my brain processes the worst possible scenario in everything I do
That's how you stay alive in aviation. It may annoy people around you that you
appear to them to be such a pessimist, but hey. I'm alive, and most people I knew
are dead now.
Free advice: always be at least one answer to "what if?" away from dying. Smell
the layers.
For example, if you are flying a single engine aircraft at night, what if the engine
fails? Well, do up your shoulder harness and don't stall. All you need is 25 feet
of deceleration to survive, if you can land it under control.
There are some "what if?" questions that you have no coverage for. For example,
my friend Bob Sterling and his wife died when the wing came off his C210. My
friend Andrew Wright died when the tail came off his G-202. Those are not easy
scenarios to protect yourself from.
Reminds me of my friend Floyd Brown. Nice guy. Loaned me his pristine new
Eagle II to fly at an airshow. It wasn't even on my card. I can't say enough good
things about Floyd. About a year later, he was flying over the beach at about
1000 feet when he lost a prop blade - see the Hartzell hub AD's on the two blade
metal props. The resulting rotating imbalance tore the engine off, smashed the
top wing and the aircraft started to tumble, according to witnesses on the ground.
His C of G had shifted slightly. Despite the low altitude and no ejection seat, Floyd
got out, opened his chute and walked to shore.
What a cool cat. I suspect he may have used up one of his nine lives that day.
Here's another "what if?" question for you. What if you control column fails on
your Cessna? It happens. Another maintenance-induced failure. Well the answer
is that you can land a Cessna using only power, trim and rudder pedals.
This happens with large aircraft, too. Remember the guys flying the A300 (IIRC) that
were hit with a surface-to-air-missile over Iraq? They lost all hydraulic pressure and
flight controls, but learned that they could yaw (and turn) with differential power, and
they could pitch up and down using both throttles. Fascinating. So, they approach, and
overshoot the first time (amazing). Then they land, and run out of the aircraft into
a mine field. I am not making this up. It doesn't matter what DHL was paying those
guys, it wasn't enough.
EDIT - found it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Bagh ... n_incident
the three-man crew made an injury-free landing of the seriously damaged A300, using differential engine thrust as the only pilot input. This is despite major damage to a wing, total loss of hydraulic control, a faster than safe landing speed and a ground path which veered off the runway surface and onto unprepared ground
I gotta ask: is that in the checklist? Like dropping your iPad? Is there a checklist
procedure for that? I would have just flipped the mags off, but I'm not too bright.
