Real Pilot Story: Power Loss on Takeoff

this is Ron Craig Lincoln Nebraska and I had the misfortune of crashing my 1976 Piper lamps just outside of Winslow Arizona on March 4th of 2006 we had just refueled and we're taking off from Winslow it's about 5,000 feet elevation so the take-off roll was relatively long we successfully were airborne and climbed to about 200 feet at that point the airplane didn't seem to want to climb anymore in spite of everything I could think of to do for it my wife was looking down at the powerlines and houses below us and said we need to be higher I replied I know we need to be higher she asked are we going to crash I replied yes we are after a moment's pause she said do you want the gear down I responded with yeah I do and selected down on the gear installing the airplane was a concern in fact my wife said one other thing to me as we settled down it was don't stall the airplane at any rate as the landing gear hit the desert floor there was lots of noise it was amazing how much noise that causes it's a1 bling roaring noise and there were tons of red dirt flying all around we rolled almost 600 feet before the nose gear finally collapsed I was keeping the nose here intentionally as high as possible being the weak point at this point it's lewd to the left and the main gear collapsed we skidded through a barbed wire fence which had a ridge associated with look which caused us to rock up on one wing and I thought we were going to roll but we didn't and the airplane came back down on its belly and skidded backwards to a halt we were facing about a hundred and eighty degrees from the direction we'd landed when I looked out of the window I realized the left wing was ruptured and fuel was pouring out of it when I looked to the right wing it also was ruptured and fuel was gushing out of it my first thought was we may burn I said to the wife get out she replied I can't my response to that was I can't isn't option then I recognize the fact that she had the door unlatched but the wing had been up and the door was stuck against the wing so I watched from the pilot sight and slammed into the door and pushed it across the bent wing and I sold her now get out she scrambled out over the wing and I followed very closely behind and probably have bruises on her behind from my hands we got away from the aircraft quite a ways and stood around and watch the last of my 97 gallons of low lead poured into the desert we had a newly remanufactured lycoming engine it had approximately 20 hours on it it failed at the worst time possible with very little errors be very little altitude and no more runway when my wife asked the question are we going to crash it made me make a decision you concentrate only on the necessary things I didn't bother trying to make any radio calls I just concentrated on playing the airplane word had to go and keeping it in a landing attitude I didn't do a very good job of running my landing checklist but there wasn't a lot of time for that maybe I could teach my passenger to pay a little more attention to what the landing checklist is and prompt me some more the next time this happens which I hope it won't the last point is the post maintenance caution anytime the airplanes bent work done I am always a little anxious about what's going to happen next and do an extra careful inspection at this point I'd like to point out that a lot of my safety knowledge has come from membership in the flying physicians Association they have an active air safety program and I would encourage anyone out there to be in an active program where safety is continually on your mind

Channel: Air Safety Institute

Views: 198,680

Keywords: air, safety, institute, aopa, engine, out, emergency, landing, takeoff, to, student, training, wings, credit, faa, analysis, investigation, piper, arrow, declare, radio, atc

Id: O-eBrxma1X0

Length: 4min 42sec (282 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 13 2016