Pilots, lets hear your close call stories.

+1

I'm surprised the KC-135 didn't hit the guy beneath you but I suppose by that time he must've pulled off or had enough distance to avoid the descending tanker... Yikes.

 

my other story is very similar.

 

Terry, the official military mind never ceases to amaze me. I would love to buy you a drink or two and just sit back and talk.
Switches

 

+10 Amazing story.... remember those days well from here... but surely not as well as you from there. Hat's off to you.

Jedi

 

Riveting! (Yea, surviving a mid-air would meet most people's defintion of a close call!)

What a great story. And thanks for your service Terry!

 

other than the images burned into my mind unfortunately no.

 

Lots of close calls in the practice area while instructing. Uncontroled area with about 7 flight schools all trying to teach in the same area. Closest mid air was about 150 feet on a missed out of Pompano Beach Saw 152 was above me - it will make your heart drop.

I had bad luck with instruments... Lost an A/I with an instrument student in actual on one of the five days of the year in South Florida when there is hard actual. pretty scary when you look and the A/I is showing 80 degrees of bank, but it was funny both the student and I simply realized it as it was failing because it didn't match up with the T/C and D/G. It was really pretty calm.

In a CRJ going into Bradley (Hartford) we had been getting a Heading disagree message most of the flight. This is such a common fault and because the instruments looked good we disregarded the caution messages.
Then while being vectored onto the LOC in actual the Capt wasn't turning to the right headings-- ATC started complaining and then I noticed that his heading indicator or DG (flying glass) was about 100 degrees off from mine and the standby. Luckily there were no big hills around! We were not even close to where we should have been. After some tense moments trying to figure out what was working and what wasn't I took over and got on the LOC broke out and landed safely. Nonetheless when the instruments go bad and you don't know what's working and your in actual at low altitudes it will get your attention.

But by far the closest... the rudder spar in a 421 I was flying in with the owner broke and the rudder started "fluttering." I don't think there anything more scary than being in an airplane when it starts to flutter. The flutter started slowly but then the whole plane was bucking violently. I'm suprised something didn't break off. The owner thought he lost #2 so he started shutting it down as I was screaming not too cause there had been no yaw. The increased drag slowed us and the flutter subsided. We limped into Athens Ga and made an Emerg landing. Thinking the engine was bad the whole time it was not until a week later when a guy at the repair shop noticed the trim bar on the rudder was snapped. He investigated and found the entire rudder spar broken. We were very lucky. Flying on one engine with no rudder... it just happened to be hanging the right way to keep us going somewhat straight. My understanding is that 421s have a history of that happening and it doesn't usually work out.

 

On Sunday, 13 August, 1995, I had given a guy at the airport a ride in the SNJ and he asked if I would like a ride in his Warner engined Fairchild 24. Of course I said yes, and away we go! Well, despite looking nice it flew like a bad Champ out of rig. We landed at a small grass strip outside between our home base at Milton and Crestview Florida. After a lemonade, we saddle up for him to take me home. We taxi to the end of the strip and launch.
At about 300 feet or so altitude just beyond the departure end of runway 18, pointed up in a climb, the Warner engine that I later found out he rebuilt himself lets out a pfffft and quits. No thrust, just a windmilling propellor. For all non-pilots here, the one thing they teach for every airplane with this occurance since the dawn of flight is DO NOT TURN AROUND TO TRY TO LAND ON THE RUNWAY YOU JUST CAME FROM. So, of course, that is exactly what he tried to do, which resulted in a picture perfect wing-over entry into a spin pointed straight down at the Florida piney woods. He was screaming in fear as we were spinning down. Being a highly trained Air Force Flight Surgeon, I was reviewing the crash literature that I had been taught which all said these accidents were all not survivable.
Oh poo.
So, I began hoping that the trees might slow us down as we prepared for the worlds shortest landing roll. We rode it in straight down, and I do not remember losing consciousness (that was my story) despite bopping my head on the panel as we augered into the Florida soil. The first thing I remember was there was no fire, yet, which I determined to be good, but I could smell gas. I looked over at numbnutz and he was passed out, but slowly waking up. I thought I had better climb out.
This is where our story gets quite painful. I tried to move my legs and I had a jolt of pain like I had never had before. I looked down to see what was up. Well, both of my feet were rotated 90 degrees to the inside, and my left pants leg was covered in blood. Dumbass had woken up by now, and somehow relatively unimjured, he pulled himself out of the plane. I yelled at him to come get me out of the damn plane, but he just sat against a tree whimpering. Oh, this is going well, I thought.
About 20 minutes later, the longest 20 minutes of my life, a friend of mine appeared through the woods, having heard the engine quit. I gave him excellent verbal medical instruction in making a splint for my leg, which turned out to have a closed fractured femur and an open comminuted ti-fib fracture in addition to blowing both ankles. Of course, It still hurt like you cannot possibly imagine as he pulled me from the still fuel laden plane. Ultimately, a helicopter crew showed up and threw me in the back of a Bloem airevac. I asked the nurse if she could get the pilot to sign off the time as dual in my log, but she didn't find it as funny as I did. Oh, everything's funny when you're in shock.
Without going through the horrific pain of learning how to walk again, let's just say that when you meet me, you'll notice that I walk with a limp a little bit. It's all that metal I still carry around and no ankle joints to speak of; and now you won't have to hear the story.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20001207X04328&key=1

 

Russ, reading your account of this incident brought back so many memories of my training and subsequent occurrences. I'll be honest and say that it made me angry because this happens too many times to the innocent passenger. I have lost too many friends to this and I have been told about too many other incidents where the deceased pilot could have easily made a straight ahead approach to a safer crash landing. One of these happened three years ago to a high time pilot in a home- built who had a perfectly good field ahead to put it down in but elected to turn back and spun in to a fatal arrival. Thank God I had the instructors that I had who pounded into my head the things that would save my life years later. I can still hear it during the simulated engine failures, " Stick Forward Straight Ahead!". AND I had better have a spot already picked out. Again, it's all ATTITUDE and TRAINING. Glad that you survived it but sorry that you had to experience it with injuries.
I have had some close calls but they are of no significance.
Swiotches

 

Russ- I think your accident is more than a near miss. I carry three knives on me virtually all the time. I would have been doing my best to throw all three of them at the miserable excuse for a human being whimpering under the tree. Assuming I had not cut his throat while he was still sitting in the aircraft.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Nothing like the rest of you guys but it sticks in my head to this day. We were invited by a friend who had just received his PPl and wanted us to accompany him and his wife to fly out to Roche Harbor for dinner. When we took off from Boeing Field the take off was under an incoming aircraft. We all misunderstood the tower's instructions and made it safely but got heavily chewed out. On final at Roche Harbor, landing to the west (I can't remember the runway numbers) the setting sun was blinding and the pilot announced while over the left shoulder and lights of the runway that he couldn't see the runway. I immediately took over the airplane and made a go-around to land to the east in a slight down wind but with the sun behind us so that we could see the runway. I had never flown the airplane that we were in, a C-182, but things worked out okay. After our dinner I flew back to Seattle in the right seat with this guy in a state of high alert because I could see that even though he was good at the book stuff, he simply was not a pilot. I had to help him in getting set up for Boeing Field and that was the last time we flew with him.
Nothing like your thing, Russ, and somewhat of a lame experience but it taught me a lesson before we got hurt or did the other thing. I learned , too, that we should all chose our drivers carefully before flying with them. You're right on Taz.
Switches

 

No Kidding!

 

When my oldest son was 14 I had him take sailplane lessons. On about his 3rd or 4th solo, I was running the wing for him as he flew a Blanik sailplane. As he and the towplane reached about 150 feet in altitude over the end of the field his spoilers came open. Of course the drag slowed both planes down and they immediately started losing altitude.

Well, he wasn't quite experienced enough to know immediately what the problem was, but he knew both planes were going down and his first assumption was that the towplane's engine was failing. He pulled the tow line release within about 3 seconds, and of course was still sinking quickly. He said the first thing he remembered to do was what I had drilled into his head: "Fly The Plane!", so he kept the wings straight and level, pushed the stick forward a little to maintain safe airspeed, then glanced side to side and saw the spoilers were popped up, he immediately closed them. He knew that 150 feet of altitude above the runway meant no way was he returning to the airstrip. At the end of the runway, there is a drop off that falls away to a tree line along a canal, and the open space beyond it is about 75 feet lower than the end of the runway. All the guys that were watching the takeoff saw was his sailplane disappear below horizon!

While we were exhausting ourselves running to the end of the runway as fast as we could, he crossed over the canal and trees, and did a 180 to the right to land on a dirt road about 200 yards away hidden from view below and parallel to the air field. He judged he he had enough altitude with the extra 75 feet, and the fact that the road was away to his right helped. He did a perfect landing on the dirt road, with no damage. When we got to the end of the runway and looked down through the trees, we saw him leaning against the plane talking to a girl who had seen the whole thing, she was impressed.

I was very thankful that he did not think he "had" to make it back to the runway.

 

Good stories guys! Russ, sorry to hear about the injuries from that event. After reading your account and the NTSB report, it sounds like the loose nut was the pilot.

teak360/Scott - Glad that one ended well. Bet he was walking a little bit taller after that incident.

-------------------
A close call for someone else...

As told to me many years ago by a friend who is an air traffic controller (Meig's airfield in Chicago at the time):

In short, he gets a request at his tower for landing approach and approval for a small plane with just the pilot on board. My friend is in constant contact with him the whole time relaying information when confusion and chaos ensues as the pilot keeps saying he's approaching the airfield but my friend can't get a visual on him. He keeps asking the pilot for his location and the pilot responds and says he's on approach, sees the runway and is about to land. My friend is thoroughly confused at this point because the pilot is nowhere in sight. In a few minutes, the pilot radios in and says he's landed. Sure enough, the guy landed at the wrong airport. My friend reports it to the other tower eventually after they figured out what happened and let the locals chew the pilot out. I apologize to the professionals if I got any part of that story wrong from memory but that story still cracks me up every time I see him.

 

Silver- We had a similar incident in the mid-1970s by professionals who should have known better. Two Navy pilots in a T-33B, cross-country from the west coast to the east coast, had filed for transient alert service at Cannon AFB, NM for their T-Bird. They called in on Cannon AFB's approach frequency, announced they had the field in sight, and switched to tower frequency. Tower told them they did not have them in sight and approach did not have them on their ASR. The pilot stated no problem, he had the field in sight, did an overhead approach and promptly landed at Clovis Municipal Airport, 10-15 miles east of Cannon AFB on the other side of Clovis. Both Clovis Muni and Cannon AFB ATC personnel went ballistic, needless to say. Cannon had the flight plan and clearance request on file with all the details on the aircrew and home unit, so the stuff hit the fan in a hurry. The Navy grounded both pilots on the spot and sent another pilot to fetch the aircraft. Never did hear the final outcome. Just as well, folks like that do not need to be flying around endangering other aircrews (and themselves).

Anybody want to hear the story of the F-111F pilot who thought he was going to die, but the old WSO who knew he would make it?

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Wife bought me an Ultralight flight to the Sonoma Coast [yes, round trip and no, she's not trying to kill me....I think]

Been trying to book it for weeks with all this fog....

I'll let you know how that goes and even thought the glide ratio is somewhat good, he does pack an ejecting chute :|

What the heck, it's better than a bungee jump.

 

Being an old F4 guy, I'm always up for gib (or guy on the side?) stories.

One day I'll have to tell you the one about the F4E Flight Surgeon and the first ride in an F4G....
"where's the RHAW scope?"
"..it covers the entire instrument panel and display screen in front of you"
"..oh #$%^"

 

I'm somehow surprised (and not) that trained pros could get it wrong too. I guess you can train, train and train some more but people are people and that's why we have "accidents".

Don't hold back on the F-111F pilot story, you know you want to.

 

The last few days have been full of semi close calls for me..... On Thursday #2 engine flamed out twice. On Saturday it was hydraulics dumping fluid all over. Yesterday the APU caught fire on climb out.

I went to officer school with three other guys who have been on the same career path. In the last four years two of them have been in accidents where the aircraft was destroyed. Tomorrow I fly with the other guy who hasn't been in an accident yet, should be interesting

 

Mark- What are you flying? If all of those turned into aborts, you are on a bad streak.

Tazz
Terry Phillips

 

Herks

Wish I could say more but the OPSEC police will come get me.......

 

Mark- Understood. Have flown in several myself and wrote a NATO joint operations manual for Compass Call in an earlier life.

Taz
Terry Phillips