Hello all,
I am writing a term paper for a class of mine called “Human Factors in Aviation” and I was hoping that some pilots here on FA could help me in providing personal first-hand experience in some incidents that occured to them. Some things I’m looking for is poor cockpit design by engineers, illusions with the eyes and ears, physical and emotional stress, and poor judgment. If you have others, please feel free to post still. Also, if you had a near incident/accident and was able to prevent it, please still feel free to post. And if you really want, I will post my nice lovely 10 page essay when it’s finish (or I can just e-mail it to specific members). I know that this comes at a kind of a bad time with the recent lost of Continental Connection Flight 3407 but this has been coming at me for a while. Also I will probably be able to use any posts up until the 15th of March when I will need to complete my final draft. Thanks in advance to all of you and hopefully we can all learn something from one another.
Best advice, is to fly the plane to the ground, or aviate, navigate, communicate.
Doing the above prevented my partial engine failure (exhaust valve bit the dust literally and figuratively) on what was suppose to be a mundane VFR flight from becoming an NTSB incident or accident report for me.
Declared emergency on 121.5, squawked accordingly and New Orleans approach followed me to the ground at L31. Called FSS afterward to tell them to pass on the word I was ok, and that was it. No paperwork whatsoever.
While the training given for emergencies work (aviate, navigate and communicate), they don’t really simulate the real deal in respect to urgency AND airplane performance. Because the cylinder was trying to beat itself to death, the vibration within the plane was incredible, to the point where it was very difficult to read the instruments.
Training says to pull the emergency checklist, but in the real deal, when the crap hits the fan, one must remember that checklist as time is of essence. Altitude is your friend as well since that buys you time for trouble shooting before you buy the farm. In my case, reducing power and mixture reduced vibration. Reaching for the checklist was not a thought as flying the plane was the critical element.
One shot for landing, no go around options not stressed enough in training. I ran off the end of the 2900 foot runway by 50 feet, no damage to lights or airframe. I landed long figuring it’s better to hit the trees at the end of the runway then to come up short was my thoughts all the way down final. (Slips work wonderful!!)
Hope this helps. If you need more, feel free to email me.
Allen