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The day I almost died, or stupid pilot tricks.

AdamFrisch… My comment about the checklist was not a criticism. Checklists are boring, mundane – even work. And all of us are guilty of either not using them or skipping steps due to the repetitive aspect of those checks. IMHO I think your story is a lesson in checklist usage and the danger of missing a checklist step. And I appreciate you taking the risk to share your experience with us.

I would not characterise this as a “stupid pilot trick”. Maybe it needs to be defined. To me it is about pilots making up procedures they think are smarter than common wisdom and accepted procedures, or wanting to show off.

Thanks for sharing.

LFPT, LFPN

Thanks for sharing, Adam. And pleased to hear that after this adventure your GF is now your future wife!

Doors popping open can really be an indirect killer. I had it happen on my first solo x-country and desperately tried to close it – nearly flew into a mountain…..

Last Edited by 172driver at 27 Dec 22:05

Thanks Adam for sharing this thrilling story.

I had almost lost a door in flight, when I was new on the Europa. My Co closed the door latch, but the rear shoot bolt of the door didn’t engage in the door frame. I felt an unusual air draft coming in at the throttle slot and tried to figure out the reason for this when I eventually at about 3000 ft looked over my right shoulder and saw a gap of about 3 centimeters at the backside of the door. Luckily the front shoot bolt held the door in place and we managed to close the door, but some Europas already lost it inflight (and some damaged the Elevator badly) because it’s so easy to forget to check it prior to take off, especially when you’re new on that type.

In August, I was an eye whitness, when a Flight Design CT took off at Höxter EDVI and the door flipped open. The pilot tried to close it and forgot to fly the aircraft, spun in at about 100 feet right in front of us – no chance to survive. After that I asked myself, what would I’ve been done, when my door flipped open direct after take off…. No matter what happens – first fly the aircraft. That is printed bold in my POH for emergencies and it’s what I try to internalise again and again.

EDLE

I trained on Tomahawks. Fortunately, given their stall-spin behaviour, there’s not a large trim change when you put the first stage or two of flaps down. Later I hired a C152. With a few hours on the aircraft, I set off on a trip to Denham. Keeping very low to stay below Heathrow’s airspace, I was struggling to find the airfield. I decided to circle to look at the map, and lowered the flaps. When I finally looked up at the instruments, the ASI read about 30 knots.

Last Edited by kwlf at 27 Dec 23:49

The doors on the 22 had this annoying habit. A very interesting story – thank you.

My first semi “emergency” situation was in an old Warrior 2, I was doing my checks when the controller asked whether I was ready for an immediate departure – it was a busy day at that airfield with a UL meeting coming in plus most of the home based aircraft – including the Canberra – wanting to depart as well. As I was nearing the end of my checks and thinking I had them memorised, I said yes, put the check list away and did the last few checks, lined up, looked across to my Dad, asked if he was ready, he nodded, we rolled and just as I rotated, the door opened – he had closed the door but it had not latched properly. And guess what the last check on the check list was? Door – latched. Doh…. had I looked at the rear top corner I would have seen he hadn’t closed it properly. He tried to pull it shut but couldn’t get it closed, in fact he was looking rather green because now, after his attempts, the door was wider open and turning crosswind on a right hand circuit, he had had a great view of the ground.

So there I was, airborne in the circuit, the wind coming in and drowning the radio and even though I had decent ANR headsets on, I couldn’t hear a word of what was being spoken on the radio, just advised that I was going to be returning to land. I informed them I couldn’t hear too well so would be sending blind calls but as I turned onto final I then saw the unmistakeable shape of the Canberra lined up on the runway. Fortunately that airfield had a smaller grass strip running parallel so I called my intentions, checked to my left and side slipped across and landed on it. Once I’d stopped, the controller asked whether I’d had a problem and needed assistance – apparently they’d not heard too much of what I was saying either, he assumed I was having radio difficulties… I told them the door had popped open, closed it and taxied back to fly off. The controller replied: “Ah, happens with that one quite often, follow the checklist and you can close it easy enough whilst airborne” – apparently that particular plane was renowned for the door appearing closed only for it to pop open just after becoming airborne.

I was going to ask the controller about this checklist but the radio was too full to waste time on that, on the printed one I was following there was nothing there so I thought – perhaps in the POH there will be a section. Sure enough, I checked the online POH for that aircraft and in section 3 found one entitled “door open” – the next time that the door on a P28A opens, I know what I’ll do… apparently if you don’t close the vents and open the storm window on the pilot’s side in a P28A, it’s nearly impossible to close the door in flight….

The learnings:

1) read the POH for any new type to ensure I know the procedures for all eventualities

2) never rush completing the check lists.

EDL*, Germany
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