Your biggest ever mistake

I made 3 classical mistakes which are often cause of aviation accidents, luckily without any consequences except damaged confidence and pride:
1. Getting to unusual attitude – flying VFR I found destination below clouds and asked ATC for vectors for ILS. While hand flying I was digging approach plates (paper at that time) when ATC asked “What are your intentions?” I was in mountainous terrain (Sarajevo LQSA), below peaks, in the cloud, 50 degrees banked, on wrong heading. Recovered, landed, still shaking for next half an hour.
2. Took off from wrong runway – on a sunny day with no traffic at Belgrade LYBE I forgot the clearance and took of in wrong direction. Luckily the runway was long enough and I started from some mid intersection but ATC was mad as hell.
3. Lost in the fog – on foggy night again at LYBE I turned before getting to taxiway continuing taxing on apron. I was able to see and confirm taxiway markings to ATC, the only problem was that I was taxing parallel to taxiway until I reached the end of the apron and reported end of taxiway and no runway. Then they sent car to save me and guide to the runway.

UdoR wrote:

The most important thing I learned out of this is to never stop flying the aircraft.

That is a very important thing to learn.

And you did better than others. Most famously but by far not the only example is the first crash of a 747 caused by a LH crew doing exactly that. They stopped flying the airplane and accepted a crash in a situation where a stall recovery was not beyond possibility. What still haunts me is that a flight crew will call out “ok crash” and retard the throttles of a fully occupied airliner and accept it to smash into the ground.

It is perhaps worth noting that none of us are immune from making mistakes. With experience comes the ability to recognise (mostly) at an early stage and take corrective action whilst, as was said above, fly the airplane. We have all made mistakes even after thousands of hours P1.

dutch_flyer wrote:

Very scary when you’re off the ground and can’t climb…

It’s awful, I once was towing a glider and their airbrakes came open just after liftoff. I was just about to pull the handle to dump them when they realised what happened, but in those few seconds I realised just how hilly the northern plain actually is.

Very scary when you’re off the ground and can’t climb…

I was scared to death. I just could not believe what’s going wrong. The most important thing I learned out of this is to never stop flying the aircraft. There’s always a chance that it goes well, and I was lucky. I immediately understood that if I can’t climb I’ll have to somehow manage to increase speed in order to have some energy to spare or trade in for height, but was also unable. But if anything would have been in the initial way the first 1000 meters or so behind runway end there wouldn’t have been any energy to react.

I was also lucky in that I already had lots of flying experience in gliders, where you are often confronted with situations where your only option is to fly that aircraft, if anything goes wrong (e.g. broken rope from the glider launching winch).

Now, sitting on the couch, it is interesting to think about that with a slight increase in speed the plane started to climb, but it did not gain speed on its own. Maybe on a 2000 meter runway one can play with ground effect to arrive at a stable condition where it climbs out, at least the Jo Conrad flights give some proof about that it can be done intentionally.

This one was very close, and totally pointless to having it done so. But here we are under “biggest ever flying mistake”. Maybe someone reading this may be sufficiently scared to not repeat what I’ve done.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

I was not there for the Continental 747 at LGW who almost took Russ Hill with him but that was probably the worst one.

I think there was an “I Learned About Flying about that” in Flying magazine by the captain of that aircraft.

dutch_flyer wrote:

I honestly can’t believe you got off the ground!

On the chances of getting off the ground with infinite runway, I was wondering if max power G-loaded turn with no loss of height give a good indication, asking for a friend ;)

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…

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.