How to Avoid Five Deadly Takeoff Mistakes

No, I love grass no, not the kind you smoke, the kind you land on. Maybe I know the other kind, maybe I didn't inhale anyway. The Cubs love grass and we have this great little grass airport south of my base called Bucking. I want to show you something about this runway, it's these markings here, this is what you see from the air, by the way, they're just old tires painted white and they work for the runway edge markings, that's what's called a offset threshold, meaning that to land B on the second set of markers, the idea is that there are obstacles at the approach end and a longer landing will force a glide path to clear them, but you can use the entire length for

takeoff

, well I do that and then some on this runway are about 2000 feet long, which is enough for a cup, but according to the theory that you can never have enough altitude after

takeoff

, I can't see beyond of the first threshold and use every inch of available runway.

What I think about flying is that the skills involved are perishable, namely the motor skills that required stick and rudder and the judgment required somewhere in the distant past. I'm sure I always learned to use the full straw, but a few years ago I was fine with my plane buddy Jack, who lives there. house right there and it reminded me that there really is a good reason not to use the full wing, so in this video we will look at an accident where we did not use the entire track and it was a factor in a chain of errors that led to a fatal accident , so there is a lot to analyze here because, like so many aviation accidents, this one had a chain of failures.

Let's start with the airport, Charles B Wheeler Airport in downtown Kansas City. I flew there once and I think everyone just called it downtown. It was TWA's original base during the 1930s, but was never going to expand much due to its location on a sharp bend in the Missouri River and proximity to downtown Kansas City during the 1960s, the FA called it the airport more dangerous. in the country and refused to spend money on development today it is a busy general aviation airport with excellent access to downtown Kansas City due to its location the layout is a bit quirky there was no room for a perpendicular cross runway , so the shortest runway is only 30 degrees from the main runway, the heading was not much help in a strong western winter, this was not a factor in this accident, but the layout of the airport did not help either, as You will soon see, here is the accident data pattern of the pilot of a Mooney M 20 J, which is a 201, he flew to the downtown airport three days before the accident and on the return flight he refueled at the self-service pumps there. here, any taxi to runway 1/9 for a takeoff at an intersection on 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 witnesses said the Moonies engine shut down. The pilot reported that on the tower frequency, when the plane was about ten feet above the runway, the gear still in the pits the engine recovered and the pilot said it was fine, resumed climb, the engine stopped. shut down again at about 300 feet and the plane entered what would be a stall of turn and crashed in this area just before the river, both the pilot and the passenger on board died in its final report, the NTSB said the cause The pilot's decision to continue the fight after the initial engine shutdown was likely, and the contributing causes were premature retraction of the landing gear and what appeared to be water contamination in the fuel.

It's backed up by the data, but I'm going to be a little cheeky here about what I think was the actual cause of death that was barely mentioned in the report. I'll get to that in a minute backing this up here if the water was the Due to the shutdown, it's a mystery how it got into the Moonies tanks. The original NTSB report said the airport had more than an inch of rain while the Mooney was parked, but later amended it to say only a trace, it is possible that there was already water in the tanks when the pilot arrived or that a trace was enough to accumulate enough water or that the airport's fuel supply was contaminated with water but the NTSB found no evidence of that or that something else caused the engine to shut down. a six-figure insurance check for this Mooney we had in a partnership, it fell into a swamp after the engine quit on takeoff, similar to the Kansas City accident, but the pilot who turned out to be one of my partners was good.

I'll let you tell me. You, what happened in the zoom window here is Dana Nickerson, who was my partner in what I call the swamp. Grumpy at this point Dana, refresh my memory on what happened here. Your problem. We were taking off from Beaufort, South Carolina, he had just gotten some fuel. and about 400 feet off the runway, the engine died. The first thing I did was lower the nose to set it to 70 knots and then begin a gentle right turn toward the airport. Turns out there was an open space there too. Also, there was a mobile home park in front of me and there were some industrial buildings to the left, so the swamp was the best place to enter.

Then I checked the fuel, I checked the magazines, I checked the seat belts and then I asked my passion to open the door and enter a code there. We did all this in seven seconds because it was so fast from the moment the engine was turned off; We actually landed in the mud, all I remember is that he left. What I have in mind is to keep flying until the stalks creak because as we were sliding in the mud the tail came up a little bit, but I kept flying the plane until we stopped. I will say that lowering the nose was really critical and The reason I did that is because it was instinctive, Paul, when you and I went out and practiced.

I remember one day I took off on a very windy day and you said, Oh, watch out for that plane and then you took the power off. and I was kind of hesitant for a second and you were yelling into the headphones, put the nose down and that's what I did, so I had this instinctive memory to put the nose down, it's extremely fast from when the engine shuts down to when you have to do it. Be flying the plane and the other thing I'll say is that it's really critical to keep flying the plane. Every fiber in your body wants to pull your nose back when you see the ground rushing towards you because it's coming faster. than normal, but in this case of the Mooney you have to maintain 70 knots and just slide it in and let it settle to land, all that training and I guess you reminded me that we went out in pretty sporty conditions.

I guess it was worth it and in fact, honestly, it's what saved our lives. If I had hesitated even a second's refraction, I'm pretty sure the plane would have stalled and we would have had another spin-stall accident. Statistically there were no injuries in our accident and no reason for arrest was ever determined. Our municipal accident was not as unusual as Muniz powered guided and aircraft equipped with the Bendix RS, a fuel system appears in a handful of accident reports by engine failures, while these reports often find no reason for the failure, many cite water pollution as the cause, whether the engine is equipped with RSA or not, there are four or

five

such accidents each year, so this reminds you of water tanks, always in an accident report that seems to have a little bit of everything.

Investigators also found the Moonies' fuel caps. These caps fit into a recess at the top of the wing with a locking lug to seal them. They have a rubber O-ring to prevent water from flowing into the tank, but if the O-ring is old or missing, they will not seal, they will also leak if the lid is not placed correctly. The NTSB found that the Oh rings on the crashed planes had recently been replaced, but there was no evidence that leaks had been verified when investigators tested the caps. when water was poured over them, they appeared to leak.

The case closed tightly, not completely, although the NTSB found no faults with the engine. The family of the victims of the Magneto accident sued Continental Motors. They are the ones who manufactured the magneto with the argument that the magneto had defective gaskets that caused the timing to slip stopping the engine the magneto in question is not a favorite of many pilots the Bendix demag case you are not familiar with Most aircraft engines have two Magnetos with independent drives the idea is that this improves reliability Bendix demag uses a single drive that incorporates both Magnetos in a single housing.

You can see why pilots don't like it. The jury didn't like it much either and awarded at least $9 million in damages to the victims of the Kansas City crash. family and in case you were wondering, our Mooney had conventional Magneto, not the devil, whatever the reason for the engine stalling, there are some WMD survival techniques here. ADM aeronautical decision making. ADM is, at the very least, about having as many options as possible. NTSB. I thought the pilots retracting the landing gear prematurely was an accident factor, but let's look at that if you just took off and the engine shuts down and you're at ten feet like the action or report says, are you really aware of if the landing gear is working? is up or down and how does that relate to the decision to land on the remaining runway?

In this accident, the pilot was halfway down a 5,000 foot runway and probably had enough runway to land, whether the gear was up or down. should be irrelevant, remember we are just trying to get out of this alive, the plane is expendable assured, as I pointed out in another video, gear up landings are almost one hundred percent survivable if you bring that fact on board ahead of time, it might inform a split second decision like this. One, if the track seems a little short, then leaving the train up will make the rollout much shorter, but you'll live to talk about it.

The pilot faced a difficult scenario of a dead engine suddenly coming 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 whether you like it or not, that's best survival decision, the engine died for a reason and it's best to find out why on the ground and then another quarter mile down. Even if the plane gets dented in the process, take it on board and it could inform your decision if this ever happens to you. The pilot accepted a takeoff at an intersection from the taxiway, giving up 1,500 feet of runway length.

I suspect the pilots are coming from the west ramp. in the center do this all the time and there are problems if there had been a parallel taxiway, I could have taxied to the end of 1/9 or crossed to the east side of 1/9 and in three minutes more taxi time would be at the beginning. from runway 1/9 for a full exit Aviation aphorisms usually annoy me, but one that rings true in this accident is that the three most useless things in aviation are the fuel left on the dirt runway behind you, at an altitude above you, when I first came out.

I read this accident report. I was trying to think of a circumstance where I would want less altitude rather than more on a takeoff. I didn't get anything. A full takeoff would have presented the pilot with 1,500 more feet of runway and a little more altitude, and that simply offers more options. That's not to say that there aren't good reasons for departures at intersections because there are, for example, you're taking off. behind a pair of airplanes, there is nothing wrong with trading the minor risk of a shorter runway length for

avoid

ing the wake turbulence of two airplanes reported ready to depart and take off at the intersection, so in this accident it may be true that contaminated fuel caused the stall or maybe it was the Magneto.

It really doesn't matter what caused the death, it was loss of control followed by a stall. There are about 60 stall accidents a year in general aviation and half of them occur on takeoffs. I put loss of control above all other factors, which is why an engine going out is not an automatic death sentence if you maintain control of the airplane. The chance of survival is much higher if it weren't absolutely insured here, the plane could have ended up in the river or on top of the flood control levees, or it would have been easier to survive than a stall spin, so this is where I deliver the clickbait title with one shot: off the survival checklist dip the water tanks, never jump over it never use all the available runway because well you never know if runway length is marginal, break the Poh and look at the performance tables, there are applications for this, the plane may just win.

Don't do what you want it to do. Think about what you will do if the engine dies and do it here.down, not up here. I have a plan. I have developed the habit of reminding myself on every takeoff that the engine will not shut down this time. and I'll be ready for the last practice as it will build that post-miss launch into muscle memory because if you do nothing else, simply launching the nose will keep you in the game for what comes next, a survivable landing, not a stall turn, Brad. Webb on Paul Berta rally thanks for watching