If you look into the root cause of most aircraft accidents, I believe you can probably boil it down to three things: complacency, haste, and incompetence. I experienced all three of these one morning in north Florida. I am a flight instructor with more than 3,000 hours, and I owned a Cessna 150 that I often used to commute from my home base to an airport 20 miles to the northeast. I was teaching for an FBO at this destination airport.
One morning I had car problems, and I knew the owner of the FBO was not going to be happy if I showed up late for my student. So I hastily untied my 150 and thought about the preflight, but I had just flown the day before and I believed everything was good to go.
I jumped in, fired up the engine, and took off.
The takeoff was normal, with the wind right down the runway. At 400 feet agl, I tried to put in some left aileron and to my surprise, the control wheel would not move. I looked at the left wing and realized that I had forgotten to remove the gust lock. The left aileron was firmly attached to the left flap by two pieces of padded plywood. The only bank control I had was by using the rudder.
Landing in any kind of a crosswind would be very interesting, to say the least. I tried jerking the control wheel to loosen the control lock, but to no avail. My options at this point were to return to my home field or head for my destination. I chose my destination and I hoped there would not be a crosswind. In addition, this field had emergency equipment and bigger runways.
I guess luck was on my side. As I reached my destination, the wind was right on the nose at five knots. I ruddered the 150 onto final and made a good no-flap landing. At this point, I was very happy to be back on the ground—and lucky to have completed this flight without an accident.
I relearned several good lessons from this experience. First, don’t get complacent. Although you might have done the same things 500 times, don’t get lazy this time. Do it correctly, and by the book—flying demands respect.
Second, don’t ever hurry or skip your preflight under any circumstances. Any problem, it goes without saying, is easier to catch and fix on the ground.
Finally, always use your checklist for the preflight, runup, takeoff, and any other areas where it can be of use.
One of my former flight instructors told me that when you fly, you have a little bag of luck that sits next to you in the cockpit. Every time you do something foolish, stupid, crazy, or reckless, you take some of the luck from the bag. When the bag is empty, then you’re out of luck and you will have an accident or incident. I guess I still have some luck left in my bag.
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