Any flight that goes exactly as planned is something of a surprise. Pilots strive for that "perfect flight," but in the real world of the National Airspace System, things seldom work out quite the way we anticipate. We count on that, however, and, if we're doing the job properly, leave ourselves "outs." We make sure we have plenty of fuel to compensate for unforeseen delays; we have alternate airports and routings in mind should weather not develop as expected; we carefully inspect the airplane before departure to satisfy ourselves that it is airworthy. Yet despite the steps we take to assure that we will not be confronted with any disagreeable surprises in flight, things sometimes go wrong. Aircraft components fail without warning, and weather (particularly bad weather) is seldom exactly as forecast. Personal experience in recent months has borne out that unforeseen events do take place, regardless of the safeguards we practice. One event was relatively benign, one was potentially disastrous.
The weather was perfect for the early morning flight from Maryland to Raleigh-Durham International. We refueled the Piper Saratoga, picked up a passenger, and made the short hop to Smithfield, North Carolina. Deplaning there, we noticed a pale blue stain stretching back across the right wing from the fuel cap, indicating that we had leaked a small amount of fuel on the flight from RDU. This came as a disagreeable surprise: The leak was not visible from the cabin, and we had inspected the cap after refueling. Of course I include the fuel gauges in my instrument scan, but I only fully trust a fuel gauge when it reads full and has been visually confirmed.
I don't like to think what the outcome might have been had our flight been considerably longer, especially if it had to be made in instrument weather conditions or at night. In such a case, the discrepancy between what the gauge would read and what we would reasonably expect it to read could create the kind of distraction that, if not resolved, might lead to a dangerous situation. In this case, the outcome was benign: We had the FBO check the cap and its gasket before further flight, and I resolved to inspect the caps even more carefully in the future. We add such experiences to our memory banks for future reference.
On another flight, the surprise was more disagreeable. Of the four people aboard the Saratoga (the same one), all were pilots. Senior Editor Tom Haines and I occupied the front seats, while our colleagues Bill Gruber and Chuck Berry, an AOPA Air Safety Foundation instrument instructor, relaxed in the back. We were enroute from Oshkosh to Maryland. A weak cold front stretched across the Ohio Valley, and while the Weather Channel showed a band of "strong storms," flight service had assured us that these were scattered.
As we crossed Lake Michigan, Flight Watch was reporting heavy thunderstorms northeast of Detroit, well clear of our route. An undercast rose across Michigan, and by the time we reached the Michigan/Ohio border, we were in and out of building cumulus. The Stormscope, set on its maximum range, showed distant activity 45 degrees right and 30 degrees left of the nose. We cleared the display regularly to keep the data fresh. Everything was pretty much as expected.
The first indication that all was not as it appeared came when Toledo Approach advised that a Center Weather Advisory for Level 3 to 4 thunderstorms had been issued for an area about 80 nm south of our route. Toledo told airplanes in that area, "All deviations approved." I asked the controller if he was painting any weather along our airway, and he said no.
Haines then checked with Flight Watch, which reported no significant weather along our route all the way to Maryland and no pilot reports. We filed a pirep, returned to Toledo Approach, and were almost immediately handed off to the next controller, just as we crossed Mansfield Vortac in mid-Ohio at 7,000 feet.
We were in cloud when it happened, moments later. Suddenly, it became very dark, the rain started, and the Stormscope lit up at all ranges in all quadrants. I was just opening my mouth to say something pithy, like "Oh-oh," when we were thumped by the first turbulence. The vertical speed indicator needle shot up, passing 1,000 fpm on its way to 1,300 fpm. The rain almost instantaneously became extremely heavy, and lightning began to flash around us. I let the passengers enjoy the ride and concentrated on keeping the wings and pitch attitude level. Passing through 7,300 feet, I asked the controller for a block altitude.
I had turned on the pitot heat and slowed the airplane to maneuvering speed before entering the clouds, so it was mainly a matter of hanging onto the yoke — with both hands — and riding it out. I did accept Haines's offer to reduce power to slow the airplane further, but I elected to leave the gear in the wells, as I was not interested in introducing another variable into the equation.
As we reached 7,700 feet, we hit the shear zone separating the upward- flowing from the downward-moving air columns. It was a kick in the pants, to say the least, as unsecured objects headed for the ceiling and the VSI needle headed for the floor, finally coming to rest on a 1,500-fpm rate of descent.
As we passed 7,000 feet on the way down, the controller offered us a block from 7,000 to 8,000. "We'll need a thousand feet below, too," I advised.
"Below, too?" The controller sounded like he had just gotten a disagreeable surprise but gave us the block. We descended, still under reasonably good control in pitch and roll, to about 6,500 feet before popping out of the downdraft. Shortly, the rain and lightning stopped, the sky lightened, and the Stormscope's display went blank in the sector ahead of us. We climbed back to 7,000 feet, canceled the block, and informed the controller of the previously unreported weather. And that was that. A moment later, we were dear of clouds on the leading edge of the front. Surprisingly, we had never strayed more than 10 degrees off our heading.
The rest of the flight was routine but quiet, each of us busy with our own thoughts. I can't speak for the others, but I ruminated on mortality and blessed Piper's engineers for designing a very stout airplane. An hour and a half later, as we tied it down, water was trickling out of every cranny of the now very clean airframe.
Haines and I have dissected every minute of this flight and our preflight planning. We have consulted weather experts, whose opinion it is that we had simply found ourselves at exactly the right place at precisely the right time to witness a thunderstorm reach critical mass. It was an educational experience, but not one I would care to repeat. Yet I don't know what I would do differently.
The point of recurrent training is to ready us to take disagreeable surprises in stride and deal with them appropriately. Many situations, however, cannot be simulated. Our training, if properly accomplished, ingrains behavior patterns that allow us to successfully cope with events for which prior experience has not prepared us. It enables us to keep disagreeable surprises from having disagreeable outcomes.
The perfect flight is an idle fantasy. Occasional surprises keep us sharp. Besides, without them, flying — and life — would become dull.
