"Okay, your turn," my instructor told me. We were flying straight and level a mile off the ground when I had to demonstrate to him how to get into and successfully recover from a spin. What is a spin, you might ask? Well, if you've seen Top Gun, it's how Goose died but not quite so dramatic in a Cessna. When an airplane slows down, lift over the wings is greatly reduced. When there isn't enough lift to support the weight of the airplane, it begins to "stall" or sink. In a spin, one wing is stalled more than the other and airplane begins to plummet and "spin." All instructor candidates must go through some form of training in how to recover from the dreaded condition.
I took controls of the airplane, added full power and pitched up for the sky. As the stall warning horn started to scream in my ear, I stomped as hard as I could on the rudder. In less than a second, the sky turned into ground and that ground was spinning. What a spin looks like. Click the link for a video!
Flight instructing is an interesting venture. In most skill oriented professions, the teachers are usually experienced and knowledgeable. Now, I'm not saying I'm neither, but last January, I barely had 300 hours in any type of airplane and was teaching the next generation of pilot how to fly.
When you first start teaching, you are quick to make corrections. The only way to a let a student learn, however, is to let them get scared. As students get more familiar with ways to recover from stalls, we start putting them in various attitudes to make the airplane stall; some of them make the airplane enter the early stages of a spin. As I've gotten more experience and confidence in the airplane, I've let them take situations further so that they can see what happens if they don't use the techniques they are taught.
It is very easy to become comfortable from the right seat, doing the same routines over and over again. Then, in an instant, that all changes. As I quickly approach my airline start date, I know there are many things I will not miss about instructing, my students trying to kill me being a big one.
Last week, I had my most recent brush with terror. Mom, this is where you should probably stop reading.
As the student turned the engines on, I continued to stare outside the cockpit. This was a "progress" check and my role was to evaluate the performance of the student and give feedback to the instructor. As we lined up for take-off, the student added full power and launched the aircraft down the runway. He pulled back on the controls to get the airplane airborne, and pulled too hard...and continued to pull. I quickly put my hand on my controls and firmly pushed them back to an acceptable setting. Had he continued to pull on the controls, the airplane would have surely run out of speed and come crashing down to earth. This is a common error for most students and I rarely let it get anywhere close to that, today being no different.
As we climbed out over the ocean, I told him what he'd done wrong and told him that I would not be interacting with the controls during this phase of the evaluation. If he did something wrong, it would be a failure. As we ran through various maneuvers, it appeared as if his nerves had gotten the best of him on the ground. The remainder of the practice maneuvers were fine. Then it came to one of the hardest maneuvers for students to do.
For those that are familiar, the particular maneuver is an accelerated stall. Essentially, we have the students bank 45 degrees in one direction then pull on the controls to load the wings, inducing a stall. When done properly, it is a very simple and easy maneuver. For whatever reason, our students just can't figure it out.
The student on this particular day set up the maneuver just fine. As we slowed to stalling airspeed, he smoothly rolled the airplane onto its side and began to pull. I was looking outside over the nose and noticed that he hadn't quite banked enough. I'll have to remember to tell him to bank more when we land, I thought to myself as he started to pull on the yoke. At this point, I noticed that he hasn't quite pulled hard enough and the nose, instead of sitting nicely on the horizon, begins to point up into the air.
This isn't of concern to me. Most students at this point stall the airplane, even though not correctly, and return to cruise. This time was different. As the nose started to rise, the wing that was pointed up began to stall. I felt the aircraft start to buffet as the wing slowly dropped to level. I now had a decision to make. Should I tell him to recover and fail him on the maneuver or see what he does next? Not wanting to fail him yet, I let it continue. I wanted to see what he would do to rectify the situation.
With the stall horn blaring and the aircraft buffeting, the student started to panic. The worst possible thing he could have done was pull harder on the yoke and try to roll the airplane to regain its originally bank. He knew he had done the maneuver wrong, but instead of recovering, he tried to make it work. This would slow the airplane further and him trying to make the airplane roll would make the stall on the sinking wing worse.
As I looked down to see why he wasn't recovering, I saw him lean back in the seat posturing to pull harder and saw him crank the controls to try and make the flailing airplane roll. My curiosity had turned into confusion. Wait, what... In the split second it took me to figure out what he was doing, I felt the familiar sinking and turning feeling I'd felt in the past. With him using all his might to roll the small twin-engined aircraft to the left, it stubbornly stayed level...a very bad sign. Then, in an instant, the right wing succumbed to the stall and gave up on flying. The nose of the aircraft start to swing to the right and I quickly and firmly grabbed the controls. "My controls," I said calmly and the student, feeling helpless, quickly gave in.
At this point, the plane had uncontrollably rolled 60 degrees to the right as I quickly tried to fix the situation. I yanked the throttled to idle, and stomped on the rudder to stop the airplane from rolling upside-down. We were still pitched up and I pushed the yoke into the instrument panel but, with adrenaline pulsing through my veins, pushed too hard. Out of nowhere, I and everything else in the airplane shot to the ceiling. My head quickly bridged the 10 inch gap to the ceiling and I could see books and charts that were formerly on the students lap floating in front of his face. The fuel in the carburetor also became weightless. I heard the engine start to surge and sputter as they were starved of fuel. Oh shit.
Those two words are never what you want to hear or even think in an airplane. Here I was, floating above my seat, and listening to my engines give up. I had a mile below me but knew if I was floating, we were coming out of the sky in a free fall. I sat there for what seemed like minutes before I was able to get the airplane back under control. I sank back into my seat and the books and bags came crashing back down to the floor and seats. The sound of the bags falling made a crashing sound behind me. I was sure I had broken something.
Heart-racing, I kept flying the airplane for a few more minutes and started looking around to make sure everything was fine. The plane, recently out of maintenance, had a few pieces of plastic and dirt on the floor from replacing an instrument. All of that had become airborne in the chaos and made it appear as if something important had shattered. After a thorough examination of the airplane, we finished the evaluation and headed back for the airport.
It had been a long time since I had been that afraid. In the end, it really wasn't TOO big of a deal but the combined shock from the engines surging, the bags crashing and being pressed against the ceiling scared me. I really do look forward to the day when I no longer have to worry for my life. These "scares" happen two to three times a month and they are getting old. One month left...
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