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well beyond 90 degrees, a place that you’ve never seen before. How could that electrical smell mess up the horizon? Maybe I’m in a spin or a stall. Nope, speed is 260 kts. Pull the throttles back. Maybe it’s an accelerated stall. You hear your call sign again: Radar contact is lost, say altitude. Why can’t I roll left? What’s going on? The wind noise is loud as you exit the bottom of the clouds.
Just Like You
The controller repeats his call sign several more times, but no one is there to answer. The flight lasted less than five minutes. And here we sit, my friends, reading our Twin & Turbine. It wasn’t you in that airplane. You didn’t mess up. It was the other guy again. Perhaps you allowed yourself to live vicariously through this event. If so, you probably feel sick to your stomach. If not, it’s because you didn’t know that this is a true story. And that three months ago, the pilot from this story was reading this magazine, and this very column. Just like you. He was a good pilot, just like you.
Viewing a story vicariously is how we learn and prepare. How we stay sharp. How we survive. When we remember events like this one, it makes us pay close attention. His altitude and perception of the event didn’t give him enough time to sort it out. Maybe it wasn’t his fault. Maybe we would have done things similar to what he did. How could anybody deal with his scenario? Is there another way to access a time-compressed or confusing scenario? First, we must be proficient and capable instrument pilots and our airplanes airworthy. After that, it’s up to us to fly the airplane first, then seek solutions.
Lateral Thinking
When you understand the information presented in the operating manual — when you are proficient and one with the machine — expand your flying skills into the domain of lateral thinking. In modern vernacular, that means thinking outside the box; solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious. By considering ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step, checklist type logic. It means not playing with the
existing chess pieces, but with finding ways to change the pieces themselves.
Would lateral thinking have helped this pilot? Perhaps not. Maybe it wasn’t an engine failure that our pilot faced. Maybe it was a half-inch of clear ice covering the unheated surfaces of his aircraft. Maybe he should have been deiced. Maybe the pitot static system iced over. Maybe it was an electrical fire. Maybe part of the airframe broke. Maybe it was a failure in the flight control system. Or maybe transiting several cloud layers or turning
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to the passengers induced vertigo. All realistic possibilities. But conventional logic, training or his proficiency were insufficient in the time allotted.
A perfectly good airplane flown by a good pilot should not crash. Besides, that clear ice thing and inducing your own vertigo wasn’t a fair scenario you say? Well, to that I say you’ve been in too many simulators. They must give you realistic scenarios in the sim, right? And they shouldn’t combine two or three bad things at once. We must be given a
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This month: Strategic Moves offers transition training 33
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March 2017 TWIN & TURBINE • 33