Originally Posted by
wonkazoo
Reading the back and forth on the conundrum of “Pilots completely at fault for being stupid” as set against “Pilots completely not at fault because Boeing designed a $hit system,” and I’ve decided to take a stand. Apologies in advance as this is long, but trust me- it is worth it.
Of all of you out there who have posted here- whether with a desire to blame the pilots entirely or the opposite, how many of you have actually experienced an imminent, binary and life-threatening emergency in your airplane?? One that is so explicit you will either get it right or you will die?? And you have maybe 30 seconds to make that choice.
My guess is the list of aviators who can answer honestly that they have been at that threshold of death is very very small.
I am on that list. And I survived, despite making bad choices along the way.
I share this story because I want people to understand once and for all that while it is fine to offer that the pilots could have done better (they totally could have) the root cause of the MAX crashes was one of design, and human failures only built on that edifice to achieve the final outcome.
I also share this story because I want to try to explain to everyone here, in terms we can all understand, what it is really like when your known world explodes and you have to improvise in order to survive.
In June of 1996 I was in a very high performance unlimited category biplane named the Goshawk. (N345RM) I had departed Livermore CA several minutes earlier and was headed to a legal practice box adjacent to the Tracy airport. While over the Altamont hills at an indicated altitude of 4000MSL I began warming up by pulling to a 45 degree upline and doing snap rolls to the right. I did this once or twice. On the third attempt, once again at approximately 4000+MSL I initiated the snap roll to the right and hit hard left rudder as the wings returned to level to stop the autorotation. When I did this the left rudder pedal/bar shot away from my foot instead of providing actual resistance. The left rudder cable had snapped.
The airplane (which was by design dynamically unstable) paused its rotation for a moment and then began again violently to the right, probably at about 360 degrees per second. And here’s where the chair-jockeys don’t get it. I probably went two or three full revolutions before my mind could accept what I already knew had happened. I immediately pulled power, but the aircraft was already entering a nose-down spin- at a rotational rate of at least 360 degrees per second.
The ROD of a spinning aerobatic biplane is pretty steep, probably on the 1500-2000FPM range. I checked my altimeter, saw I was descending through 4,000 feet and decided to try to recover the airplane before bailing out. AND HERE IS THE IMPORTANT POINT: BECAUSE I REFUSED TO ACCEPT THAT THE AIRPLANE WAS COMPLETELY EFFED I would nearly die. My mind knew before then, as it knows now, that if you put a Pitts-like airplane into an autorotational state the only thing that is going to get it out is opposite yaw. With no rudder THERE CANNOT BE ANY OPPOSITE YAW!! I had thousands of hours in similar aircraft, I was an unlimited category competition aerobatic pilot and instructor, and yet when faced with the obvious I could not process it quickly enough, despite having the evidence staring me squarely in the eye, to react quickly enough to prevent me from nearly dying.
So I frittered away precious moments trying to use opposite yaw via ailerons, shots of engine thrust, hell I might have even prayed, I don’t know. What I know now is I could have done better. What I also know now, and somehow managed to forget then, was that I was over the Altamont. When I saw 4000’MSL and thought “OK, I’ve got time to play with this” the reality was I was over a hill- that was 2134’ high. Tracy- just 20 miles away and where I was headed sits at 193’ MSL.
In my mind, because I was stupid overwhelmed, or just unable to process everything being thrown at me I had maybe 3500-4000’ to play with. So I could spend 30 seconds fighting the airplane to try to recover it before I had to bail.
In reality I had less than 2000’ before I would be dead.
I spent probably ½ to ¾ of the real time I had to get out of the airplane in it- fighting to try to save it, and I did this by deliberately ignoring what I already knew (I had lost rudder control completely) what I should have known (I was over the Altamont) and what I should have accepted (I had to go- the Goshawk was not going to survive this, the only real question was would I??)
I obviously did reach the (already foregone but stubbornly ignored by me) conclusion that the airplane was unrecoverable and decided to bail out- which is an interesting concept in a stable spinning airplane. I undid my harnesses as I had practiced, and I fought my way out of the airplane- pinned against the left side of the cockpit coaming by the rotational g-forces before eventually getting enough of my upper body into the slipstream that I was basically yanked out of the airplane. I was falling in a fetal position, thought about waiting to pull the ripcord, said eff-it and pulled, and after the shocking introduction to my first and (so far) only canopy opening was struck by the sound of the airplane smacking into the ground just a second or two later. Future calculation efforts would show that my chute opened between 134 and 200 feet above the ground, which at that rate of descent equaled a couple of seconds at best.
Surviving that incident has given me some small window of insight into what happens when your comfy world devolves in seconds into one where you know you are about to die.
The biggest lesson, and the greatest ego-killer was simple: I didn’t respond nearly as I would have hoped I would. It took me countless seconds to register the fact of the failure. I knew as soon as the pedal fired away from my foot what had happened. But my mind simply refused to accept that reality for some short period of time. The second error was equally simple: I thought I was the hero pilot (Neil Williams etc…) who would bring my crippled plane back to the airport, thereby saving the day. That thought nearly cost me my life, as I wasted precious seconds performing an absolutely useless dance of fancy “airmanship” that did nothing but allow my airplane to bring me closer and closer to the ground with every moment.
And now to the main point of this entirely too-long post: For those of you who suppose you will see everything clearly and “FTFA” when your own fatal opportunity presents itself please hear me when I say this: YOU WILL NOT!! The question that will determine your survival is how quickly will you move past that initial shock and be able to function properly again. In my case it was a single (albeit fatal) failure. I was extremely well trained, averse to panic-driven responses, and well-able to handle the emergency I had been presented with. Yet I wasted probably a full minute in an airplane I had no business being in any longer.
In the 737 crashes it was a cascade of failures. My own- very rare life experience tells me that those pilots had little chance given the stressors they were working under, as would the rest of you. These are not the words of someone who doesn’t know what it’s like. I’ve been there. I lived. So please trust me when I tell you that your vaunted talents will wither to nothing if someday you are in this unfortunate position. At best you will be semi-functional, at worst you will be functionally useless.
What you will not be, in any context, is a hero who defies these realities.
Final note: This isn’t about placing blame on anyone. Boeing designed an airplane with a crap system that had random and unmonitored control over the single most important control surface of the aircraft. The FAA paved the way for certification of the airplane, and once in the hands of pilots that airplane not once, but twice flew itself into the ground. (The pilots didn’t- it was MCAS that did, and that’s an important fact to take note of…) You can blame the pilots all you want, but it was the airplane itself that had a failure mode that required the pilots to be perfect or die. Boeing had years to create a functioning system that would not put the pilots in this position and they failed to create one. So the two (six really) pilots were left to defend themselves against an airplane that was trying to kill them. Four failed in that endeavor, and they have my utmost respect and gratitude.
Only those who have walked the path and survived can understand the fine line between winning and dying- which is why I have posted this ridiculously long post tonight.
Sorry for the sermon, just tired of reading the constant back and forth about who we should blame.
Link to the Final on my incident: Well despite being a member for years I haven't reached the vaunted 10-post threshold for posting URLs. Search "NTSB June 17, 1996 N345RM" for the final report.
Regards,
dce