "just doing it" ever since. It was a tough way to learn a lesson but, hell, that was nothing new for me.
Meanwhile, back in Wichita Kansas, where they put those birds together, the Cessna Corp., having obtained a copy of the "incident" report, quickly realized that a design change was in order. So, they put an additional fuel pickup tube in the forward part of the wing...to prevent fuel starvation when the plane is low on gas and in a nose-low attitude as ours was at the time of our "descent into hell".
Five months later, I was hired as a flight instructor...to fill in the gap which was created when "MM" was politely asked to hit the bricks :)
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