McMURPHY'S LAWYER
McMURPHY’S LAWYER
I have flown daily for years at a time without an actual takeoff emergency, and I’ve experienced two in one hour – twice. The first gotcha of the second pair is described below.
On this day a stiff crosswind 90 degrees from the left would have discouraged many pilots from flying at all. The point is, after you launch in perfect weather, that can change and oblige you to land in conditons that are far more difficult. So difficult landings are well worth training for. I convinced the tow pilot this was a good opportunity, and of course my student (for better or worse) was inclined to agree with his instructor. Before moving onto the runway the three of us conducted a thorough briefing – but it’s impossible to fully prepare for dynamics you’re unaware of.
Our launch was getting under way, student on the controls with me talking fast as I could, but before either aircraft broke ground the wind delivered a knuckly backhand. As we passed the midfield windsock it jumped so wildly I glanced over and saw it indicating a sudden tailwind. If we'd expected that, we would never have started. Less than a second later I was looking forward again – to find the tow plane in a steep bank with its windward wheel and wingtip on the ground! We cut loose at once and the tug leapt away to safety in the air.
Exactly what happened? As we neared the moment of liftoff, the tow pilot was correctly holding left stick so the crosswind couldn’t raise that wing and flip him over. Then struck by new wind from behind, his bird weather-vaned left. That sharp yaw caused the right wing to rise before he could respond. It's easy to imagine that our hasty release prevented the tow plane from wadding itself into a terribly expensive, potentially explosive ball with the pilot trapped inside.
BUT, YOU ASK…
How could the tailwind reach him before us? It took a couple years for the full meaning of that event to soak through thick, dense bone and finally reach my brain. For a tailwind to overtake either craft while we're moving forward, it must come from above, and in this instance the downdraft happened to bottom out between our two ships as we rolled up the runway. It pushed down and forward on the tow plane's tail while giving us a brief pulse of headwind, so for a moment both craft acted like they wanted to fly. Meanwhile though, the air all around us was descending; we were ‘launching’ into the foot of an invisible waterfall...
Examples abound of quick, positive action averting disaster. One such story that I didn't witness is told in trenchant detail by the tow pilot, a long-ago student of mine. Moments after liftoff, his aircraft was rolled by a violent rotor, inverted. Again, the glider pilot released immediately. This reduction of drag gave the tow plane sufficient energy for a brief climb – upside down – before entering what amounted to an inverted split-S toward lower ground. He pulled out, upright, in a brushy swale below the level of the runway.
A young father’s life was spared that day.
These are situations where an instant abort is the only smart choice, ugly as the immediate landing might be. Otherwise you wait an unbelieving moment or two, then realize it's too late to abort and there's no option left but to hang on, hoping for some kind of divine intervention. Blind luck is splendid if you can arrange for it, but including that as part of your flight plan is like quitting your job because you expect to win the lottery.
(And remember, our story here was the first of two emergencies – we were scheduled for another one, unbeknownst, just minutes later...)