How to Avoid Five Deadly Takeoff Mistakes

no I love grass no not the kind you smoke the kind you land on I might know about the other kind maybe I probably didn't inhale anyway Cubs love grass and we've got this great little turf Airport south of my home base called bucking I want to show you something about this runway it's these markings here here's what it looks like from the air those are just old tires painted white by the way and they work for the runway edge markings that's what's called a displaced threshold meaning you're supposed to land B on the second set of markers the idea being that there are obstacles off the approach end and a longer landing will force a glide path to clear them but you're allowed to use the full length for takeoff well I do that and then some on this runway about 2,000 feet long which is plenty for a cup but on the theory that you can never have enough altitude after takeoff I can't see past the first threshold and use every inch of available runway think about flying is that the skills involved are perishable that's both the motor skills the stick and rudder required and the required judgment somewhere in the distant past I'm sure I learned to use full wank always but a few years ago I was fine with my airplane partner Jack who lives in that house right over there and he reminded me there's really a good reason not to use full wing so in this video we're going look at an accident we're failing to use the entire runway was a factor in a chain of mistakes that led to a fatal crash so there's a lot to unpack here because like so many aviation accidents this one had a chain of faults let's start with the airport the Charles B wheeler downtown Airport in Kansas City I flew in there once and I think everyone just called it downtown it was the original home base of TWA during the 1930s but it was never going to expand much because of its location in a tight bend in the Missouri River and the close proximity of downtown Kansas City during the 1960's the FA called it the most dangerous Airport in the country and declined to spend developmental dollars on it today it's a busy general aviation Airport with terrific access to downtown Kansas City because of its location the layout is a little quirky there wasn't room for a perpendicular cross runway so the shorter runway is only 30 degrees off the main runway heading not a lot of help in a strong winter westerly this wasn't a factor in this accident but the Airport layout didn't help either as you'll soon see here's the accident fact pattern pilot of a Mooney M 20 J that's a 201 flew into downtown Airport three days before the accident and on the return flight he fueled at the self-serve pumps which are here any taxi to runway 1/9 for an intersection takeoff at taxiway kilo I gave him 50 300 feet of runway but he left 1,500 feet behind him after takeoff the pilot retracted the landing gear and shortly after that witnesses said the Moonies engine quit the pilot reported that on the tower frequency when the airplane was about ten feet above the runway the gear still in the wells the engine recovered and the pilot said he was okay he resumed the climb the engine quit again at about 300 feet and the airplane entered what to be a turning stall and crashed in this area just short of the river both the pilot and the passenger aboard were killed in its final report the NTSB said the probable cause was the pilots decision to continue a fight after the initial engine stoppage and contributing causes were his premature retraction of the landing gear and what appeared to be water contamination in the fuel this conclusion is supported by the data but I'm gonna go a little rogue here on what I think was the real cause of the fatality which was barely mentioned in the report I'll get to that in a minute backing it up here if water was the cause of the stoppage it's a bit of a mystery how it got into the Moonies tanks the original NTSB report said the airport had over an inch of rain while the Mooney was parked but later amended that to say just a trace it's possible that there was already water in the tanks when the pilot arrived or that a trace was enough to accumulate a sufficient slug of water or that the airport fuel supply was contaminated with water but the NTSB found no evidence of that or that something else caused the engine to quit I got a six-figure insurance check for this Mooney we owned in a partnership it flopped into a swamp after the engine quit on takeoff similar to the Kansas City accident but the pilot who happened to be one of my partners was well I'll let him tell you what happened in the zoom window here is Dana Nickerson who was my partner in what I call the swamp moody at this point Dana refresh my memory on what happened here your problem we were taking off out of Beaufort South Carolina he had just gotten some fuel and at about 400 feet coming off the runway the engine quit the first thing I did was to put the nose down to trim to 70 knots and then start a gentle right-hand turn towards the airport well turns out also there was some open space there as well there was a mobile home park in front of me and there was some industrial buildings off to the left so the the swamp was the best place to go into I then I checked the fuel I check the mags I checked the seatbelts and then I asked my passion toward to open the door and jam a code in there we did all of this within seven seconds because it was just a very quick from when the engine quit - we were actually landed in the mud the one thing I do remember is went through my mind is to keep flying until the crunching stalks because as we were sliding in the mud the tail came up a little bit but I just kept flying the airplane until we stopped I'll say that putting the nose down was was really critical and the reason why I did that is because it was instinctual Paul when you and I used to go out and practice I remember taking off on a very windy day one day and and you said Oh watch out for that airplane and then you pull the power back and I kind of hesitated for a second and you were yelling into headphones put the nose down and that's you know what I did so I had this instinctual memory to get the nose down it is extremely fast from when the engine dies until when you have to be be flying the airplane and the other thing I'll say is that it's it's really critical to to keep flying the airplane every fiber in your body wants to pull the nose back as you see the ground rushing up at you because it's coming up faster than it normally is but you have to maintain in this case of the Mooney 70 knots and just glide it right in and let it settle in for landing well all that training and I guess and and you reminded me we went out some pretty sporty conditions I guess it paid off absolutely and in fact quite honestly it's what saved our lives if if I had hesitated even a refraction of a second I'm fairly certain the airplane would stalled and we would have been another spin stall accident statistic there were no injuries in our crash and no reason for the stoppage was ever determined our muni accident wasn't all that unusual like homing powered Muniz and airplanes equipped with the Bendix RS a fuel system appear in a handful of engine failure accident reports while these reports often find no reason for the failure many cite water contaminates the cause whether the engine is RSA equipped or not there are four or five such accidents every year so let this remind you some the tanks for water always in an accident report that seems to have a little of everything the investigators also hit on the Moonies flush fuel caps these caps fit into a recess in the top of the wing with a locking lug to seal them they have a rubber o-ring to keep water from flowing into the tank but if the o-ring is old or missing the caps won't seal they also leak if you don't seat the cap correctly the NTSB found that the accident airplanes Oh rings had been recently replaced but there was no evidence that they were leak checked when the investigators tested the caps by pouring water over them they appeared to leak case closed right well not quite although the NTSB found no fault with the engine Magneto's the family of the crash victims sued continental motors they're the ones that made the magneto on the grounds that the magneto had faulty gaskets that caused the timing to slip stopping the engine the magneto in question is one that's not a favorite of many pilots the Bendix demag case you're not familiar most aircraft engines have two Magneto's with independent drives the idea being that this improves reliability the Bendix demag uses a single drive that incorporates both Magneto's in a single housing you can see why pilots aren't fond of it the jury didn't like it much either and it awarded at least nine million dollars in damages to the Kansas City crash victims family and in case you're wondering our Mooney had conventional Magneto's not the demon whatever the reason for the engine stoppage there are some ADM survival techniques here ADM aeronautical decision-making ADM is if nothing else all about having as many options as possible the NTSB thought the pilots retracting the landing gear prematurely was an accident factor but let's break that down if you've just taken off and the engine quits and you're down to ten feet as the action or report says are you really cognizant of whether the gear is up or down and how does that relate to deciding to land on the remaining runway in this accident the pilot was halfway down a 5,000 foot runway and probably had sufficient runway to land whether the gear was up or down should be irrelevant remember we're just trying to get out of this alive the airplane is both expendable insured as I pointed out in another video gear up landings are all but a hundred percent survivable if you bring that fact aboard ahead of time it could inform a split-second decision like this one if the runway looks a little short so what leave the gear up the rollout be a lot shorter but you'll live to talk about it the pilot faced a difficult scenario of a dead engine that suddenly comes back to life from the comfort of an armchair it's easy to say just ignore that close the throttle and land on what you've got but like it or not that is the best survival decision the engine quit for a reason and better to find out why on the ground then another quarter mile downrange even if the airplane gets dented in the process take that on board and it might inform your decision if this ever happens to you the pilot accepted an intersection take off from taxiway kilo giving up 1,500 feet of runway length I suspect pilots coming from the West ramp at downtown do this all the time and there have issues had there been a parallel taxiway he could have taxi to the end of 1/9 or crossed to the east side of 1/9 and in three more minutes of taxi time been at the beginning of runway 1/9 for a full length departure aviation aphorisms usually get up my nose but one that rings true in this accident is that the three most worthless things in aviation are fuel left on the ground runway behind you an altitude above you when I first read this accident report I was trying to think of a circumstance where I'd want less rather than more altitude on a takeoff I got nothing a full length takeoff would have presented the pilot with 1,500 more feet of runway and a little more altitude and that just offers more options that's not to say there aren't good reasons for intersection departures because there are say for example you're taking off behind a couple of airliners nothing wrong with trading the minor risk of less runway length for avoiding the wake turbulence of two airliners report ready to go and take the intersection takeoff so in this accident it may be true that contaminated fuel caused the stoppage or maybe it was the Magneto it doesn't really matter what caused the fatality was loss of control followed by a stall spin there are about 60 stall accidents a year in general aviation and half of them occur on takeoffs I place loss of control above the other factors for this reason just because an engine quits that's not an automatic death sentence if you maintain control of the airplane the probability of survival is much higher if not absolutely assured here the aircraft might have ended up in the river or on top of the flood control levees either would have been more survivable than a stall spin so here's where I deliver on the clickbait title with a take-off survival checklist sump the tanks for water always never skip it use all of the available runway because well you never know if the runway length is marginal crack the Poh and look at the performance tables there are apps for this it's possible the airplane just won't do what you want it to do think about what you'll do if the engine quits and do that down here not up here have a plan I've developed a habit of reminding myself on every takeoff that this time the engine will no quit and I'll be ready for it last practice it build that post failure pitch down in the muscle memory because if you do nothing else just pitching the nose over will keep you in the game for what comes next a survivable landing not a stall spin Brad Webb on Paul Berta rally thanks for watching

Channel: AVweb

Views: 164,140

Rating: 4.9599376 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: KI1QKEsxw8k

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 28 2020