African Instructor Learns The Hard Way: Keep Your Head In The Cockpit

By Gary Wiblin, Editor, Aviation Safety Forum

It was a beautiful, sunny, Sunday morning as I lifted off runway 26 in Port Elizabeth, stowed the wheels and turned out right for Seretse Khama. I was flying a magnificent example of a Bonanza 36 and everything was purring along just as it should. I was on my way to fetch the owner in Maun, Botswana. I had dropped he and his family off there a week previously and it was now time for them to head for home.

After re-fuelling and completing the necessary formalities for entering the country of Botswana, I again took off into a clear blue sky. I remember sitting at FL 090, with the auto-pilot taking its cue from the GPS, and thinking that this was indeed a darn fine way to earn a living. After crossing the Kalahari desert, I would soon be landing in Maun where I would be meeting two of my ex-students who were now working out of Maun. Our plans for the afternoon involved the consumption of large quantities of beer and much chewing of the fat. I was looking forward to this.

A couple of hours later, I started descending into Maun. I was soon cleared to land on runway 08 and I lined up for what was to be a perfect touch-down. The possibility that my ex-students were not only waiting for me, but were possibly actually watching my approach played on my mind, and I resolved to make the landing a flawless one.

The main wheels gently kissed the runway and before the nose-wheel touched, I shot out my right hand to retract the flaps -- and instead, accidentally did the slickest gear retraction I have ever done. As I saw the prop curling back I realized what I had just done and immediately slammed the gear lever back into the down position. Bearing in mind that the Bonanza has about a three second retraction cycle, there was no way that the nose-wheel was going to come out again. The main wheels, however, made a gallant effort to do so. The right main wheel actually locked back into the down position, but the left one tried valiantly for a while before finally also giving up the battle, and the aircraft screeched to a grinding halt, coming to rest on its nose and the left-hand wingtip.

I remember switching off the mags, master and fuel. I then unplugged my headset and rolled up the chord. As I stepped off the precariously teetering right-hand wing, people and vehicles began appearing all around me. This was not the arrival I had envisaged.

The following few hours are now just a blur. I can just remember stamping up and down cursing myself for my stupidity and wishing that I could turn back the clock. The Botswana accident investigation official was on the scene immediately and within thirty minutes we were in his office and he spent the next hour or so scrutinizing all the paper-work. This is where I appreciated the need to have all the T's crossed and the I's dotted. After what seemed an eternity, he seemed satisfied enough to release me. The hardest thing that I have ever had to do was to tell the owner that I had just smeared his pride and joy down the runway.

Why did this accident happen? I spent many days, weeks, and months mulling over what could have caused it. I never retract the flaps shortly after touch-down, but I have been known to do so while still rolling. Even then though, I would always say "flap/identify/retract". Even though the Bonanza that I was flying had the flap and undercarriage controls reversed, ie. gear left and flap right, I do not think that this was the reason either. I never reached for the flap lever, I reached for the undercarriage. It was a spontaneous reaction. I tried to think of anything else that might have contributed to my momentary madness. Before I left that morning I initially could not find the aircraft, it had been moved to a different hangar. After much searching I finally located my steed. The customs official had also not arrived and after many phone calls we finally touched sides. My son was extremely ill and had been for some time. Did all of these factors reduce my mental capability on that day or could this just be seen as excuse finding.

I finally decided that the main cause of this accident was procedural. I have often flown with pilots in the twenty or thirty thousand hour bracket and when flying with these pilots, if you reach for anything after touch-down, they become hostile and even aggressive. I always used to consider this to be over-kill or even paranoia. We need to take our cues from these people. If they have managed to reach twenty or thirty thousand hours and are still around to tell the tale, they must have learned a few things along the way. At the time of this accident I had seven thousand hours of incident-free flying under my belt. I had begun to think that mistakes were things that other people made.

The positive spin-off is that I am an active Flying Instructor and have taken this experience into the training environment. If I now see flailing hands after touch-down I get extremely tense. I now insist that the right hand remains firmly on the throttle/s until the aircraft has been pulled clear of the runway and stopped. Even then, when retracting the flaps, be careful that you have the correct lever. Do not expect the squat-switch to prevent the wheels from retracting. These switches have been known to fail. The negative aspect of all this is that there is now a disillusioned and disappointed aircraft owner. There is also an insurance company that likes me not one jot.

We'll never really know, but maybe I have prevented a few future accidents by writing this article. I hope so. I still sometimes wake up at night with screeching, tearing, very expensive sounding noises assailing my ears, but at last I can now say it, "I learned about flying from that".

(Gary Wiblin is editor of Aviation Safety Forum. He's an instructor with more than 9000 hours of total time. Based in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and will soon publish a new aviation magazine called Flight Training & Aviation Safety.)

FMI: http://efc.org.au