Mechanical failures....check lists...SOPs and decisions.

[Big Pistons Forever]

So .

You are coming in to land at Lac Labiche (narrow relatively short runway) in the DC 6, empty but with No 1 feathered and about 10 kts of crosswind from the left, just as the nose wheel touches it blows and the nose starts whipping from side to side as well as you experience the instantaneous loss of nose wheel steering......



Whatcha gonna do .......

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Doc the PBY with the gear down and one feathered has a descent rate that is truly serious.

The mixture levers are behind the pilots seats and above their heads so a bit difficult to get at real fast......the F.O. had no idea the throttle lever had broken off and the fucking noise level in one of those beasts is unbelievable so trying to tell him to cut both mixtures would have been a waste of time.

If there had been a live mag I would have known in a split second and then would have pushed the master kill switch back in and for sure we would have continued the take off and dealt with it in the air.

As it turned out the decision to kill ignition to both engines and drop the load at the same time was the correct one as I knew there was room to safely stop.

What I am trying to point out is be aware of not becoming a slave to SOP's and always take those few seconds to ask yourself what the hell is going on here and how do I solve this problem.

I have no problem with sharing my experiences and explaining what I did and why, I am only pointing out that flying an aircraft requires one to think things out and solve each problem as they arise...SOP's are great but sometimes one has to use innovative means to solve some of the mechanical problems that occur during your career.

Once again when an examination of what I did on a given flight is looked at and questions arise as to whether or not I did the correct thing all I can say in my own defense is in over thirty thousand hours of flying I have not wrecked one, and believe me I have flown in some real tough conditions.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

So .

You are coming in to land at Lac Labiche (narrow relatively short runway) in the DC 6, empty but with No 1 feathered and about 10 kts of crosswind from the left, just as the nose wheel touches it blows and the nose starts whipping from side to side as well as you experience the instantaneous loss of nose wheel steering......



Whatcha gonna do .......

Hey that's an easy one BPF, I would immediately smash the BMEP gauges.

We may not agree on some things BPF but I am fairly certain you can understand my advising pilots to think before they do something is good advice.....automatic actions do not always give the best results.

[Big Pistons Forever]

So .

You are coming in to land at Lac Labiche (narrow relatively short runway) in the DC 6, empty but with No 1 feathered and about 10 kts of crosswind from the left, just as the nose wheel touches it blows and the nose starts whipping from side to side as well as you experience the instantaneous loss of nose wheel steering......



Whatcha gonna do .......

Hey that's an easy one BPF, I would immediately smash the BMEP gauges.

We may not agree on some things BPF but I am fairly certain you can understand my advising pilots to think before they do something is good advice.....automatic actions do not always give the best results.

Actually IMO for takeoff emergencies, automatic reactions are almost always the best ones. This is why the virtually universal SOP for large aircraft makes V1 the automatic and fixed point where the PIC switches from being primed to reject the takeoff to being primed to continue the takeoff. The vast majority of takeoffs that were rejected after V1 ended badly.

I have no opinion on whether the successful outcome of your PBY emergency was good management or good luck as I was not there and have no personal Canso operating experience. However I would say that I think care should be taken when extrapolating a very unusual failure in a very non typical aircraft type
into general operating advice.

The basis of good decisions IMO starts with a sound understanding of aircraft systems so that failing systems are detected early and the personal discipline to follow checklists and SOP's. To deviate from SOP's one first has to understand what one is deviating from and should be response to the failure of the "normal" emergency procedures to be effective or appropriate.

The EFATO emergency in Piston twins is a good example where some pretakeoff critical thought is important. A VG equiped Cessna 340 is the only piston twin I regularly fly. The owner and I put a lot of thought into our EFATO SOP and checklist. We do all takeoffs no flap and with the VG's, Blueline is 100 kts so we rotate at 95 to fly off at 100 knots and the landing gear is retracted with positive rate of climb. Our "decision" point is gear retraction. Before the gear is retracted any engine failure/fire results in the immediate closing of both throttles and a land/stop straight ahead. After gear retraction the conditions for continued flight are in place and the only think left to do is feather the failed engine. Therefor the visual/physical indications that the flight has gone from stopping to going is when the pilot moves his hands from covering the throttles to covering the prop levers. At this point, in the event of an engine failure, only one action is required. After identifying the failure through yaw and EGT indications, the pilot verifies by moving the appropriate prop lever to the feather gate, pauses to ensure it is the right one, then continues to the full feather position. After that you just have to concentrate on flying the aircraft to a safe height and then complete the engine failure and securing checklists.

[PanEuropean]

Guess what I did and why.

Uh, wrote up a Service Difficulty Report and submitted it here: http://www.tc.gc.ca/wsdrs ???

[Chuck Ellsworth]

I have no opinion on whether the successful outcome of your PBY emergency was good management or good luck as I was not there and have no personal Canso operating experience. However I would say that I think care should be taken when extrapolating a very unusual failure in a very non typical aircraft type
into general operating advice.

You have no opinion on whether the outcome was good management or good luck because you have no PBY experience huh?

Yet you question my sharing this experience I had because pilots may take it as advice to just randomly make decisions with no thought process.

You may be correct and I may be far better off just never sharing any of my flying experiences because it may empower some pilots to ignore SOP's for no specific reason.

The basis of good decisions IMO starts with a sound understanding of aircraft systems so that failing systems are detected early and the personal discipline to follow checklists and SOP's. To deviate from SOP's one first has to understand what one is deviating from and should be response to the failure of the "normal" emergency procedures to be effective or appropriate.

Great advice:

However there can be times when systems fail with no warning....and sometimes at the most critical seconds of a flight.

I stand by my decision making process and all the second guessing of asking " what if " does not change the fact I made the safest decision in that instance born out by the results. And my record for making good good decisions is verifiable in that during my whole career my decisions " never " resulted in an accident or incident caused by poor decision making for the simple reason I never wrecked one because I did make the right decisions obviously.

I have been communicating with Hedley on these issues and have decided he has chosen the correct way to deal with this stuff on the Avcanada flight training forum.

Leave it up to all you experts because you know it all anyhow.

This will be the last time I ever share any of my flying experiences on this flight training forum.

There is one big difference between you and I B.P.F. and that is I do not use anonymity to hide behind.

[Beefitarian]

So how long should a pilot look in the book for the proceedure in case of broken throttle lever before switching to thinking?

[Chuck Ellsworth]

So how long should a pilot look in the book for the proceedure in case of broken throttle lever before switching to thinking?

You don't really want to suggest there is critical thinking involved in flying do you Beef?

That might cull a lot of people who are incapable of such a process, and the aviation community would be reduced to the point where pilots would get payed as pilots and not robots.

[Beefitarian]

Push the button ., if you survive you'll get a banana.

[System Message]

., thank you for not just telling stories with a happy ending. Flying requires fast responses to unusual situations and we do the best we can at the time followed by a year or more for others to guess if it was the right thing to do. After thinking about what you did at the time can you say if that was the best thing to do and can you describe what the actual failure was. The PBY throttle looks like a lever connected to cables. If the lever dissconected could the cables have been used directly to set the throttle?
Remember the first post left us guessing about the type of aircraft, its engines, the runway and the conditions.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

., thank you for not just telling stories with a happy ending. Flying requires fast responses to unusual situations and we do the best we can at the time followed by a year or more for others to guess if it was the right thing to do.

It is really quite simple System Message, I spent a half a century flying most everything there is out there and am quite comfortable discussing anything and everything about my career. What people think about the decisions I made will be up to each individual. One thing is a given, I have the self worth to tell it like I experienced it and the fact that I survived is what is important to me. I made lots of mistakes during my career but fortunately I never made one bad enough to have an accident.

After thinking about what you did at the time can you say if that was the best thing to do and can you describe what the actual failure was. The PBY throttle looks like a lever connected to cables. If the lever dissconected could the cables have been used directly to set the throttle?
Remember the first post left us guessing about the type of aircraft, its engines, the runway and the conditions.

The throttles on the PBY are in the roof and the throttle broke off inside of the quadrant and that means there was no way to change the power setting. You should be able to google the inside of a PBY and see how the throttles are mounted.

There was no doubt in my mind at the time that the safest way to deal with the problem was shut down both engines and accept a possible over run of the runway onto the grass....which was exactly what happened.....I got it stopped long before I ran out of flat clear ground.

So yes I did the correct thing under that circumstance and for what ever it is worth I had a couple of thousand hours on the PBY at the time and knew its limitations and how it behaved in any given circumstance...like how much distance I needed ahead of me to safely reject a take off.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I have no opinion on whether the successful outcome of your PBY emergency was good management or good luck as I was not there and have no personal Canso operating experience. However I would say that I think care should be taken when extrapolating a very unusual failure in a very non typical aircraft type
into general operating advice.

You have no opinion on whether the outcome was good management or good luck because you have no PBY experience huh?

Yet you question my sharing this experience I had because pilots may take it as advice to just randomly make decisions with no thought process.

You may be correct and I may be far better off just never sharing any of my flying experiences because it may empower some pilots to ignore SOP's for no specific reason.

The basis of good decisions IMO starts with a sound understanding of aircraft systems so that failing systems are detected early and the personal discipline to follow checklists and SOP's. To deviate from SOP's one first has to understand what one is deviating from and should be response to the failure of the "normal" emergency procedures to be effective or appropriate.

Great advice:

However there can be times when systems fail with no warning....and sometimes at the most critical seconds of a flight.

I stand by my decision making process and all the second guessing of asking " what if " does not change the fact I made the safest decision in that instance born out by the results. And my record for making good good decisions is verifiable in that during my whole career my decisions " never " resulted in an accident or incident caused by poor decision making for the simple reason I never wrecked one because I did make the right decisions obviously.

I have been communicating with Hedley on these issues and have decided he has chosen the correct way to deal with this stuff on the Avcanada flight training forum.

Leave it up to all you experts because you know it all anyhow.

This will be the last time I ever share any of my flying experiences on this flight training forum.

There is one big difference between you and I B.P.F. and that is I do not use anonymity to hide behind.

It is too bad that anytime anyone advances an opinion that is not 100 % the same as yours or dares to advance an alternate action, you rubish the poster and then announce we are unworthy of your presence on the board and threaten to stop posting (this is what, the 78 th time )

Maybe it is time to return to the facts of the case. At the time of the throttle failure you had two engines operating at full power and the abilty to make the aircraft 8000 lbs lighter by pushing a button. You had two courses of action.

1) Continue the takeoff, jettison the load and shut down the engine in flight, or

2) Reject the takeoff and therefore either shut down the engine with the mixtures or the master mag switch.

Like I said I wasn't there and therefore I can not make an opinion as to whether you made the correct choice or just got lucky. Personally if I am well down the runway and both engines are running my first choice would be to keep going. This is because accidents statistics have shown that this is almost always the better choice, especially for large aircraft. But like I said I wasn't there. I am sure your very considerable flying experience on this type allowed you to accurately estimate how much runway you need to stop and you used your comprehensive knowledge of the aircraft systems to determine the best way to shut down the engines. However I still am not sure the "lesson" to be learned here. Is it

1) I need to remind everyone I am such an awesome pilot by posting another example of my derring - do, or

2) SOP's are for brain washed saps from the new age of aviation, and you should just do the "right" thing when an emergency occurs, or

3) Understanding the aircraft systems is important because when the one in a thousand failure occurs that is not covered in "normal" emergency checklists, you will be able to appropriately respond.

If it is, as I suspect No 3, then we are in violent agreement, and frankly why the histrionics

The bottom line from my POV is that how this failure is dealt with ultimately has nothing to do with the response to emergencies that are covered in the Sop's or the emergency checklists

[Chuck Ellsworth]

B.P.F. we have a history of disagreement and the only difference between us here on this site is you know who I am...but I do not have the faintest idea of who you are except you sure love to jump all over a lot of my posts.

One thing you can take to the bank and sticky in your mind is this will be the last time I share any flying experiences on this training forum because it just is not worth the effort of the constant whine from posters like you who comment from the safety if anonymity.

May I very calmly and seriously make a suggestion to you?

If you are at Pitt Meadows any time in the future drop by the hangars on the north side and express your opinions to some of the owners / operators on how I do things and what a negative influence I am on aviation.

[Dagwood]

I agree with you ., that in this case, you made the right decision. However, maybe for another pilot who is not as strong on system knowledge, or is new on the airplane, or just woke up cranky that morning, doing as you did might have ended differently.

How did you know the throttle cable broke anyway? Most of the time I set takeoff power and don't touch the levers until climb power reduction. Were you tweaking the settings and noticed one side wasn't responding?

[Chuck Ellsworth]

I agree with you ., that in this case, you made the right decision. However, maybe for another pilot who is not as strong on system knowledge, or is new on the airplane, or just woke up cranky that morning, doing as you did might have ended differently.

If we examine the above comment and look at from a safety viewpoint we need to ask a simple question.

If you are have not determined at what point down the runway you can reject a take off and something entirely unexpected like a throttle lever breaking off what else would you be unsure of?

How did you know the throttle cable broke anyway?

It was the throttle lever, when it broke off there it was quite evident as it had snapped completely off.

Most of the time I set takeoff power and don't touch the levers until climb power reduction. Were you tweaking the settings and noticed one side wasn't responding?

[Chuck Ellsworth]

I agree with you ., that in this case, you made the right decision. However, maybe for another pilot who is not as strong on system knowledge, or is new on the airplane, or just woke up cranky that morning, doing as you did might have ended differently.

If we examine the above comment and look at from a safety viewpoint we need to ask a simple question.

If you are have not determined at what point down the runway you can reject a take off and something entirely unexpected happens like a throttle lever breaking off at full power what else would you be unsure of?

How did you know the throttle cable broke anyway?

It was the throttle lever, when it broke off there it was quite evident as it had snapped completely off.

Most of the time I set takeoff power and don't touch the levers until climb power reduction. Were you tweaking the settings and noticed one side wasn't responding?

Excluding heavy jets I always keep my hand on the power levers until I am airborne with a positive rate of climb.....this is especially important for me as should there be a loss of power on one engine I have my hand on the power levers and can reduce power on the operating engine if there is not enough rudder effectiveness to prevent yaw.

I have never flown an airplane yet that I could not control with one hand on the wheel / stick and the other on the power levers.

That was the way I was taught and there were a few airplanes I flew that would have really been a problem with if an engine failed at a critical point where there was not enough rudder to keep it straight....like say a Beech 18 on wheels as an example....

I am sure many here will disagree with my method, but that is the way I fly them and I have never had a check ride where the examiner faulted that method.....what would an examiner criticize????...the fact that I had complete control of the airplane?

Please note:::

The above is how I fly and I am not suggesting you fly using my methods.....I have enough problems in this thread with B.P.F without starting another shit storm over how I do things.

[Big Pistons Forever]

.I have enough problems in this thread with B.P.F without starting another shit storm over how I do things.

Whatever

[Colonel Sanders]

Odd how experience is treated as unimportant - even with contempt - in aviation.

I figured that you could probably learn something from old pilots, but I guess that isn't the case, because there's nothing to be learned from experience.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Unfortunately this is quite common in aviation Colonel Sanders, the reasons are complex.

Sometimes this attitude is because the person who shows contempt for those who have more experience is they are insecure with their own ability, but here in cyberspace there really is no way to determine why an individual would feel that way because the anonymity of the internet is a place from which they can safely make any comment they feel they need to.

I have been on this site for a long time and am as guilty as anyone for making ill thought out comments when responding to some posts that are nothing more than personal attacks. Of course when I do I am putting myself on the same level as the person who makes the comments....so I guess I'm just human.

What separates me from most here is I am secure enough within myself that I do not have to post under an assumed name.

But sometimes I wonder why I bother.

In this thread my intent was to share a truly unusual mechanical failure and relate what I did and why.......

......simply put the message is always strive to think before you do something.....and the more experience one gets the quicker you solve the problem of the moment.

. ..

[Airtids]

Guess what I did and why.

You did exactly as you briefed before takeoff?

Honestly ., I hear ya about being able to think outside the box. A few years ago I posted a story about a situation I ran into that drove home to me the value of not following SOPs into your grave if the occasion arises that dictates doing something different.
viewtopic.php?f=54&t=55626
I know that's what you're getting at. I think BPF does as well...

That being said, those occasions are few and far between, and these days, it is the unfortunate pilot that will experience one of these events over the entire span of their career. SOPs work for the VAST MAJORITY of failures. I may be the best damned PBY pilot on the planet, and I may have decided to "Go", and dumped the load, raised the gear, caged the failed engine, come around for a landing after pumping the gear down, and saved the day (although, I really liked the idea about getting the load on target too!!). You did something different, and we both met up later for a soda, which ultimately is all that matters- favorable outcome.

SOPs are there for a reason, but one of the differences between a good pilot and a great pilot, is the knowledge/experience/je ne sais quoi to know when to abandon them in favor of a course of action that will have a better outcome. That's a big reason why we as pilots continually need to strive for improvement.

Now, BPF, I want to hear the solution to your conundrum. I would have applied full power on the remaining 3, selected gear up, climbed away, pulled the breaker for the nose gear, selected gear down (so only the two mains came out) come around and landed right down the center of the runway with the nose gear in the well. Replaced a couple of skins (and an engine and nose gear assy), and gone flying again. How'd I do??!