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was only 100 feet from his hangar. He could not contain his enthusiasm, so he decided to try it.
The first three take-offs were a little wobbly from a directional point of view, but the airplane was lightly loaded and got airborne before anything disastrous hap- pened. The landings were all bouncy, but the landing gear on this particular airplane had good oleo struts, and they helped smooth things out a bit. To the pilot’s relief, given his lack of experience, the whole flight was working out very well, and he was starting to think he was quite ‘the’ pilot. But then, the perpendicular runway, which, because it was much longer and better paved, had an increasing amount of traffic despite the 10-knot crosswind. So, our pilot decided that since the other airplanes were doing just fine on the crosswind runway, he might move over there and join them.
Tailwheel airplanes become entirely different animals in the presence of a crosswind, something he promptly discovered. On his first landing, the aircraft bounced some five feet in the air, and with the crosswind from the right, it started drifting to the left off the runway. He compensated for the drift by applying a lot of right rudder and (inadvertently) a touch of right brake. On the second touchdown, the airplane was closer to the centerline but now headed around 60 degrees off the runway’s direc- tion. He decided to go around since the plane was almost perpendicular to the runway center line. Adding full power but without sufficient airspeed, the airplane came back down again, this time on the grass; it then bounced back up again to about 10 feet and, with the engine at full power, ran into the top of an airplane parked on the ramp, adjacent to the runway. Fortunately, the pilot was not hurt, but he had totaled two general aviation airplanes, and the fire department spent a couple of hours cleaning up a 40-gallon low-lead fuel spill.
But, it is not just private pilots.
The commercially licensed pilot had several thousand hours in fixed-gear airplanes but was relatively new to airplanes with retractable landing gear. He decided an efficient, small, single-engine retractable was just what he needed to fly back and forth from his island home, and so after diligently looking for quite a while, he bought one. But, after the purchase, winter weather set in, and he did not fly it much for months.
Finally, a decent day arrived with good weather, and he had some spare time, so he decided to get current. The departure from his home airport went smoothly, and the flight to our airport only took 15 minutes. He was arriv- ing from the west, and it just so happened the wind was negligible; rather than making a proper pattern entry as was his habit, he elected to make a visual straight-in ap- proach from 10 miles out, direct to the east-west runway.
The problem with straight-in visual approaches is that many cues pilots use from pattern flying are absent. For example, pilots lose the habit of lowering landing gear on downwind (or over the initial approach fix if flying
When our routine changes, be extra alert to accomplish all checklist items.
IFR). Things also get forgotten at times when the pilot’s routine is changed, especially while on approach and in high workload situations.
Our pilot had everything nicely lined up on his long final. He crossed the approach end of the runway a little fast for reasons he did not grasp, floated about halfway down the 5000-foot runway during the flare, then made a very gentle landing on the fuselage, followed by a quick, sliding stop, all with the gear handle still in the retracted position. We had to close the airport for an hour while we moved the airplane to a local mechanic’s hangar. The prognosis was, what with sudden engine stoppage and fu- selage damage, that little airplane would never fly again, and the insurance company would total it.
But not just lack of recent flight time results in problems.
The corporate pilot had an ATP with several thousand hours flying the twin-engine, pressurized turbine aircraft. He flew it professionally nearly every day, year-round, for a local corporation. Like often happens in corporate aviation, his day usually started at about 0500 and involved flying construction managers to a site about 500 miles away. He would then wait around all day, trying to nap on the local FBO’s frayed, dirty and worn couch, later to fly the return leg late in the afternoon while his passengers drank beer in the back and discussed their business day. The pilot repeatedly made this type of flight and had the whole thing down cold. He memorized everything, includ- ing approaches, frequencies, power settings, airspeeds, and even the complete menu at the layover location res- taurant. He had done it so often that he complained about it being incredibly dull and was thinking about finding another line of employment.
The weather on this particular return flight was CAVU, and the winds were calm. The runway in use ran to the west, and given he was returning from the east, he elected to make a very long, straight-in visual approach. He came over the approach end of the runway on speed and glide
November 2023 / TWIN & TURBINE • 5