Shane Mitchell’s Weblog

Close Call

In the morning as the sun escaped through the clouds everything seemed fine. Of course, there is a warm sense of comfort and familiarity that you get when standing on solid ground. I was about to go flying. I was not worrying about the people constantly telling me, “Shane, I don’t like it when you fly, what if you don’t come back?”, because I knew better. I knew, and confidently assured them that statistically flying was far safer than driving, and neither they nor myself had anything to worry about.

On my preflight (where I check the aircraft), I found my instructor double-checking everything I did, even after I assured him it was OK. He had every right to though, after all, the week before he piloted the same type of aircraft (Cessna 172N) into a paddock after the engine cut out on him at low altitude. He was just being cautious, and he continued being so after we took-off and headed out into the training area (Area 40, Southern Training Area).

At 1000 feet we encountered an amount of moderate turbulence. It was nothing alarming and it certainly wasn’t the worst I had experienced. As we bounced up and down my instructor looked at me with a pondering face and asked, “was that rough running?” Rough running is when the aircraft’s engine runs less than ideally, perhaps jerking the plane around, backfiring and losing power. I didn’t notice any loss in power and I thought it was merely the turbulence jerking the plane around. “He must be paranoid,” I thought and told him that I didn’t hear or suspect anything by reading the instruments. This was the truth.

As we continued into the training area my instructor asked me to do a practice forced landing. This is practice for the situation where the engine cuts out and you need to find somewhere to land quickly. “Alright, power off, attitude, carby on, check mixture, check fuel.” Everything was nominal and we continued in our circuit pattern for the practice forced landing. I recycled the engine after 1000 feet of descent to prevent engine fouling, and progressed down. I was not expecting what would unfold next.

Unfortunately I missed the approach due to my overly precautious early base turn, so the practice would not have been successful. We were basically too high to land and would have overshot the field. I took the carby off and put in maximum power to do a go-around and climb back to normal altitude.

Suddenly the plane shook back and forth and the power dropped considerably – so much so that with full power selected we were achieving only about 40% power. This was not enough power to keep the plane in the air and we were forced into a descent – a real descent – at the low altitude of 1200 feet.

“Taking over,” my instructor said as he rushed to perform the troubleshooting checks. As he adjusted the levers and knobs at 100-mile-an-hour, I was left staring in front of the aircraft at the approaching scenery.

“Paddock, paddock, trees, house,” I thought as I scanned the possible landing areas (maybe not trees and house). Was I about to die or will be fortunate enough to land safely on the ground? What if this happened when I was flying solo without an instructor? Why is the engine failing? Wait – what can I do to help?

I stared at my instructor with my eyes wide open like a rabbit staring into headlights and yelled “Mayday mayday!” In hindsight, I’m not sure what help this would have been, but it felt right at the time.

By this point of descent we were at 200 feet above ground level (dangerously low), the plane was shaking all over the place, the engine sounded very angry, and we were aimed directly into a grassy paddock. I looked around the cockpit and had a sudden urge to tighten my seatbelt – and I mean really tighten. Then the unexpected happened.

The power started recovering – yes, climbing back up, after about a minute and a half of rough running! It was not perfect, but my instructor took this opportunity to gain as much altitude as possible while transmitting his ‘Pan pan’ (distress) call to Brisbane Radar. He cooperated with air traffic control and headed straight back in the direction of Archerfield. I should note by this point that we expected the engine to fail again at any time. Our stroke of good luck with the power increasing was expected to be purely temporary, and landing in a paddock still seemed like the logical ending.

On the way back to Archerfield we flew as high as possible to give us the option of gliding to a landing strip if anything bad were to happen. Luckily, after a very wary approach, we were on the ground safely – in one piece each. We shut the engine down and prepared for the 4 hours of bureaucratics that were to come.

We met with the Chief Executive Officer of the aero club, the Chief Flying Instructor, and the Chief Safety Investigator and were interviewed separately. By the end, the probable cause of the partial engine failure seemed to be engine fouling, where deposits from the fuel collect around the spark plugs and render them useless. Fantastic! And how did I feel about all this?

It was damn scary when it happened (thoughts of impending death, etc), I was a bit nervous on the return approach to Archerfield (thoughts of impending engine failure leading to thoughts of impending death, etc), and generally OK on the ground (thoughts of hunger and McDonald’s, etc). The Chief XYZs thought I wasn’t fine. In their ‘duty of care,’ they had someone drive me home in my car, just in case I freaked out and crashed. I didn’t freak out, and now I feel good. If anything, this experience has made me want to learn more about aviation so I can master the art and, potentially, avoid death when it impends on me.

This all happened this morning, and my next flight, which I booked after this incident, is tomorrow. You know, statistically, this shouldn’t happen to me again…

Tags: Cessna, engine failure, flying, fouling

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