I've been threatening to give a story of a "brush with death" and here's one. I wish I could say it was the only one I have, but I was young and foolish once. I could have easily become a statistic. Instead I added some experience that (I hope) has made me a safer pilot.

From my logbook, here are my entries for a flight in 1985. There is only a small space for remarks, so they’re not detailed, but they’re enough to remind me of the whole thing. These entries are verbatim and therefore cryptic:

--------------------
11-2 M20C N78959 W09 - McCollum, Kennesaw GA 3.9 hrs
w/Paul, Barb. Visit Shavers. LORAN to NC, then VOR; IFR most of time

11-4 M20C N78959 McCollum - Statesville NC 2.0 hrs
Gloomy forecast. Heaviest rain ever!! Engine out @7000’ over Barrett’s Mt due to showers

11-4 M20C N78959 Statesville – LYH 1.3 hrs
Emergency landing @ Statesville, MVFR (thank God!) Try to push on. More showers; Precautionary landing LYH. Stayed @ Holiday Inn

11-5 M20C N78959 LYH-W09 1.3 hrs
Mostly IFR, little rain. Good to be home!!
--------------------

Paul was a high school friend of mine (who I still see fairly regularly; in fact we're meeting with 2 other high school friends this evening for dinner) and I'm surprised he even went with me on this trip, considering another experience he and I had flying to the Bahamas several years earlier (that's another story I want to share). Along with his wife, Barb, we set out to visit another high school friend and his wife, who lived in Georgia.

It was a nice visit and when it came time to return home, I checked the weather. Rain in the forecast, but that's why the FAA invented the Instrument Rating (which I had) so I felt bullet-proof and filed for the flight home.

The rain that lay ahead turned out to be some of the heaviest I've ever encountered and caused flooding that ranks as the 2nd worst in Virginia history. (See http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/Historic...va-floods.html for confirmation)

The M20C was an old 1963 Mooney which belonged to a student who I taught to fly in this plane. He used to let me use it for free; I just put gas in it. On the Nov. 4th flight from Georgia, we started encountering rain in North Carolina and it got progressively heavier to the point that the plane actually leaked (rain coming in through seams in the roof and dripping on Barb in the back) and it got so loud from the sheer volume of water impacting the plane that it was unlike any experience I had had to that time. I felt like I was on a submarine, not a plane. I could barely hear the controller over the headset.

And then...the engine just stone cold quit.

The absence of the roar of the engine left us in a small (and oh God, it felt small at that moment), leaky vessel at 7000 feet in the heaviest rain I had ever seen. Looking back through the fog of time, it would be silly to think that I could accurately describe all of my emotions and thoughts at that moment, but I distinctly remember a couple of things.

I had two main competing thoughts that kept demanding air time in my brain. One was something along the lines of "Well, you idiot, this is how you get yourself into Flying magazine and all the pilots reading your story in their Aftermath section will be tsk, tsking about what a bonehead you were for flying into conditions beyond your capability" and the other was a sense of overwhelming guilt at putting my trusting friend and his wife in this situation. I kid you not, the guilt feeling was one of my major emotions.

I could feel the effect of adrenaline and I remember consciously thinking that I had to keep it together for my friends' sake. I looked at Paul, sitting to the right of me and he was looking wide-eyed back at me. He knew this was serious, but he was taking his cues from me and I tried hard to give the appearance of calm.

All of the above -- the thoughts, the looks -- were in the first 2-3 seconds after the engine quit. I keyed the mike and told the controller "Washington Center, Mooney 959. We've had an engine failure"

I had the radio turned way up, so that I could hear the controller and she responded, "Roger 959, what are your intentions." This struck me as somewhat humorous at the moment, but I thought it best not to share my amusement with Paul. I simply said, "We need to land."

Well we were going to land, whether we needed to or not. The question was, would we survive the landing?

The controller said, "Roger 959, turn right heading 180 degrees, vectors for Barrett's Mountain. Current weather at the field: 200 foot overcast, visibility one half mile, heavy thunderstorms. Winds ..." I can't remember the specific winds, but I do remember vividly that it was 200 and a half...classic ILS weather minimums. This was the minimum weather to fly an ILS with an engine running! And I was going to attempt it deadstick.

I should mention that the terrain was mountainous and the Barrett's Mountain airport sits at 1,030' MSL (above sea level). It was not a pretty prospect.

And then, halfway through the turn (because what option did I have but to try?), we popped out of the side of tall cumulus buildups and into clear air. I immediately rolled the wings level and stopped my turn; no way I was going back in the clouds. Ahead were more clouds but there were gaps and I could see the ground. I would take my chances with an off-airport landing that I could see rather than a deadstick to 200 feet that I couldn't see.

Looking over my left shoulder I looked at the clouds going up to probably over 40,000 feet and extending on a line from the Southeast to the Northeast as far as I could see. I told Center I was back in VMC (Visual Meteorological Conditions) but I honestly can't remember anything of what I said. She offered the fact that Statesville NC was at my 12 o'clock position and 10 miles.

I'm not sure what altitude I was at by this time (but I was still comfortably above the terrain I could see) or if I could have glided all the way to Statesville. I was delighted with the prospect of just picking an open field. Our chances of living had skyrocketed!

Once clear of the rain, the engine began coughing back to life. Throughout this ordeal, the prop had been turning, windmilling in the slipstream (you really have to work at it to get the prop to actually stop without the engine running). Each time the prop turns it causes the magnetos to fire the spark plugs (two sets in each cylinder for redundancy), so the engine is constantly trying to restart in a case like this.

It turns out the reason for the engine failure was the sheer amount of water being ingested. A combustion engine requires intake air to operate and the heavy rain was displacing the air so the engine quit. I might have been able to avoid the failure by selecting "Alternate Air" which provides a different pathway for air to reach the engine, bypassing the air filter. Alternate Air is usually selected in cases where the air filter ices up, but could well have worked for this case too...I'll never know.

So anyway, as the water worked its way through the system, the engine was sputtering and finally coughed back to life somewhere around 2000' and by the time I was on final approach at Statesville, it was purring as sweet as ever.

Epilog: Somehow I convinced Paul and Barb to get back in the plane and continue home to Leesburg (W09 was the airport identifier for Leesburg then; now it's JYO). This really is a testament to my persuasive skills but it still amazes me 24 years later.

I thought we could stay east of the rain, but I was wrong and once we started encountering rain on the flight out of Statesville, Paul started pointing down, gesturing that he wanted to get on the ground, so I diverted in to Lynchburg, VA where we stayed the night. The approach in to Lynchburg was no piece of cake -- right down to 200 and a half in rainshowers. You can bet I was watching those engine instruments during approach and I was really glad to be on the ground...again.

Wow. Sweaty palms for me on that one. That is some crazy stuff. I've had a few "omfg" moments in my life but nothing where I had other people looking at me like "fix it!"

Have you played Microsoft Flight Simulator?

If so, how 'real' is the experience? (I mean obviously it's a video game, but does it capture what flying is like with regards to ILS approaches and all that jazz).

Great thread!

It seems ridiculous to try and correct you in this thread, but aren't you affected by jet streams, which are caused by the rotation of the earth?

Are there regulations for where you can dump fuel? For example, in the Hudson river landing, could Captain Sully have dumped thousands of gallons of jet fuel onto the streets of Manhattan? Did he?

+1

There are designated fuel dump areas around most major airports that try and make use of sparsely populated areas and altitudes high enough that the fuel evaporates prior to reaching the ground. Additionally, if an aircraft is forced to dump fuel within the area, ATC will ensure that all nearby aircraft are kept away from the dump area. These areas are not used for aircraft in immediate danger because they generally don't have the time to fly to the location and take the time to dump fuel, they usually need to get down on the ground as fast as possible.

Any chance of getting some free passes to Delta Sky Clubs?

What really caused the Colgan Air flight to Buffalo to go down earlier this year? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407

Were the pilots really that useless? Why aren't you banned from piloting if you fail simulator tests for emergency situations that can be recovered from?

Great thread, thank you.

Great thread!

What is the worst part of being a pilot (sorry if asked)?

Have you had any friends die in plane crashes? Did it make you think about quitting?

Holy cow!! I would never, ever in a million years get back on that or any other plane again in my life.

Having said that, I feel alot better today about flying thanks to you. Now if only the airline executives would give a crap about thier customers and employees, travel could be a fun experience again.

One more:

Ok, coolest place on earth to see from the sky?

No, I didn't stumble on that one but I'm sure I would have stopped channel flipping if I had. Anything flying and I'm glued. I still love it.

Good question.

Most flying movies, especially the old John Wayne era stuff, are laughable in their depiction of flying.

The most cringe-worthy flying movie I've ever seen was Die Hard 2 and I'm sure it got a lot of discussions in cockpits when it came out. This one was ridiculous for its portrayal of flying and ATC procedures, not for any flying sequences per se (which I don't even recall there being any). If you're interested I'll list some of the more glaring examples.

The universally loved movie among pilots is Airplane. From time to time, a quote from that movie will be dropped into conversation by a pilot and then it takes off. Ex-Navy guys are especially able to quote every line from their days watching it on the carrier, when they watched the same movies over and over and over. (The same guys know every line of Caddyshack.)

Yeah, I suppose it could. Most major airports have a runway with alignment different from the main runways. Dulles has main parallel runways 01/19 but also a 12/30. On occasion landings are restricted to runway 30 if the prevailing northwesterly winds get strong enough. It slows their arrival rate considerably.

Atlanta is a bit unusual among major airports for having no alternative (the only one I can think of, in fact). All 5 runways there are oriented with magnetic headings of 272/092. I'm sure the weather patterns in Atlanta were considered and I can't think of any time that there were strong enough northerly or southerly winds to make landings impossible.

Last flight I was on, as we were circling down for landing I saw a plane ahead of us. The plane attempted to land, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the plane that was ahead of us in the air had landed and we pulled out and landed after another 10 minutes in air before landing again. I thought our pilots were dumb for not realizing that another plane was ahead of them yet went in for landing anyways. Am I right to be upset? Note, this was a smaller airport.

Here's a couple of the clips for you:

Heading into Iraq

Heading out

The switchover

Yeah, but I'll bet they found this well before takeoff speed.

Hey W0X0F,

I'm just going to go ahead and disagree with the majority of people here and say I hate this thread.



Edit: PS Crazy story about the engine failure. Reminds me about one I read where the intake manifold iced up for some pilots over mountainous terrain. They were able to land at a nearby field, and after the ice melted, the engine started up like nothing happened. Stories like that are a big part of what make me think some glider time to start with might be a good idea.

I'm a little surprised at this one (but I believe you), because Lajes is a major divert field and the runways and taxiways are certainly stressed for large aircraft. Maybe it hit hard, which would be understandable on a deadstick landing.

I think the posture is to lean forward with your hands crossed on the top on the seatback in front of you (not sure for bulkhead seats) and place your head between your arms. But I wouldn't swear to this...I should check with a flight attendant and get back to you.

If the plane actually rolled to a very steep angle, this sounds more like you encountered the wake of the preceding aircraft. Wingtip vortices (the corkscrewing wind disturbance created by the wing) can be very strong and the strength varies directly with the weight of the aircraft generating them. That's why ATC will ensure 5 miles separation behind a landing heavy aircraft. It can literally roll a small aircraft behind and even another heavy aircraft could have its hands full.

Sometimes, ATC will ask if we've got the preceding traffic in sight. If we say yes, they might then say, "Delta 83, maintain visual separation with that aircraft, you're cleared for the visual approach to Runway 31 right. Contact Kennedy tower 123.9" At this point, they go on about their day and we can fly as close to the other aircraft as we are comfortable. This is where a pilot might get a little too close (no collision threat; just the wake problem) and encounter the wake turbulence.

Maybe they used the term "hot start"? I've never heard "fire start". During engine start, we monitor the start sequence for various possible abnormal starts:

hot start - sometimes the ITT (internal turbine temperature) can approach or even exceed limits. In this case we abort the start (by cutting off the fuel). No big deal if we catch it in time, but if the temperature gets too high you may have just toasted a multi-million dollar engine.

hung start - the engine doesn't accelerate normally and doesn't achieve a stable start. Also not a big deal, but we'd call maintenance after aborting the start.

starter won't engage/disengage - if it won't engage, it's just a valve that isn't opening and we call maintenance; if it won't disengage, this is potentially serious (kind of like engaging your starter on a running car engine) as the starter could disintegrate.

no light off - fuel is introduced at some point during the start cycle (on the 767 it's when the engine is turning at 25%) and lightoff should follow within seconds, but if the igniters fail you get no lightoff, no engine acceleration and you have to abort the start.

It's kind of traditional for pilots to do their own walkarounds and we look for the obvious: general condition of surfaces (has a vehicle run into the plane and left a dent?), any leaks (fuel, hydraulic fluid), tire condition, service and access doors all closed and secured, etc.

Probably, but some pilots like to at least look at the plane which they are going to take in the air. But at Southwest, they do just what you're saying; the mechanics are responsible for the walkaround inspection. This frees the pilots to get things ready for their next flight (they do quick turns and keep those planes moving).

You'd think I would know about this, but I wasn't even aware they went on strike.

Worst turbulence you've ever encountered? Is there a specific route you fly that you cringe when you get assigned to it because you know its such an uncomfortable ride?

Any cool stories about stuff outside the atmosphere?(Probably not the best way to phrase the question)

Both are remarkable examples of grace under pressure, but I guess I'd give the nod to the 767 glider, if only because he had to land it on a runway of set length whereas Sully had the entire Hudson river.

Addison, Texas. Never been there, but I've landed at a few airports in Texas: DFW, Abilene, Luck Field (Ft. Worth), San Antonio, Kenedy and Leaky (near Garner state park).

i feel like this question has to have been asked before, but i can't remember it.

you've posted multiple different kinds of planes that you've flown with all sorts of different 747-100 or 767 and that kind of stuff.

my question is, how much do all of these planes vary and how often do you fly different kinds of planes? do you pretty much always fly one kind since you're flying for one main carrier or is it kind of a surprise every day what kind of plane you're going to be piloting?

does it ever happen where you show up to fly a plane you're not familiar with? then what?

again, apologies if this has already been posted/answered.

what role do the pilots play in ditching (after the plane has come to rest). I ask because the during an exercise to certify the new 747 configuration, we had a crew of FA's on hand but no one from the flight deck. are you supposed to help with the evacuation, or are you like a passenger at that point (get the hell out of dodge).

are you friendly with pilots from other carriers? are there rivalries when you run into them ("damned UAL scum"), or do you not run into them much.

at UA our flight safety group was headed by and staffed partly by active pilots. the director even had to put his hours in every month to stay active. is this the same at your airline? if so, how would this work in a labor situation? as an active pilot and ALPA member, they would have some loyalty to the union, but as a FS member they'd be "management". I asked this multiple times and was given non-committal answers. how would the rank and file view the FS investigators and management (the ones who are also ALPA) if it ever came to a stoppage and they had to cross to get to their management positions?

finally, a cool story about the director mentioned above (who's one of the nicest guys I knew at the company and is a triple seven captain...I think he's a chief pilot at ord now, if you know him).

he was flying ex ord to lhr and taking a rest. when he woke up, the first officer told him "want to know how the world changed when you were asleep?" turns out, they were mid-air when they caught the liquid explosives plot at lhr. he was, understandably, out of the corporate offices and stuck in england for a few days after landing that trip.

thanks again for the great thread. as someone who worked closely with the FS group I was exposed to my share of bad apple pilots. good to have this kind of access to one of the good guys.

I was going to list the ones I could think of offhand, but it's too many...easily over 200 in the U.S., so I dispensed with that idea. Note that we use 3 letter identifiers in the U.S., but the ICAO (International Civil Aeronautics Organization) format is 4 characters. Thus, all U.S. fields have a "K" prefix when used internationally (Kennedy becomes KJFK).

Here's airports just in New York that I can think of (and that I've been in to):
JFK - Kennedy
LGA - La Guardia
ISP - Islip
FRG - Farmingdale
BGM - Binghamton
ELM - Elmira
SYR - Syracuse
BUF - Buffalo
ROC - Rochester
ALB - Albany
HPN - White Plains
SWF - Stewart/Newburgh

I've got single engine and glider ratings. Sail planes are great for learning to properly control the aircraft. With power planes you can get away with some sloppy flying because you have an engine dragging you through the air.