Training and Safety

Fears of Flying: Lost Over the Pacific

BY KAMRAN TEHRANI

"Socal Approach, Arrow Seven-Six-Two-Six is somewhere over the water between Catalina and the mainland. I believe our navigation equipment has malfunctioned and we seem to be lost...."

Those were my words to a Los Angeles area controller as I desperately tried to determine our position over the water in relation to the gigantic Los Angeles Class B airspace.

Our flying day had started mid-morning on Sunday, when my friend — a two-hour student — asked me to go up with him and show him some basic maneuvers. Since I am not an instructor, I told him that he wouldn't be able to log any of the flight time. He agreed, and we departed Torrance Municipal Airport in the only rental available that day, a 180-horsepower Piper Arrow.

A few minutes later, we arrived over the practice area and I put my 500-hour commercial, multiengine, instrument ticket to use and demonstrated to my friend shallow and steep turns, various stalls, and slow flight. After playing around over the Pacific for about 70 minutes, we proceeded to the nearby island of Santa Catalina. My friend was excited about the fact that it had taken us 10 minutes to fly there, versus nearly 2 hours by boat.

We toured the town of Avalon for a couple of hours and decided to head back to our home airport at Torrance. By now, I was getting the "nothing-can-happen-to-this-pilot" feeling. We performed a quick runup and departed the island. As soon as the mains left the runway, a gush of air poured in the cockpit as a result of the cabin door's being ajar.

Knowing that most Pipers fly well with the door ajar, I decided not to return to the airport, but rather to try to close the door over the ocean. However, it wouldn't close, no matter what I tried. I noticed that the landmarks I was expecting to see on the mainland after our departure from Catalina were not visible because of a dense haze layer. I tuned in the Seal Beach VOR, which is located 15 miles east of Torrance and had my friend point the nose in its general direction.

Everything seemed normal. The course deviation indicator was centered, and the "To" flag was pointing towards the station, but I noticed that our overwater leg had become dramatically longer.

I became alarmed, knowing that something was awry, especially when I noticed the DME counting away from the station. Yet my heading indicator, the OBS and its "To" flag all indicated that I was heading in the right direction.

By now I knew that we were lost in potentially dangerous airspace. An undercast had begun to form, and we lost sight of the ocean below. I tuned in the Los Angeles VOR; based on the DME, we were either 40 miles to the south or to the north of it, with the DME indicating an increase in distance as we flew in what appeared to be a northerly direction.

The loud sound of air coming through the door and the sickly feeling of being lost — not to mention the fear of a possible Class B airspace violation — all helped to distract me further. This is when I made my call to the controller to report our dire situation and get radar help. The helpful gentleman couldn't pinpoint our location and asked me to squawk 7700 (emergency). He also pointed out higher traffic to me, to see whether I could spot it.

I have never felt more embarrassed in my whole life than I did at that moment. There was the compass indicating a heading, reciprocal of what was on my heading indicator. This 500-hour pilot with 100 hours of instrument flight experience was going the wrong way because he had forgotten to set the heading two hours prior.

As soon as I corrected the heading problem, everything fell into place and I realized that we had wandered east of our course, which kept us clear of any special-use airspace. My friend had been really quiet all this time, and I apologized to him for having set such a bad example and hoped he also had learned as much from this mishap as I had. Since this incident, I have created an abbreviated checklist that covers all necessities for return trips of short flights.

Incidentally, we still beat the boats (even with our door open).

Kamran Tehrani is a systems engineer who has an instrument rating and has logged 500 flight hours in eight years of flying both single- engine and multiengine aircraft.