My incident occurred in a B2 Astar on a tour with six passengers on board. I first realized the problem coming out of an out of ground effect hover. To this day I still get confused as to whether you call it stuck left or right---basically I had about an inch and a half of left forward pedal, and was not able to push right pedal. I had the non power pedal forward. Ultimately we found the flexible ball control cable had frayed inside the plastic sheath. So as I pushed left pedal, the cable would slide freely inside the sheath, when I pushed right --- the frayed cable dug into the sheath and would not slide. Biggest thing to remember—FLY THE AIRCRAFT. I elected to fly back to the nearest airport with crash rescue facilities----not pessimistic, just stacking the odds in my favor, plus it gave me 30 minutes of transit time to figure it out in my head. Unfortunately for me---I used to switch between a 206 and an Astar frequently---the previous flight less than an hour prior to this was in the Bell---hence I do not like to say stuck left/right but try to think of it as power and non power pedal. Also, the company I worked for did NOT provide factory training, I had never done this procedure in the aircraft---read about it once--- and in fact my annual Astar training consisted of 30 minutes flying with the owner, who flew on average about 30 hours a year. (Welcome to Hawaii !---although to be fair---there are some decent operators out there). I told my passengers everything, (was later chastised by the owner---should have kept my mouth shut---I no longer fly in Hawaii ! !), I felt they were entitled to know what was going on.
For better or worse, I elected to attempt a shallow approach to a run on landing. I had enough fuel for about an hour, so I was in no rush. The wind sock was spinning on the pole, so therefore no wind. I picked the longest runway---as the speed approached about 20 kts, the aircraft started slowly spinning left, and I did a go around without pulling power till I got some more airspeed and chose a different runway. This attempt, same thing, another go around---did not pull power till I got some speed. I was starting to think that if this next attempt did not work---I would cut the engine and do an auto. This time the aircraft started spinning faster, my gut reaction was to go around, but I started pulling power----WRONG, this increased the spin violently, instinct, gut reaction, luck and the voice in my head said CUT POWER----which I half did. I got the FFCL out of the flight gate and about half way back to idle, the earth had stop spinning and I was about 10 feet up, drifting slowly forward and descending slowly, with 3 fire trucks about 100 feet in front of me. I let the aircraft settle to the ground, shut it down, and realized that adrenalin is really brown!!!!!!! I personally was not happy the way it turned out---I felt I should have nailed it on the first attempt, I should NOT have let the aircraft spin, but I am somewhat of a perfectionist, and I need to live with that. That being said, No damage to the aircraft, one passenger had passed out and was given medical attention on scene, the rest were all fine, I spilled my coffee on the runway and had to beg a soda from one of the firefighters!!!!
What did I learn?
- FLY THE AIRCRAFT.
- As stated above do not refer to this as stuck left/right, it gets too confusing when switching aircraft types.
- Take your time; make as many approaches as needed.
- No matter what anyone says—there is no text book way to do it.
- I did not do the “text book” procedure—but it worked.
- If you all walk away from it---you did good, learn and move on.
One more side note; The company did not initially refund the passengers their money until a few months later one of them asked for a copy of the NTSB report we filed as it came under NTSB 830.5 (a) (1) ----guess what---company did not file one, make sure one gets filed---you could be liable if not.