Continuing a Flight with a failure?
Just for a bit of a discussion, how many of you would continue a flight with a failure that meant you could not operate a major item? On another forum, one chap posted up this, talking about qualifying cross country flights :
"Mine was Sywell, Cambridge, Leicester, Sywell. Remember taxiing out behind a C130 from Marshall's thinking "Oh f.ck what am I doing here" LOL
Took off and then couldn't get the flaps up... Then, rather than abort, flew the rest at VFE."
Now, as a low hours (96hrs) PPL, and a professional aircraft engineer, this strikes me as a fairly bad idea, not so much in the flying with the flaps deployed for an extended period, as of course they are designed to be used up to VFE, but insomuch as that losing control of a major control surface with no indication as to why would be worring to me, and continuing a lengthy flight is a bit odd, when the option to land back immediatly and rectify the problem is available?