A couple of weeks ago, I began to write about moments in my personal aviation experience that looked just like the beginnings of some of the accidents that I discuss here on the website.  You can access the first part of these moments HERE.  This post is Part two:

In part one, I wrote about how I mistakenly starved my engine over the Florida Everglades, got distracted with a GPS over Jacksonville, and headed towards an MD-88 I was supposed to hold short of while throwing up.  All these experiences, as is the same with hundreds of experiences lived by pilots everyday in the world, are very similar to the beginnings of aircraft accidents.  However, the difference is that the remainder of the chain of events that eventually lead to an accident are missing, either because corrections are made orluck intervens.

Even after committing all the errors that I am writing about on these posts, I consider myself a  good… err… careful… um… OK pilot.  However, there were a couple of times in my early flying days when I was pretty damn reckless in my decisions.  In the summer of 1995, I was ready for my instrument rating check ride just as a tropical storm was churning somewhere near Florida.  The winds at the airport were about 15 knots and gusting to 20 (or something like that).  The check ride pilot asked if I wanted to go or postpone the flight to another day.  I could have easily chosen to fly on a calmer day and had an easier check ride.  For some unknown reason, though, I decided that it was a good time to go.  The check ride was on a Mooney M20J and most of it went great, although there was a lot of wind correction involved in all the maneuvers.  As we returned to Daytona Beach International Airport to land, there was a considerable crosswind at the airport and I had very little experience with such crosswinds.  As I approached the airport, I added the appropriate rudder correction and had a nice, stable approach to runway 7L.  However, just as I was about a wingspan off the runway, a gust of wind pushed the plane to the left.  I added right correction and stopped the roll.  Now this is where I took things in the wrong direction.  Instead of initiating a go-around maneuver and coming back for another landing, I decided that I would put that plane down on the ground.  I landed sort-of sideways on the runway and then proceeded to do a series of pilot-induced oscillations all over the runway (and I do mean all over) that must have scared the check ride pilot big time.  Needless to say, I did not pass the check ride and had to do it over about a week or two later.  I’ve always gone around since that day when confronted with that kind of situation.

When I wrote about the pilot that crashed after apparent electrical problems near Lexington, Kentucky, it reminded me of a day when I was northwest of Lake City, Florida and on my way to Gainesville from Waycross, Georgia ( a solo flight).  My equipment on that day was a Piper PA-28 Cadet and the flight had been relatively uneventful.  There something about southeastern Georgia that makes one place seem just like another.  As I was about to cross into Florida, I went ahead and contacted air traffic control (ATC).  I received no response.  I kept attempting to contact ATC, while checking circuit breakers, frequencies, radio settings, headset connections, etc.  Still no response.  I began to think I was going to have to land in Gainesville using light signals.  I continued on towards Gainesville and somehow got disoriented as to where I was in the map.  This was disconcerting because I only had about a quarter of a tank of fuel on each tank.  It turned out later on that I was exactly where I thought I was, but for about five minutes I doubted myself enough to think that I was way off course.  A third reset of the radio circuit breakers finally brought the radios to life as I was about 15 miles away from Gainesville and in need of radio contact.  I landed, refueled, had the radios checked, and took off again.  They never failed again and the avionics technician was never able to figure out if anything was wrong with them.  I guess I’ll never really know what happened.

I have never written about runway incursions in Velozia Air.  Thankfully, there haven’t been any serious ones recently.  When I think about my flying experiences, though, I can’t remember a worse flying offense that when I crossed a runway hold short line, as an airplane was on final, at runway 16 on Daytona Beach International Airport.  The controller had just told us to hold short of the runway and was kind enough to immediately clear us across the runway when he saw that my flight instructor and I were already halfway across it.  It was a case of distraction.  You see, up unto that point I had over 200 flight hours and had still not been inside a Cessna 172 Skyhawk.  All my flights until that point had been on Aerospatiale/Socata TB-9 Tampicos, Piper Cadets, and Mooney M20Js.  As I worked my way through my Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) certificate, it was time to do spin training and the only spin-allowed aircraft on the university´s fleet was a Cessna 172.  I was going to do spins in the thing without ever being in the plane before.  As I got into the much older (than the other planes) 172 that morning I noticed the thing didn’t even have headset connections.  I had always flown with headsets and had never depended on a speaker/mike communications combination.  As we got ready for the flight I was excited about the spins and getting used to the plane as we taxied out.  The instructor was working the radios and I was at the controls.  He (with good reason) assumed I was listening to the radio and I (with good reason) assumed he would verify if I had understood ATC commands.  Suddenly, as I was crossing runway 16, the controller cleared us past the runway and I looked at my instructor to see a startled face.  A Cessna 152 was on final approach and just about to land.  I added throttle and quickly crossed the runway.  The controller verified if my flight instructor had received the hold-short instructions, to which he replied “affirmative”.  The controller didn’t say much else until we got back from the spin flight (which was a great experience). As soon as we got on the ground control frequency after landing he kindly asked if we could call a phone number he gave us.  A reprimand was coming from the tower.  That was a situation which could have easily turned into a ground collision between two planes.

Well, that’s it for this round of personal experiences.  I have one more; the one in which I simulated my own death in Memphis, Tennessee, but I’ll give that one its own post.  There are a few safety lessons to learn on it.

You may be interested in these posts:

• Personal Experiences in Aviation Part 1
• Plane crash in Lexington, KY.
  

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