When people find out I'm a pilot, they inevitably ask me the same question: What was the most dangerous thing that ever happened to you? It's like people have this fascination with how dangerous flying is, though of course in reality I'm more likely to get injured walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night than I am in an airplane. My standard go-to answer is usually "Well, nothing really. It's been a pretty boring career in that sense." They seem disappointed but the conversation usually ends there. I have however, had a few instances that would fall under the category of potentially harmful. These of course are occurances not caused by my own stupidity.
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| SA227 Metroliner |
Well, one time I was flying home at FL240 from Orlando. It was late and I was by myself, clear skies, minding my own business, when suddenly there is this loud creepy-sounding groan. Then the cabin pressure abruptly changed. Not a little bit, but all at once the pressurization failed (an outflow valve failed full open). In a second the cabin was at 24,000'. My first thought was "Oh, crap!", then I figured I'd better do something. So I reach behind me and grab the oxygen mask. Now in some airplanes the oxygen mask fits like a glove. In this 30 year old Metroliner, it doesn't fit at all. On it's smallest setting it is still ten sizes too large. Luckily I already knew this so I didn't waste any time with trying to make it fit. I grabbed the mask part and held it up to my face and breathed deep. Ah, good, oxygen flowed. I keyed the mike to tell ATC but there was nothing. Oh right, gotta throw the mask switch, which is conveniently located behind me on my left, at the very back of the dark side panel. I switch hands and grope around in the dark for the switch and move it, hoping I haven't just switched off the essential AC bus or something. I switch hands again and key the mike. "Memphis Center, Amflight 743 needs to descend to 10,000 right away," in one of those muffled I'm-wearing-a-mask kind of voice. The woman controller says "Alright, ALRIGHT! Everybody just be quiet for a minute! (pause), OK, Amflight 743 you need to descend?" "Yes, I'm starting down now." "OK, OK, descend and maintain ten thousand. Do you need assistance?" "No, we're good for now."
All this conversation is happening while I'm holding the mask on with my left hand, disconnecting the autopilot with my right hand, pulling the power to idle (which activates the landing gear warning horn which definitely doesn't help the situation), putting the nose down and flying the airplane, all with my right hand. Then I switch hands and with my left hand push the trim switch to keep the nose down and pretty quick I'm descending at a phenomenal rate. It was a real clown-fest. I remember thinking something like "Holy Guacamole!" because the descent was so darn fast. As we approached redline we passed twenty thousand, then eighteen, then sixteen, and suddenly I was fast approaching ten thousand. I leveled off, dropped that damn oxygen mask, and set it up in cruise again. Then I just flew home at 10,000'. So really, it was no big deal. Just a quick descent.
1990. One morning when it was still dark out, I taxied out in the trusty Saab 340 at Sioux City IA. Our maintenance base was there so the airplanes usually had some sort of inspection process going on overnight. We taxi to the end of the runway, get cleared for takeoff and away we go. All is normal until 400' when the copilot turns on the bleed valves. Suddenly the whole cockpit is filled with some kind of smoke. Thick it was, making the panel instantly hard to see. And the stuff was nasty! Made your eyes burn and water, further messing with your vision. Plus, it made breathing very hard. Every breath was like breathing some toxic substances. It burned. Now in training, when the instructor says "Smoke in the cockpit!" you calmly put on your mask and goggles and run the smoke in cabin checklist. Not us. First thing we did was undo what we had just done, i.e., we turned off the bleeds. Now it wasn't getting better but at least it wasn't getting worse. We both knew that 1/4 mile behind us was a runway we really wanted to get back to, so I said "You run the climb, in-range and landing checklists, I'll talk to ATC," which he promptly started doing. I called the tower, said we had smoke in the cockpit and were returning immediately. I leveled at 1500' and banked right around into a downwind leg. As the copilot began the before landing checklist I called for landing gear and flaps when he got to them, and abeam the threshold I pulled a lot of power off and made a descending turn to the runway. We rolled out on short final and, wow! The fire trucks were already there! Who called them out, I wondered. We landed, stopped on the runway, and the fire trucks began shining spotlights on us. I asked them on the radio if they could see anything and they said no, it looks fine. So I taxied to the gate. Maintenance was there and indicated to keep the right engine running while the passengers got off. Then the mechanic supervisor came up and said sorry, we did an engine wash last night and forgot to run the engines afterward. So what we got was all this toxic engine wash, compressed and heated and sprayed into the cockpit in a misty gas form. As we ran the engines on the run-up pad I was making clear in no uncertain terms how unhappy we were. But, it could have been worse, so looking back it really wasn't that big a deal. The whole thing only lasted a few minutes.
I had a couple of other things happen, but nothing too bad. Flew to Mt Vernon IL one afternoon and the landing gear in our KingAir wouldn't extend. Another day we had an engine lose oil pressure in the KingAir so we had to shut it down. Had a trim malfunction that tried to put us into the ground, also in a KingAir. Had water in the elevator freeze up on one night flight (yep, KingAir), caused a very unbalanced control that caused a tremendous flutter in the controls. I'll talk about those later in another chapter. Honestly, looking back on my career, it was pretty boring with just a few abnormal situations. It's probably been more exciting for you in your Volvo. I mean, I never had an airplane strand me in a bad neighborhood.
