swconsultant

"will quarter-back a dire situation/action they have read/viewed...should temper perhaps, because they have not yet, been put through that ring of fire, you have not been... in that person's set of shoes...." Ah ... But I have been in that person's set of shoes ... Forty years ago four of us were flying from Florida to Massachussetts in a V-tail Bonanaza. We landed at Ashville, NC in the late afternoon to refuel and eat dinner. By the time we took off it was dark, but it had been light when we landed and we had seen the airport's surroundings -- entirely pine forest in all directions. The Bonanza belonged to a friend, who was PIC. I was riding shotgun. The two back seat passengers were also friends. They knew nothing about aviation. We climbed out of Ashville in pitch darkness. As we reached about 1,000 feet there was an extremely loud bang (extremely loud) upon which essentially all of the windshield blew in on the left side. (As we learned the next morning, judging by the feathers and blood we had hit an owl, breaking the windshield but with the owl skipping off the cockpit roof. But at the time of the windshield implosion we had no idea what happened, at least not immediately.) It took Jack (my friend) and I perhaps 1-2 seconds to recover from our mutual shock and suprise. We had been climbing, gear up, at full power with the propeller in fine pitch at 600-700 fpm. Now, with half the windshield gone, we were descending at full power at about 500fpm. I knew it. Jack knew it. Each of us knew that the other knew. Jack turned to me with one eyebrow raised. I motioned behind me with my left thumb, indicating that I thought we should turn back, the obvious reason being that a crash landing in any direction would be into pine forest at 80 or 90 knots, very possibly meaning death for all aboard. Jack nodded his head and started a turn to the left. I yelled to him that I would call out the airspeed and altitude so he could concentrate on flying back to the runway. We both realized that we were going to crash if we did not try to make the runway. We might fail and crash anyway, but there was also a chance that we would make it -- a good chance since we had taken off into a stiff headwind. And so it turned out. Jack flew an impeccable approach, dropping the gear just as we crossed the runway threshhold at about twenty feet AGL. We touched down without incident and taxied back to the FBO. Was I scared? Yes. So was Jack. (Our passengers didn't understand the perilous nature of the situation and, while also scared, did not realize that they had been staring death in the face.) But the real fear came after we landed. During the emergency we were much too busy to have time to be scared. What did I learn from this incident? Answer, do not fly SEL at night. Period.

"... all humans, will react, whether in civil purvue, or military purvue, not 100 percent as the next, of equal level of their training. Not even a highly trained U.S. Marine under duress. " Absolutely correct -- and those who have provably panicked should not be allowed to put others at risk ever again, especially not instructors. Flying is much more about headwork than aircraft handling skills. Part of headwork is learning to compartmentalize fear -- to set it aside (even make it work for you) so that it doesn't interfere with doing what you need to do in an emergency situation. In an emergency you must assess the situation as calmly as possible, formulate a plan of action as calmly as possible and then stick to the plan as calmly as possible. Letting fear take over, as this instructor obviously did, only makes things worse and may well lead to disaster. I was in a building that was hit by a GA aircraft precisely because the pilot, who was making an emergency landing owing to having run out of fuel, a) had not switched off his magnetos, and b] wracked the aircraft around in a steep turn just a couple of hundred feet above the ground in a panicked attempt to make the runway at Princeton Airport. I know this because I spoke with him after the crash (he was only banged up a little). His steep turn caused residual tank fuel to surge into the engine. The resulting sudden burst of power during his steep left turn rolled him inverted, causing him to dive into the A-frame roof of the building I was in. Only that cushioned crash saved his life.

"I agree with you..there are hard procedures that a trained P.P.L holder SHOULD do, in a text-book incident." This was a text book incident. Clear weather, aircraft intact, plenty of altitude, many choices of places to land, engine out -- exactly what PPLs are trained to deal with. Anyone who has provably panicked behind the controls should not be allowed to carry passengers, much less instruct. EDIT: I forgot to add "daylight" to the conditions. It doesn't get any easier than the situation at hand unless you still have 10,000 feet of runway in front of you.

If you pay close attention to the various posts you will find that the critics generally possess pilot's licenses, as I do, and the supporters do not. The instructor was wrong from the word go, and he risked a crash by making a tight last minute turn with the magnetos still on. He should have committed to an engine off landing at 1,000 feet or so, certainly by 500 feet, and he should have picked the best field to land in, if necessary crabbing the aircraft to get into a good field that happened to be close. Like all of us with PPLs he will have been trained to do this. That he didn't indicates panic, not coolness under pressure.