Originally Posted by
Bob Viking
....However, as someone who has flown over 3000 fast jet sorties and flown multiple passengers (many of whom have been experienced aviators in their own right), I would be truly gobsmacked if the first the pilot knew of an engine failure was his passenger pointing it out to him. That is not to say a passenger cannot have something to offer in certain circumstances........
BV - LOL! Agree with you entirely and, if I may be so bold, I suspect
cncpn would agree too! I agree that the use of the phrase "I'd expect Capt. Casey was monitoring the gauges" implies a formal type of PM activity - maybe what
cncpn meant was "After the bang, Capt Casey may have instinctively looked across at the engine instruments suspecting, from her limited experience as a PPL (or whatever), that they had an engine issue and made some comment to that effect.". But I agree with you that Capt. MacDougall would have been on the case instantly - hence the fairly rapid initial "confirm - decide - execute escape" type of process which seems to have been carried out quite smoothly into the initial pull-up. In my Sea King incident, I was the only one watching out that window when the sparkles started - and the BANG was just after I'd worked out it was not my eyes playing tricks on me!!! No-one noticed anything on the engine instruments and my "Hey Gents..." (rudely interrupted by the BANG) was their first/only indication that all was about to go pear-shaped!
Retired BA/BY -
"Even now, if the engine failed in my Warrior and I set it up for a forced landing but I can restart the engine, I would probably continue with the forced landing if it was looking good. If the engine WERE to restart but then failed again after throwing the forced landing away. it the may well have compromised a successful forced landing."
I had almost exactly that a while ago at the start of a Ferry. On climbout the engine started to stutter and lose power at 600-700 ft. Nose down, pick my field, quick engine check with concurrent Mayday ... but then, just as I was about to shut it down the engine then started to recover all by itself!!!!! It wasn't well but I could slowly climb now but I didn't trust it one bit. Rats!!!!! Decision time! However, as I knew the area very well after a lot of time in the circuit as an Instructor (I always study fields with an obsession - it goes back to my gliding days!) I knew I could "field hop" a not-quite direct track (I could follow the fields I knew were OK and avoid the rubbish ones) back into the overhead, all the while actively planning a succession of Forced Landings for each field as it appeared in sequence ending up planning the last one into the airfield itself. It was an almost flat calm day so I knew wind was not an issue WRT landing direction. Once in the overhead I then started breathing again and, effectively, did an engine-off landing back onto the active. Had I been somewhere strange or had no options - I'd have done what you suggest - shutting it down fully in case it ran up at just the wrong moment and screwed up the forced landing! ATC were funny after I landed. "G-YZ, welcome back! You didn't half give us a fright with your Mayday!". My reply was "You? Frightened? You should have been up here in the plane, Sunshine!!!!!!".
Back to the Snowbirds though. Actually, my sympathy goes to Capt. MacDougall who will, undoubtely, for every day for the rest of his life go "If only I'd done....". We've probably all had moments when we did something thinking it was for the best in the heat of the moment, only to realise that, once on the ground (or even in the air after the event) we could have done things better. I've always been lucky in that I've always had at least one slice of cheese left across the hole(s) I've inadvertantly opened up. Sadly, this seems to be a case where an aircraft has demonstrated a lack of tollerance to inadvertant pilot distraction and rapidly bitten back - unless there was another tech issue which made the outcome inevitable. I'll leave the debate about the seat alone - but that did not help. A very sad outcome.....
Cheers,
H 'n' H