Pilots

When you look at Joe Castanza in the light of a late summer's day, you can make out the faint scars etched across his forehead like torn tissue paper. And this New Jersey-based flight instructor knows a lot about engines — more than your average CFI, to be sure; he knows, for instance, how to burn off the carbon from the plugs by leaning the mixture during the runup. And therein lies this tale.

It was back in 1999, in July. On a Monday, Castanza, with 297 hours in his logbook, took his commercial checkride and passed it. That Friday, he started instrument lessons with his flight instructor, Neil Tucker, a native of Australia. They were taking off from Newton Airport, near Newton, New Jersey, in a 1964 Cessna 210. Castanza, in the left seat, had just put the hood on and was flying the airplane. "All of a sudden Neil says, 'I got it.' So I think there's traffic and so I said, 'Traffic?' and Neil says, 'No,'" Castanza recalls. "Neil says, 'I've got oil on the windscreen.'"

Castanza pulled off his hood, and sure enough, it looked like someone was out there hosing oil all over the screen. So he looked over at Tucker. "If you'd never been flying before you would have thought that every time you took off you will have oil spraying on the windscreen," he says now. "It was very reassuring."

The two began discussing what to do next. They decided to leave in the 10 degrees of flaps — retracting them would mean a loss of lift. Castanza told Tucker that they should back the throttle off to climb power, to eke as much altitude as possible out of the 210 while delaying engine failure, so Tucker pulled the throttle and the propeller back, but the rpm kept declining. They were at an altitude of 120 feet, and the engine was giving up the ghost. Tucker reapplied full power and full rpm. The power kicked in beautifully, but "we were losing rpm at the prop level," Castanza says. Castanza suggested they retract the landing gear, which Tucker thought would be a bad idea — the gear doors on a 210 are closed when the gear is down, and they open to bring the gear up — which would create more drag. Tucker began a turn to avoid power lines, and hopefully to turn back to the field. "He made a beautiful landing — right in the tops of the trees," Castanza recalls.

And he admits it still would have worked perfectly, if it had not been for one very tall tree. It sheered off the left wing. The 210 spiraled down the tree and landed on its left side, a little nose-down. The 210 didn't have a shoulder harness, but it did have a lap belt, which was bolted into the seat, which rested in rather frail seat tracks. "I never left the seat," he says, "but the seat and I went face-forward into the instrument panel." Castanza broke his nose, his jaw, four ribs, shattered his sinuses, and fractured his skull in at least seven places. His right eye popped out of its socket. Tucker, who had broken his shoulder, dragged Castanza from the wreckage and dialed 911 on his cell phone. In minutes a medevac helicopter arrived to fly Castanza to Morristown's hospital. His parents were told he probably would not survive. He was administered the last rites.

Of course, no one asked Castanza. In just three days he walked out of the hospital — with some help, naturally — which he attributes to his new-found faith and his flight instructor's at-ease attitude during the crash. "I was relaxed, not at all uptight. If I hadn't been, the doctors said I would have died on impact."

A plastic surgeon was at the hospital when he arrived. His jaw was wired shut for the next two and a half months. He sustained himself with chocolate milk and chicken broth through a straw. But he was alive. Yet, he had one thing he had to do: He knew he had to get back on the horse. Just over one month after the accident he got his friend J.D. Darrah to take him flying. "I admit I was starting to get my demons," he remembers. "I was very apprehensive when I got in the cockpit, but once the engine started I was fine with it."

He was so fine with it that he got his instrument rating in November 1999, then he earned his CFI in March 2000 and his commercial multiengine instrument ticket that August. In fact, he just broke the 1,200-hour mark. The accident's still under investigation, but Castanza's gotten on with his life. "When I got my first student I fell in love with instructing. I would fly the majors, but I would still instruct on the side. And," he adds, "I'm very much into teaching emergency procedures."