There was a crash some years ago when a commercial airliner had some fairly minor malfunction (I think it was a landing gear down and locked light not lit) at night. They got so engrossed in troubleshooting that damn lightbulb that they allowed the plane to fly into the swamp. No survivors. The voice recorder had them yakking about that light until impact.
It seems like that was a Delta DC-9 with a pilot, copilot and flight engineer. Landing gear problem. That’s one of the mishaps I discussed when giving the emergency procedures lecture.
Here’s a good one:
One day as an IP and flight lead in VT-7, I was leading a solo student on an ACM hop which was close to the end of the syllabus. It was in a TA-4J and we were doing s “section takeoff” or formation t/o.
We ran the engines up, he gave me a thumbs up, I raised my right hand as “get ready”, then dropped it for “off the brakes”. I always kept an eye on the students during the t/o roll to make sure they weren’t doing something stupid. Check line-up, check student, check line-up, etc. At 100 kts I gave the “we’re going flying” signal indicating we were now above normal abort speed. We rotated and again, I’m watching him out of the corner of my eye. Ok, looking good and gave one head nod to raise the gear. Gear handle up and confirm his gear are moving.
Then gave the second head nod to raise the flaps. My handle up and look over and the student was diving for the deck with his HEAD DOWN ! I yelled at him on the radio, “PULL UP, PULL UP!” Well he responded and finally scrambled back up into position and while my heart is coming out of my chest, I’m thinking “holy sh it, holy sh it!” I’m guessing he bottomed out at 50’ or less. The shadow and his aircraft were “one”.
Now i have a decision to make: do I give him a “below average” for the section t/o and continue the hop and see how he does? Or.. Do I end the hop and give him an “unsat” or “down”?
I’m thinking, “well, he’s doing ok now and stable on my wing” so….”ok he’s bought his below average for the section t/o, let’s see what he does on the rest of the hop.
We did our thing out in the working area so we finished all the ACM stuff and went home.
Back in the ready room I told him to grab a debriefing room. I talked with the duty officer for a few minutes to settle down and get my blood pressure under control.😳
So the debrief went sorta like this…
“Ok you know you got a below average for the section t/o, right?”
“Yessir.”
“So what happened on the section t/o?”
“Well sir, I raised the gear handle and when I checked the indicators, the left main gear indicated unsafe. After a couple of seconds, it indicated UP and then I got back in position.”
I’m sure my jaw hit the floor. Now it takes a lot to wind me up and I don’t think I had ever yelled at another stud, but I spooled right up, jumped up. I got in his face and yelled at him, “do you realize how close you came to dying because of a STUPID GAUGE?”
He sat up straight in his chair and when I told him how close he came to dying, his eyes opened wide and he turned white as a sheet.
Didn’t have a clue that he had almost died!!! 😳 There’s no doubt in my mind that he would have flown into the ground if I hadn’t yelled at him on the radio.
That was another example I used in my EP and formation lectures. When a had an event with a new instructor going through the Instructor Under Training syllabus, along with a few other examples, that would be one of the “sea stories” I would relate to them to let them see what they were up against when dealing with students.
