Never Again

It was my airplane, my sweat oozing between my fingers on the yoke, and I was officially pilot in command. But the folly of allowing someone else — someone with a completely different view of mortality — to influence my decisions became glaringly obvious.

Jack and I had flown together for the past nine months as volunteer pilots for a medical transport organization. While it was compassion that moved us to fly for this group, it was the thrill of going to new places and blasting off into new and challenging weather possibilities that fed our appetite for excitement. Each flight became a lesson, and every successful hour logged raised our bar of courage to a level that could only be exceeded by another flight.

It was understood, however, that we would never fly one of our patients into a situation that could be even remotely hazardous. Nevertheless, we didn't consider it unreasonable to push the envelope a bit on the deadhead legs of each flight. It's not as though either of us were risk takers, but as one tends to be lulled into a false sense of security, the comfort of having another pilot on board gave us the confidence to do things we would scarcely try alone.

Our plan on this particular day was to fly my Cessna 182 VFR from our home base in eastern Washington to Portland, Oregon. Once there, we would transport a cancer victim to her home near the Canadian border. But as the weather has a tendency to do in these parts, the cerulean sky of autumn had already turned ominously gray, and the winds were beginning to howl out of the west. Therefore, we planned to angle south, under a 3,000-foot ceiling until we reached Oregon. Then we would turn west to shoot the Columbia River Gorge as the clouds pinched us lower.

Flight service painted a very marginal picture that day; but it was VFR, nonetheless. They reported a ceiling of 3,000 feet over Spokane, and 2,000 feet near the Washington-Oregon border; and as we reached each checkpoint, we were comforted to find that the ceilings were exactly as reported. However, as the overcast began to force us lower near Hood River, Oregon, visibility had degraded to the point where Jack and I could hardly agree on the range. He called it simply an "area of reduced visibility." However, I considered it pure instrument meteorological conditions.

At that point, realizing that continued VFR was no longer viable, and that IFR had its own risks to consider, I informed Jack that I was turning back.

"Turning back?!" he exclaimed with a bold tone. "No way! We've never stranded a patient yet, and I don't think it would be a good idea to give up now — at least until we play out a few options. Besides," he continued, "we can always file IFR."

Looking at him with an annoyed slant to my frown, I argued, "Climbing over the Cascades, through ice-infested cumulus, doesn't sound much like an option!" Keeping one eye on the vanishing terrain, and the other on the center of the debate, I continued to argue for a few short moments. Then, realizing that Jack was not going to acquiesce to my wishes, that is, without moving our discussion into the physical realm of persuasion, I felt that it would simply be easier to keep pushing through the muck.

However, as the altimeter continued its counterclockwise rotation, cold flashes of desperation and a hint of panic began to riddle my confidence. Affected by the flood of adrenaline that was now coursing through my veins, I began to call out our altitude — "Eight hundred, seven hundred, six; we're at five hundred feet, Jack!" — as I flew the Skylane lower. And although I had reached my limit of excitement several miles back, I was wondering just how low we would have to go before Jack's nerve ran out.

A dozen sweat-inducing minutes later, as the gorge sandwiched us between its jagged ridges, I noticed that Jack finally had begun to grow uneasy. Keying the mic, he made a hurried call to flight watch. But with the exception of a report from Portland-Troutdale Airport (some 15 miles downriver) reporting 1,200 feet and six miles in rain, we had no idea what to expect within the void that lay ahead.

Clearly, by this time my copilot's resolve was growing fragile but was not quite broken. Realizing then that my case might find a less hostile listener, I asked him how he was doing.

"Fine!" he snapped back. "But I'm a little worried that we might meet another airplane in one of these narrow canyons."

But knowing that there couldn't possibly be another pilot so foolhardy, I mentioned that my concern was the power lines and other obstructions.

Startled at the notion, his anxiety deepened. "Power lines?!" he blurted. "Oh [expletive], I forgot about those. Let me check," he said as his eyes frantically scanned a sectional, between hurried glances of the canyon walls for electrical towers.

I continued my oral commentary of the altimeter. As I called out 400 feet, we descended deeper into the gorge — at an elevation that put us just above a highway off my left wing. Another cloud engulfed us. I banked to the left to follow a truck I could see through the hazy mist. And suddenly, behind a ridge I was turning along, several large smokestacks materialized out of the opaque vapor.

The sight of the ominous towers just ahead and slightly above our flight path stirred a reserve of self-preservation I didn't know existed deep within my gut. Reacting instinctively, I did what I should have done long before and asserted the authority that the term pilot in command empowers one with: "I've got the airplane!" I yelled though I'd been flying all along. Jack's face turned to reveal his surprise (and maybe a little relief that I was finally taking responsibility for the flight). "Are we clear on the right?"

"Uhhh, yes," he stammered.

Then, nursing the throttle and slowing the airplane in a lumbering attempt to decrease the arc of our turn, I banked hard to the right into a forested area that appeared to have enough clear air between the churning gray overcast and the terrain below. With one wing cutting through the base of the clouds and the other just yards from the treetops, my eyes darted from the airspeed indicator to the dim images of the muted trees laced in fog.

Not sure of what was just beyond my field of view, I leaned forward and craned my neck to peer past the upper edge of the windscreen. Straining to see something, anything, that could warn me of an impending impact, my eyes struggled to pull identifiable images through the torrent of gray and green as it panned down and across my front window.

I pushed on the yoke, then pulled gently to null the effects of treacherous canyon air currents. The stall warning horn sounded intermittently, the ball swung wildly, and my airspeed indicator fluctuated like a decibel meter at a rock concert. One moment the cockpit would flash a heavenly shade of white as we penetrated the luff of a cloud; the next, my front window would immediately fill with the eerie scene of a murky, misted forest. Making a simple turn to reverse course had never been so important, yet never so difficult to execute.

As I gasped a final lungful of air, and waited for the airplane to tumble into a ball of fire and twisted metal, the forest abruptly began to fall away.

As we leveled off, the revelation that we may have gotten away with something very foolish surged through every capillary. Making our way back to the center of the river, the thinner clouds that marked our egress allowed the sun to lead us back through the gauntlet from which we had just come. Silence filled the cabin for the next five minutes. I think Jack and I needed time to say a silent prayer; or maybe it was just that we were both embarrassed for our different reasons for nearly coming to the same end. His, of course, for not listening to me when I wanted to turn back, and mine for not demanding it.

Until that day I could not understand what would possess a trained flight crew to fly an airplane into the ground — there must be as many reasons to err as there are pilots, I contemplated. Yet, much was learned in that fragile moment, when adrenaline and panic compressed a lifetime of experiences into a single second. When I feared my next breath would be my last, I suddenly realized that two pilots don't make a flight safer; that is, not if both are willing to allow testosterone and pride to rule over common sense.

Doug Atherton, AOPA 5200727, is an instrument-rated private pilot who flies for business and as a volunteer pilot for a medical relief organization.

"Never Again" is presented to enhance safety by providing a forum for pilots to learn from the experiences of others. Manuscripts should be typewritten, double-spaced, and sent to: Editor, AOPA Pilot, 421 Aviation Way, Frederick, Maryland 21701; or sent via e-mail to [email protected].

See an online index of "Never Again" articles published in AOPA Pilot ( www.aopa.org/members/files/pilot/idxna.html). Additional information on VFR flight into IMC also is available on AOPA Online ( www.aopa.org/pilot/links.shtml).