In-Flight Emergencies

Making the most of a bad attitude

How many times have you accidentally been upside down? Never, for most of you. It is difficult to believe it could ever happen to you. But a little ice on the wings, a lot of turbulence from an airliner, winds tumbling across mountain ranges, an autopilot gone berserk — any of these could cause an unwelcome attitude.

If you fly in the eastern half of the country, then the worst you've experienced is turbulence along the Appalachians. But pilots who fly out West — especially near mountainous areas — have at least heard of violent upsets happening, and may even have experienced it.

Spins get their fair share of publicity, but this article is primarily about extreme attitudes not involving spins. On your back and headed down, for example. Extreme attitudes are ones involving more than 25 degrees of pitch up, or 10 degrees of pitch down, or more than 45 degrees of bank. For the inexperienced, the most confusing aspect of an extreme unusual attitude may involve heavier G forces.

Other things contribute to the chaos of an unexpected upset. Negative Gs throw your feet awkwardly from the rudder pedals as though riding a roller coaster; hands flail in an effort to reach flight and engine controls. The passengers may scream, causing distractions. Coats and pens, papers and portable GPS receivers, suitcases and laptop computers tumble as though inside a clothes dryer. If you were loosely belted when the upset occurred, you may not be able to reach the controls at all.

Instinctively, most pilots thrown on their back begin to pull on the elevator to keep the aircraft from going down. In a perfect world, pulling back equals up. But if the aircraft is already upside down, then it is easy to understand, sitting as you are in the comfort of your living room, that pulling plunges the aircraft towards the ground in a split-S maneuver. Pulling is also a mistake if the aircraft is not upside down, but in a steep bank; it leads to an accelerated stall.

In 1986, Michael Matthews, owner of Aviation Investment and Management in Carlsbad, California, suddenly found his turbocharged Piper Arrow in knife-edge flight at 300 feet during an approach to Palm Springs, California. The passenger was terrified. G forces made it difficult for Matthews to remove his hand from the yoke and place it on the throttle. A thermal had rocked his boat, so to speak, although surface winds were manageable at 20 knots right down the runway. But it was a 100-degree-Fahrenheit August day.

Matthews had taken only a few aerobatic lessons before that flight, but had rolled upright from knife-edge many times. He did so this time, continued the approach, and made a safe landing. A pilot not trained in emergency maneuvering might have started pulling back on the yoke, resulting in no improvement in altitude (the frightened pilot's intent) and creating the potential for an accelerated stall.

Palm Springs tower controllers report that moderate turbulence (by small aircraft standards) is normal, especially in October and November, and there are occasional occurrences of severe turbulence. There are days when the winds are 25 kt, but all the windsocks point at one another. It is not unusual for winds to hit 60 kt.

While an upset close to the ground during approach is the most dangerous, those at cruise altitude can be equally frightening.

Mark Huber, who writes occasionally for Pilot, was flying a Grob aerobatic aircraft over Colorado a few years ago when he encountered mountain turbulence. The aerobatics-trained pilot found that he was quickly going inverted despite opposing aileron.

"I decided the best way to go was to go all the way around," Huber said. He completed a 360-degree roll and returned to level cruise.

Sometimes the upset can be caused by the need to avoid a midair collision. Two aircraft approaching on opposing runways some years ago at Dutchess County Airport in Poughkeepsie, New York, both decided to go around. One aircraft, a Cessna 150, carried a student and instructor Dan Gates. The two aircraft were about to collide above the intersection of the two runways, both with full flaps and at slow airspeeds. Gates used his aerobatic training and racked the Cessna 150 into a 90-degree bank, saving the day. Emergency maneuver training includes handling the aircraft at slow speeds in landing configuration.

In another incident, a check pilot was flying with a regional airline pilot — also at Poughkeepsie — in a Beech 99 practicing a rejected landing on one engine. Witnesses said one wing dropped, placing the airplane in a 90-degree bank. With the lift now vectored toward the control tower, the aircraft began a slow turn toward the tower cab. Controllers ducked under their consoles. The check pilot, who also had aerobatic experience, recovered just above the ground, adding the proper amount of rudder to the student's heavy aileron pressure. Upon landing, the check pilot made a point of thanking his former aerobatic instructors at Mudry Aviation on the field. That was years ago, and Mudry Aviation has since relocated to Bunnell, Florida, and still offers unusual attitude recovery training. The school is run by Montaine Mallet and Daniel Heligoin, the well-known French Connection airshow performers.

Another example comes from the Texas Air Aces school near Houston. In 1995, the pilot of a Beech Bonanza taking off from David Wayne Hooks Airport in Spring, Texas, found himself prop to prop with a landing Cessna 172. Because of an error the tower had cleared the Cessna 172 to land head-on toward the Bonanza which was just rotating. The Cessna 172 was cutting the corner from base to final. (Perhaps the Cessna 172 was simulating an engine-out emergency.) The tower directed the Bonanza shortly after rotation into a turn that would place it in the Cessna's path. The Bonanza pilot rolled back to the right, but the frightened Cessna pilot turned toward the Bonanza's new flight path. The startled Bonanza pilot momentarily increased his bank to 105 degrees, going slightly inverted close to the ground. But he had an advantage: He had taken the Ad-vanced Maneuvering Training (AMT) course offered by the ex-military pilots of Texas Air Aces, also based at Hooks Airport. The Bonanza pilot used light top rudder to conserve altitude and recovered from the bank, averting three problems — the midair, an accelerated stall, and a pull into the ground.

USAIG, the insurance company, has approved the AMT course at Texas Air Aces as one of the follow-up recurrency programs its clients may take for credit toward better rates. (USAIG policies are offered through the AOPA Insurance Agency.)

"Emergency maneuver training helps pilots to realize how quickly they can get into a desperate situation if they have not experienced that phenomenon before," said Don Sharp, USAIG's Dallas branch manager.

According to the book Emergency Maneuver Training by Rich Stowell, emergency maneuver training got its start with instructor Sammy Mason in coordination with former Lockheed chief test pilot Tony LeVier. LeVier was offering scholarships for such training. In 1987, CP Aviation in Santa Paula, California, took over Mason's training. The course was revised because it was considered to be too much like aerobatic training, and became CP Aviation's current Emergency Maneuver Training program.

The type of courses offered nationwide vary from specially designed attitude recovery to full aerobatic training. Former national aerobatic champion Mike Goulian has devised a course especially for jet pilots. He teaches at Executive Flyers Aviation, owned by his father in Bedford, Massachusetts.

The upset training required to make a pilot safe (ATP or otherwise) is not that intense, Goulian says. It starts by making the pilot understand what actually makes an aircraft get into that situation in the first place (wake turbulence, dying attitude gyro, ice on wings) and how to avoid it. "You would be surprised by the many people who actually don't understand the theory behind wake turbulence or how to 'fly around' it," Goulian said. Montaine Mallet agrees. "You can never show exactly all the bad situations one might get into. Some pilots think that flying some aerobatics with an instructor and having it logged is going to make them safe by osmosis. It is hard sometimes to make them understand what the problem is, recognize the bad situation, and react to it. Practice makes perfect."

After the initial ground school, Goulian puts the student in an aerobatic-approved aircraft and starts with steep turns and stalls of all types. If the pilot still has the stomach for it, an aileron roll is done just for fun before heading back.

The next flight consists of unusual attitudes and inverted recoveries. Flying an unusual attitude is something most jet pilots have only done in a simulator. He has them pitch the nose up 50 degrees, and at the onset of a stall, the student is instructed to bank the plane 70 degrees and just let the nose fall to the horizon before leveling the wings. Finally, the instructor simulates rolls to inverted and the student recovers.

The government considers upset training a valuable addition to pilot-recurrency courses. The FBI, for example, sends pilots to Chandler Air Service in Chandler, Arizona, for a 10-hour program. "The course starts with beginning aerobatics as a way of teaching recovery from unusual attitudes and upsets, with a cross-section of the basic aerobatic maneuvers, and then progresses into the spin program and stall/spin scenarios," said John Walkup of Chandler Air Service. FBI agents are taught that often the best solution to an unexpected roll is to keep rolling 360 degrees back to the upright position. They are taught, however, not to push or pull on the elevators during the roll.

You may want to know how to recover from emergency upsets, but have no interest in aerobatics. If that is the case, ask the flight school to customize the course a bit, but you'll still need to feel the onset of Gs. You don't want to meet Mr. G alone some night in a dark aerodynamic alley.

A list of schools offering emergency maneuver training can be obtained by calling the International Aerobatic Club at 920/426-6881, or e-mailing a request to [email protected]. Links to previous articles on emergency maneuvers and aerobatic training along with other links can be found on AOPA Online ( www.aopa.org/pilot/links/links9908.shtml). E-mail the author at [email protected].