Air traffic control
versus pilots. Your right main is now
missing from the airplane. It's fallen off the airplane.
Say your intentions. Coming up. Hey, 74 crew. Welcome back. If you don't know me,
my name's Kelsey. I'm a 747 pilot. My channel, 74 gear,
is all about aviation. Now this video is very interesting
because what you have is a new pilot. This girl probably
has about 30 hours. She's working on
her very first license. And based off of the
circumstances of the video, I'm going to guess she's
probably been in the plane two, maybe three
times all by herself. So with those circumstances, you can imagine how
uncomfortable you'd be when something
goes terribly wrong. I'm not as uncomfortable as
Stella is right here, but to this day, I still don't like
flying by myself. I just get bored. All right, let's get into it. Warrior 2496X, runway 9
full length cleared for takeoff Cleared to takeoff, 96X Tower, that Warrior, just
departed the right main gear strut and wheel just
feel off the airplane. Roger. Warrior 2496X, tower? Yeah? Warrior 2496X, the WACO just said that you right
main is now missing from the airplane. It's fallen off the airplane.
Say your intentions. Can I circle back to land? Warrior 96X, affirmative.
Are you a solo, ma'am? I'm a student pilot solo, yeah. Okay. It'll be ok. Just go ahead and
circle the airport for now. Make a right turn to circle. We're going to get some
people out to help you, okay? Okay... Pattern altitude 1,100' and you
can make a right turn out, okay? Okay... This girl is obviously rattled and I would be too considering the
amount of flight experience that she has. Something I got told
when I started flight school for my very
first flight instructor was when you start flight
school, you get two bags. One bag is full of luck
and one bag is empty. And it's your experience bag. As you go through flight school,
you're going to do some dumb things. You're going to make a
lot of different mistakes. And each of those mistakes
and dumb things that you do, you're taking something
out of your luck bag. So as you gain experience, you're going to be putting more and more
chips into your experience bag because sooner or later your
luck's going to run out and you're going to need
to rely on your experience. This girl has maybe
20, 30 hours and she's already out
of the luck chips. But this controller did
something I really liked. Pattern altitude 1,100' and you
can make a right turn out, okay? Now this controller realizes
that this girl is a student pilot and realizes just how
flustered she's going to be. So what she does is instead of
saying turn southbound pattern altitude, which she could
have technically said, she said, make a right hand
turn out and fly it 1,100 feet, which is the pattern altitude. Now pattern altitude, the simple way to explain this is when
you're going through flight school and you're doing
takeoffs and landings, you're flying in what's
called a racetrack pattern. You're taking off turning right, turning right, turning right,
landing or turning left either way. But that altitude
you are going to maintain is usually,
on this type of plane, about a thousand
feet above the airport. What that does is it eliminates the amount
of thought that this pilot has to have. They'd go, okay, cool.
Turn to the right 1,100 feet. That's easier than turn
south pattern altitude because your brain's starting to get
overloaded when things get complicated, you can start to
get tunnel vision. So the controller alleviated that because
obviously the controller's going to have a lot more experience
in this situation than this pilot who's new and maybe has 20 or
30 hours in the plane. Now this is something that I
actually do when I'm briefing, when we're going out of an airport
that has mountains or buildings or something that's
dangerous in a certain sector, so let's say you have
mountains to the south. Instead of saying, Hey, on this
departure, we got mountains to the south, what I say is, Hey, on this departure, we
do not want to turn to the right. And the reason I say right is
because that's easier to be oriented knowing right
and left than south is because on the airport, you could be spinning around
a bunch of different ways. So I say, we don't want to turn
right on this departure. So that way, if a controller messes
something up and they say turn right, we're all thinking, we don't
want to go that direction. Now listen to the swap over in
the way the controller is talking from controller to nurture mode. Warrior 96X, affirmative.
Are you a solo, ma'am? I'm a student pilot solo, yeah. Okay. It'll be ok. Just go ahead and circle the airport
for now. Make a right turn to circle. We're going to get some
people out to help you, okay? Okay... I'm not sure if this
controller is a mom, but the amount of nurture that
she gives to this pilot was perfect. Instead of just going
hard controller mode, she gave a balance of the
controller side which is, Hey, this is what I need you to do, be
safe, but you can hear that change in that pitch in her
voice, which is like, everything's going to be okay. And I think that's really
important here to note. This controller's being very professional
while keeping this pilot calm. Now that's not her job
to keep the pilot calm, but she just automatically
went into that mode of Hey, let's keep this pilot calm and
let's help them the most that we can. And one of the things that the
pilot needs the most help with in this specific situation
is to calm down. Obviously with a
little bit of experience, having your wheel
come off your plane, that's going to make
you really nervous. And the pilots always say the controllers
are there to help the pilots out and really what this pilot needed at
this exact moment was to be more calm and be more comfortable. So I think the controller is
doing an excellent job here. Let's see what happens next. Maggie, this is John.
How are you doing? I'm okay. Okay, you're doing a
great job flying the airplane. Keep doing what you're doing. They're going to
stage the equipment just in case anything
is needed there. But we're just going to wait.
We're going to take our time here. We got plenty of time,
you got plenty of fuel. We got plenty of daylight. So, just try to relax and you always
heard me say go back to basics. So we're going to work the basics
here as much as possible, okay? All right. We're going to do this just like
we did. I know it's hard to say this, but treat it like as much as
like a normal landing as you can. So the power settings we've always
done, the pitch for the airspeed, keep everything as
normal as you can. All right. So you got Maggie
who's the pilot. And then you have this guy
who's talking on the radio now is actually her
flight instructor, which is about as good as it's going to
get when you have an in-flight emergency, you want the guy that you
have been comfortable with and has been
teaching you everything. You want that familiar voice. So really it worked out great that he
was nearby enough to get over there and get into the control tower. He said something here that
you may not be familiar with, which was staging the equipment. Listen here. They're going to
stage the equipment. Anytime a pilot declares an
emergency, which she didn't, but they did it for her because
they realized the situation. Anytime a pilot
declares an emergency, they're going to roll
the fire trucks out and they're going to
get the fire trucks out. Now he's saying they're going
to get the equipment ready and stage just in case
they need anything. That is kind of a sought
the way of putting, we're going to put the fire trucks out
there in case there's a real problem. We're able to put the
plane or put the fire out or get you out or
whatever is needed. So that's what he's saying. That's kind of a
nice way of saying it. Listen to what the
instructor says right here. You always heard me
say go back to basics. So we're going to work the basics
here as much as possible, okay? When you do your
final exam on the 747, one of the things that you have
to do is fly a two engine approach. So you fly with two engines
working and two engines not working. It would be great if it was one engine
on each side that was not working, but that's not how it works. It's two engines working
and two engines not working. And the thing that one of
the instructors said to me is when the first time I
was practicing this was, Hey, realize you're
going to go back to basics. All the normal stuff,
normal, normal, normal, which is basically what this instructor
is telling to this student pilot. Remember, this
is still an airplane, still flying, all the
normal things that apply. Obviously in the case
of having two engines working and two
engines not working, it's not exactly the
normal situation, but the plane is still working
under the exact same principles. So don't get overloaded
with the fact like, oh my gosh, we're leaned out this
way or this or this or this is happening. Go back to the basics. If you remember, I've talked about that old Vietnam era
B-52 pilot that I used to fly with, PJ. PJ used to say the
exact same thing. I was so fortunate to fly
with him early in my career. And we did a lot of flights together and
he taught me a lot of different things. But one of the things that
he always used to say is realize as long as the rubber
touches before the metal, you're going to be okay. And that's basically like, just keep the plane flying. If it's windy or
whatever the situation is, realize it's going to do and
react the exact same way, every different type of plane. Now he flew a lot
of different planes. That was maybe the third or fourth
different type of total plane that I flew. It was only the second
commercial plane that I was flying, but he was really mentoring
me without me knowing it and he's teaching me like, Hey, realize at the end of the
day, it's going back to basics. And that's what this
instructor is telling her. Listen how she
calms down from here. All right. And compare it to how she was
talking at the start of this video when she realized
she had a problem. I'm a student pilot solo, yeah. She's getting more comfortable,
which is really important. Something that
you may have heard, or that's an old
saying in aviation is if you have an emergency,
wind your watch. And what that means is it's an old thing that used
to be in the day is that when watches need to be wound, but is that if you
have an emergency, don't make a harsh,
quick reaction. Especially in this case for her. She's flying, the
airplane is flying fine. It doesn't care that the
landing gear is missing. That's not really
important to that plane. So in an emergency,
wind your watch. Now that's one of the great things
about flying a fixed wing aircraft is you have time typically to work
out and think about your problem. That does not
apply in helicopters. If you have a problem
in your helicopter, you need to react right away. But on a fixed wing
aircraft, wind your watch, take a second,
process everything. Sometimes you can make a situation
worse by reacting or doing something silly and reacting too quickly. So she's doing the right thing and
she's starting to calm herself down. She's realizing the
plane is flying okay. She has a voice that
she's familiar with. And so she's doing
really well here. Greg and I have looked at the
airplane through the binocular so it's your right
wheel that's missing. So as you land, the plus side here has got
a little bit of a left crosswind. So if you use your normal
left wind crosswind correction, that means your left
side will touch down first, and you're just going to
ease the right side down. It's going to try
to pull to the right, so be prepared and
use as much left rudder and left brake as you have to
to try to keep it on the center line. All right. This has to be the most flight instructor
thing I've ever heard in my life. So be prepared and use as much
left rudder and left brake as you have to to try to keep it
on the center line. When I had her
level of experience, I was just happy that I was
making it on the runway each time. But as a typical
flight instructor, they're always
trying to get you to keep your wheel running down
the middle on the center line. So that's one thing that you
will always hear in flight school. It's something that they will yell
at you or say to you all the time. You'll probably hear it a couple thousand
times as you practice your landings and in different stages is center line, center line, center
line because a lot of times pilots will land to the
left or land to the right. And you want to maintain that center
line and always keep your nose going right down the middle of the runway. That's very important
to learn early on because as your jet
gets bigger and bigger, as your plane gets
bigger and bigger, or as your runway gets
more and more narrow, you need to be able to keep that
nose running right down the middle. So that way you know, you're
not going to have a problem. This is a picture of what
the instructors are looking at when they're looking
at Maggie's plane. You can see right here, this tire is missing from
the main landing gear. Something the instructor
could have told Maggie here also would've been landed to
the left side of the runway. He knows the plane
is going to pull the right. We all know that it's
going to pull to the right. By telling her to land of
the left side of the runway, It would've increased her chances of
staying on the runway the entire time. But on these smaller
planes, it's not a big deal. If you have an excursion and go off
of a runway on a small plane like this, it's going to damage the plane. And you're probably
going to be okay, the plane might need some repairs,
but just realize it's not a huge deal. And at her level of experience,
if you had said, okay, we want you to land the left side of the
runway over here with the tire missing. I don't know. Maybe I could have
done it because for some reason, when I went
through flight school, I was always landing on one
side or the other of the center line. I can't remember if it was
the right side or the left side, but I always landing on one side of
the center line and my instructor said you perfectly land this far away
from the center line every time. Can you just slide this
thing over six or seven feet? I don't know why, but I kept
always landing to the left or the right. But if he had said, Hey, try landing a little bit to
the left side of the runway. It would've increased her chances
of staying on the runway there. But like I said, on
a small plane like this, it's not a big
deal if you slide off, it's like being in
a small car crash. You may have seen some clips like this
of planes landing totally off the runway and still being able to make it
on without there being any issue. Now, if you drop a 747, 30 feet out of the sky and
land totally not on the runway, it's definitely not going to work out
that well, but on a small plane like this, it's going to be all right. Let's see what Maggie does next. Looks real good, Maggie. You
got enough spacing out there? I think so, yeah. We're not going to rush everything.
This is going to be perfectly normal. If something looks wrong,
I'll tell you to do a go-around, but we're going to do a
perfectly normal landing here. All right, should I
drop the flaps now? So Maggie, when you're
comfortable, go to full flaps. Alright, I'm there now, sorry. That's okay. You're doing a
great job. Just remember that 09 is your aiming point. Very light winds, Maggie,
very light left crosswinds so that's all to your advantage. You're doing great. Keep
doing what you're doing. I'm going to go back
all the way on power. You're doing a perfect job, Maggie,
just treat it like a normal landing. It's going to try
to pull the right. When that left main touches
down, right main touches down. You may have noticed that he said
09 is your aiming point. Listen here. Just remember that
09 is your aiming point. What is referring to is the numbers
at the very start of the runway. I talked about that in the video with
Leonard DiCaprio, Catch me if you can. But basically what
he's referring to is those numbers at the very
start of the runway. Now he's saying those
are your aiming point. That doesn't necessarily
mean it's your landing point, but those are the aiming point. And that's something that
I got told in flight school. Doesn't really work for me,
but everybody's different. That aiming point is what the
instructor's telling her to go aim at. So that way she can land at the very
start of the runway, which is important, but you never want to land, and
this is my own personal opinion. You don't want to land on those
numbers at the very start of the runway, because if you come in
too short or you lose power, you could actually
land short of the runway. And there's no reason to take a
bad situation and make it worse. So just keep in mind, aiming point landing
point, not the same thing. But I do like what the
instructor says here. It's going to try to pull to the right
when that left main touches down right main touches down. Something that I do
when I'm doing a briefing and there's something
broken on the aircraft, that's going to be abnormal or
affect our landing is that I will say, Hey, before landing, maybe
mention this thing to me that's broken. For example, let's say you have a thrust
reverser that is not working. So if you use your
thrust reversers, you're going to get a lot of pull
on one side and none on the other. So you'll say, Hey, don't
use your thrust reverses. And that's something you might
want to say right at the very beginning or right as you're
getting ready to land, because that way you
don't have a problem. It's just a little reminder. So Maggie obviously knows
that her wheel is missing, but as she's getting ready to land,
the instructor is reminding her like, Hey, just remember, this
thing is going to pull to the right, just as a little reminder to put
that right at the top of your memory, because she's got a lot of things
that she's dealing with right now. So I thought it was really
smart that he did that. Next listen to what Maggie
says here about her power. I'm going to go back
all the way off on power. She's talking to herself
and she's talking out loud and she's talking to her instructor
and she's obviously uncertain and something to know, Maggie, if you ever watch this
video, I did the same thing when I worked on some
of my initial solo flights. I would talk to myself. Okay, I'm going to talk,
I didn't talk to controller. I didn't have a problem like
you did, but I would talk to myself. Okay, I'm going to
do flaps one here. And that's just because you're talking
out loud and just kind of like reassuring that you're doing
the right thing really. As you gain more experience, you can be a
little bit more wild because you understand the
aerodynamics of a plane a lot more. So something that she's
doing is talking to herself. She's a little bit
unsure. She put her flaps out all the way
early, which is fine. She's talking about
pulling the power out, but she's really actually doing a
really good job with the circumstances. She's making the corrections
that she needs to do to get the plane
safely onto the runway. There's no problem with
putting your flaps out really early. I mean, you're just going to be
using more power to get to the runway, but that's fine, especially
in a situation like this. It's better to be configured
and have everything situated. And that's just one less thing
that you need to do last minute. So she is nervous. She is
uncertain about what she's doing, but I honestly would be
totally uncertain as well with the level of flight experience
that she has at this point. I'm a student pilot solo, yeah. And asking about flaps or power
is something that you'll see as well if you ever go to the airlines. You'll see it with new pilots
when they're going from, let's say a small propeller
plane to their very first jet. They're uncertain about, Hey, do I put the flaps out now
or do I do the power out now? They don't know and so
they're asking the captain, the check airman
that they're flying with, what they should be doing. And they're basically
walking them through like, Hey, now you want to do
this. Now you want to do this. Maggie doesn't have that comfort
of having somebody there with her. So this is part of
what's going on. You'll see airline pilots
do this exact same thing as they go through their career. And as they get more and more
experience with jets or different jets, they'll get more and more
confident of like, okay, cool. Now I think I should do this. Now I'm going to do that. And they'll start making
their decisions for themselves. But early on, even with a guy with a
thousand or 1500 hours, when they're getting
into their very first jet, they'll be asking those
types of questions. Flaps out now? I think I'm going to
pull the power out now. Those are some things that you will
hear when you start going to the airline. So it's not just the fact that
she's got 30 or so hours. It's just that she's uncomfortable
and unsure about the plane, which is how most people
would react in this circumstance. Let's hear how Maggie lands it. You did a beautiful job, Maggie. You've got a whole bunch of
people clapping for you up here. Alright, that's a good thing! She obviously gets the
plane on the ground okay. And was willing to sit in there and
reply to her instructor that she was happy of everything went well. This is what the plane
looked like after she landed. Obviously it's a
little banged up, but that is not
important at all. What's most important
is that she's okay. This is a great example of
using all available resources. And so you have the
pilot using air traffic control and the controllers
helping them out, the instructors
helping them out. And she's using all
available resources. Now it's mostly them giving them
to her and not her asking for them, but it doesn't really matter. This is an example, a great
example of aviation teamwork. In an emergency, you have
so many people that are there that are willing to do anything
that they can to help you. I read online that the instructor
heard that there was a problem. He was in this plane
with another person. Ran back, took
the plane back park, got out. Got a... I don't know, something to get over
to the control tower and got on the control
tower to help Maggie out, but it just shows you in aviation,
just how much of a family it is. Even though sometimes
you'll hear pilots bickering with controllers
and stuff like that. On these air traffic
control versus pilots. You'll know that at the end
of the day, if you're in a jam, nobody's going to do more to
help you out than that controller. And I've talked about that
in some of the other videos. Now, if you want to see
some pilots flying a 747, where they're missing their landing
gear, check out this video here. And if you want to see some
pilots who are not getting along with air traffic control, nearly as well, check
out this video up here. I look forward to
hearing from you. Until then, keep the blue side.
