The Somatogravic illusion
The take-off at Alice Springs on a dark night is a real “black hole” affair, and with the tower closed, completely uncontrolled. One evening, taxing out our traffic was an Ansett 146, inbound for a landing towards the north, while our take-off was towards the south. Now he was a little earlier than he said he was going to be, and we were a little later, so as I rotated the windscreen was full of BAe146 landing lights at about 800 feet! Keeping a wary eye on the lights, I began a right hand turn to avoid at about 300 feet. Pete then called out “SH!T !! Pull UP!”
I heaved back on the controls, and looked down at the cockpit instruments, where I saw a
rate of descent of
1000 fpm, and a radio altitude of just
50 feet.
That was another “near death” experience, about TWO seconds to impact on the desert floor, with no chance of survival. It was over 15 years ago, and my heart
still races thinking about it.
The somatogravic illusion occurs with high performance aircraft, and a lack of visual cues. As the aircraft accelerates (which it does with take-off thrust if you lower the nose) the sense organs of the inner ear are thrown back – and the head assumes that it is pointing up into the sky (i.e. still climbing.)
The problems with distractions are that they are so
distracting in fact, if they weren’t, you wouldn’t be distracted
The trick to survival is
realizing that you are distracted.
Pete, the Captain's 14,000 hours experience was looking at the instruments when my 1,400 hours was looking out of the window – and that saved our lives. (It’s funny how you don’t appreciate 14,000 hours experience when you are in your mid twenties with 1,400 hours
)