Your biggest ever mistake

Mooney_Driver wrote:

It doesn’t come more unbalanced than that without an accident…

Oh yes, it can. A charter flight took off from Östersund airport (ESNZ) at night. The landing gear hit and damaged the approach lights of the opposite runway. The flight was completed without problems. There was no damage to the landing gear and the crew first denied that anything unusual had happened, but color scrapes from the approach light system was eventually found on the landing gear.

Picture from the investigation report.

Well, yea, ok, I should have said without damage or incident. There was also the “Bristol Cowboy”, a guy who took a 707 – no less – through the approach lights in Bristol only as the first of many antiks flying an unairworthy airplane. If the link works, enjoy the reading. (The article starts a bit into the post…). I recall reading the original of it in “Flight” at the time with mounting disbelief.

I flew from Atlanta to Knoxville in 2002, shortly after getting my IR, to pick up some friends and bring them home. When I arrived they had a mountain of bags, and I decided to shrug it off. I departed into IMC and could not climb. Barely above a stall, I was afraid to raise the flaps or gear for fear of doing anything that might result in a stall. Eventually I raised the gear and managed a slight climb but was unable to reach the required altitude.

What’s worse is that for some reason I lost comms at a time when I was expecting vectors. Pre-GPS, so I had to orient myself using VORs and find my way to an airway in unfamiliar airspace while getting maybe 50fpm climb. At some point I regained comms, and ATC had naturally been quite concerned about me. All in all a pretty stupid move made worse by inexperience and lost comms.

When I still had my Cessna 150 in the 198ties I must have fallen for the large baggage area that airplane had vs the 150 kg payload it actually had. In most cases, with full tanks, that 150 was not capable of carrying two people. Yet it flew quite nicely and never failed to reach altitude… I reckon when the 152 came out with 30 kgs more payload but a mere 10 hp more, it kind of explained that. And while my own lamentable weight was then a lot less than today, I’ve probably been lucky more than once. More importanly, it was not a very critical airplane in CG, if you kept to the forward baggage area.

My lesson from that was that I am counting 100kg per person and bag in pre-planning and while evaluating airplanes re their useful load. In fact, a “normal” IATA family of 4 will weigh about 310-320 kg with bags. For my little family with baggage I count about 260 kg, which is exactly the full fuel payload of the Mooney for planning.

The other thing is, CG is much more critical than actual weight. A few pounds over gross will not have a huge impact (while obviously illegal) but CG out of limits will. That is one lesson which is also burnt into my brain from almost 20 years as load controller/loadmaster of much larger airplanes. If you look at IATA standard weights, most airliners may operate withing quite some tolerance at max weight but to keep CG in check is the holy writ of WnB. And it should be.

Inspired by this thread, I would like to share one of my biggest mistakes so far, which have affected my flying (or rather planning) since.

10 years ago, with a fresh PPL, I decided to go for a local tour solo in southern Sweden with the club’s PA28. It was a nice summer day with fair weather. One of the stops was supposed to be Sövde, ESMI, an uncontrolled grass airfield, which I’ve never been to before.

I had planned the trip carefully, at least I thought, and I had studied the local plate where I could see that there is a glider strip alongside the main runway.

When I flew over the field, everything looked good, however, I could notice there were white crosses on a part of the field below me, but I didn’t really think of it then.

As I lined up on the final I could see a very nice and green “runway” in front of me. I looked down on the plate and my confirmation bias led me to believe, “yes, this must be it” and the glider strip must be the one other one on the side as the plate described.

During the flare, I looked out of the window to the side and had a feeling that this doesn’t feel right. When the main gear touched down, the nose gear dropped immediately and the aircraft decelerated quickly and I saw that the propeller cut through very high grass. The surface was very bumpy.

Immediately, I selected full thrust, and luckily I was able to get off the ground, and went directly home.

After parking, I noticed that there was a lot of grass underneath the fuselage attached to the main gear. Informed my club of the incident and a technician had a look at the plane, and everything seemed ok.

I realized I had to debrief myself to understand what happened, and read on the club’s internet page and saw that there was a mention of pasture land on the airfield which was deemed to be an “unlandable” area. Contacted the club and they just told me “welcome back, but please use the runway next time”. Two years later there was a similar mistake made at the same airport, resulting in an accident (aircraft went into a hole and was flipped upside down), luckily only with minor injuries.

It was a very scary moment for me, and at that point, I decided to only fly to controlled or familiar airports for a while.

10 years later more mistakes have of course been made and have ended up in some scary situations (mostly IMC related) but with bigger margins those times…

Early 90’s, freshly minted PPL, enjoying one of my first post-exam hops in this exceptionally roomy and high-perfomance plane. I’m talking C152 without my 120 kg instructor next to me.

Decided to go to the nearby grass-strip. All well, correct appch and nice nose-up flare. But the plane stopped almost immediately. Brakes blocked? The verdict came through the radio. “Hey Aart, welcome! Next time, take that strip about 50m to the left!” Don’t know why I missed it, must be tunnel vision caused by stress. He suggested me to make sure there was a smooth and low-enough grass path back to the runway as to avoid prop damage.

I remember that the bribe to make the field owner bury the story was higher that the landing fee And I guess the crime must be time-barred by know and can come out.

So @magnus, you’re not alone. And I guess (hope) we have many more fellow-dumbo’s.

With iPad app on kneeboard missing or misinterpreting of runway will become very rare. It was way more difficult then and I also remember some hefty misinterpretation even kilometers away; however I somehow managed every time to land on the right strip in the end.

O.k. biggest mistake I remember was an horrible overweight issue.

Freshly baken license owner but already years around the airfield where I’ve flown gliders since I was young there were waiting a couple of people for a sightseeing trip and none of the usual pilots was available. So I was asked if I could just fly them as they are waiting at the tower. I was in some thoughts and as it was a flight instructor who asked me I had absolutely no concern that what should follow could involve any risk. But he had not seen the guests, he only passed me the information and had another flight himself with a student.

It was three people, a mother with two adult boys, but all of the three were big. I don’t mean big, I mean really big, really. But as a youngster weighing only 60kg myself I could not imagine anyone could weigh anything more than 100kg. (First and second error: wrong assumption and I didn’t ask in the beginning). So I calculated a bit and ended up that with the Robin DR400 should work just fine. (Third error: committed to doing it).

Walked around the corner of the hangar and someone just pulled out that plane. Talked to him but he refused to change aircraft for his trip. Available was only our good old Piper Cadet, 160hp. Looked into the fuel tanks and both were fueled up to the tips. So way too much for what I would need. (Fourth error: did not recalculate or rethink)

So when the first guest stepped up the wing with his nearly 150kg the aircraft went down on the knees. I hesitated. But loaded the plane. (Here I do blame a bit also the other pilots which were around and watching, that no one said anything about what was happening there; in retrospect it was so obvious that it could not go)

I had an overweight of about 300kg above MTOW in a Piper Cadet, which is about to double the payload. On an 800 meters paved runway it did take off o.k., but did not establish positive climb rate. When I finally noticed what I was doing, it was too late to stop. I went around a forest and houses nearby where I could not go over it until due to initially some thermals I think, where I gained more speed and it finally climbed out. I could establish to initially climb to some hundred feets, but slowly went up to 1000ft AGL. On typical speeds (however full power!) it behaved quite normal, but climb rate was very limited.

As the flight should be anyhow only 15 minutes I stayed close and above the airfield and prepared myself for landing. I landed with over speed and veeery smooth, so it should not harm the landing gear. Turned out all fine.

Well, you can imagine the number of lessons I learned from that.

UdoR wrote:

I had an overweight of about 300kg above MTOW in a Piper Cadet, which is about to double the payload. On an 800 meters paved runway it did take off o.k., but did not establish positive climb rate.

Wow that’s amazing. I honestly can’t believe you got off the ground! In my somewhat similar overweight story above I was probably 100kg over. Very scary when you’re off the ground and can’t climb…