Flight Lesson: Just like you trained

Like many private pilots, I fly on and off. Since earning my instrument rating 8 months ago I’ve flown only 21 hours. Knowing this isn’t enough to maintain proficiency through experience alone, I practice as much as I can, read Flight Training, watch AOPA Air Safety Institute videos, browse Reddit posts, and watch YouTube videos. At just shy of 200 hours, I put that training to the test with my first aviation emergency.

The flying club’s Cessna 152 wasn’t booked that afternoon despite the calm, sunny day. My plan was to fly for an hour and practice maneuvers: stalls, steep turns, and—ironically—engine failure procedures.

The preflight and run-up were good and I departed from Runway 33 at Bangor International Airport (BGR) in Maine with the engine developing full power. Suddenly, I heard a loud bang, similar to a backfire, and immediately felt a strong vibration with a reduction in power. I think I paused about two seconds while I processed these events—and then my training kicked in. It felt almost routine.

“Departure, One-Six-Bravo returning to Bangor; we’re declaring an emergency,” I said. I had often played out scenarios such as this in my head and had decided to be proactive in declaring an emergency.

I was a little over 2,000 feet agl now and had partial power. Pitch for glide, throttle full. I turned back around for the two-mile runway I’d just left behind me.

“Cessna One-Six-Bravo, roger. Wind one-niner-zero at niner and would you like to land Runway One-Five?”

I continued with my practiced motions: Carb heat On, mixture rich, magnetos on Both, check fuel On, oil pressure and temperature good. Adding power made the engine rougher and the field was made so I reduced power for the descent.

“Uh, we’ll do [Runway] Three-Three. I think I lost a cylinder,” I said. “She started vibrating pretty bad, but I have partial power so I can take her around to Three-Three and I’ll land One-Five if needed.”

Aviate, navigate, communicate. Unfortunately there is a hidden step: think. I had taken off in a calm wind but in that short time the wind was now favoring the opposite runway. I had departed Runway 33 so I didn’t think anything else but that I should land on 33. It took another prompting from the controller that Runway 15 was both closer and more favorable. Lesson learned: Always take a moment to pause and think things through.

I made a gentle base-to-final turn, selected full flaps over the approach lights, made a smooth landing, and turned off the runway. Other than the parade of fire trucks, it felt like a normal landing.

We initially thought the airplane had a stuck valve. I’ve since learned that lead fouling becomes conductive at high temperatures. Apparently because of some bad leaning practices by other club pilots, the engine had built up enough lead that during my climb it shorted out some of the plugs, causing a cylinder to fail to fire and resulting in the vibration and loss of power.

Reflecting back, I realized all my training and studying had paid off. Just because you can’t get in the airplane every week doesn’t mean you can’t be proficient—and when you are in the airplane, keep learning and practicing. You never know when it will be needed on your next “routine” emergency.