Never Again: Soul searching

I had taken my Piper Meridian M500 in for some minor avionics maintenance. Walking toward the airplane for my preflight to take the airplane home, I noticed from a distance that something did not look right around the tail area, but I thought I would look closer when I worked my way to behind the airplane. I then became distracted by a phone call that required me to go into the FBO, sign a document then send it as a fax. After that, I was further distracted by paying for fuel. Then I ran into another pilot I knew and talked for a few minutes. I had been distracted three times.

Much later, and out of my routine, I walked back to the front of the airplane, looking to see the fuel caps, tires, chocks, propeller, and inlets all were good to go. I got in the airplane, fired up, and set it up for takeoff based primarily on common memory items: Check voltage, fuel, flaps, lights, set trims (to be more accurate, I set one trim, the rudder). I got my clearance, and then taxied to take off. I did not notice that apparently during maintenance, someone one had run the elevator to the full nose-up position. Amazingly, I had routinely set the rudder trim but not the elevator trim (which seldom needs any significant adjustment).

I pushed the throttle forward. The PT6 powered up flawlessly as expected. Then the takeoff “routine” quickly turned into an emergency. The airplane almost immediately became uncontrollable in the climb. As soon as I left the ground, the airplane went into an extreme nose-up position. I could not push it over and I could not see the runway. I guess the crosswind may have exacerbated my drift to the left toward the infield grass. I could not think fast enough to understand what was happening.

Realizing I did not have enough strength to force the nose down, I reduced the power. The stall warning was blaring, in my vision was only sky. Then at least some of my training kicked in and I landed straight ahead. The thought hit me that I should not leave the airplane in the grass and tie up the airport. I decided to move the condition lever forward, reintroducing fuel, assuming for some (illogical) reason the engine would magically re-light and I would calmly taxi back to the FBO. At that point, I noted some smoke and flames coming out of right side of the airplane.

It subsided quickly. In the aftermath, there were no structural issues with the airplane. The grass was smooth. Nothing buckled, nothing hit, the prop did not strike the ground. We learned, however, there had been an engine over-temp—but I was told it was likely insignificant. Since then, I found out “insignificant” means at minimum a $6,000 letter from Pratt & Whitney that states it was probably “insignificant” or $50,000 to prove it. I chose the latter because I wanted confirmation there was nothing wrong. I feel extremely fortunate it did not end up worse than it did.

After the incident, I almost was in a state of shock. When I got home an hour later, my heart rate was still over 100 beats per minute and stayed at that rate for several more hours. Needless to say, I did not sleep well that night.

I have read many articles about pilots who have had accidents. I now realize it’s a whole lot easier to casually speculate on “what I might have done” from the comfort of a plush lounge chair than struggling in the cockpit of an out-of-control aircraft. I would guess few of us know how we will react when we are confronted with the adrenaline rush and subsequent panic of an airplane that is not performing as expected. I will never again smugly postulate “what was that pilot thinking” or criticize their thoughtlessness.

I am angry at myself and disappointed I put myself in that situation in the first place. I have always thought myself a conservative, careful, and safe pilot. I have gone to training every year. I go to the conventions, I read a lot about flying, I have limitations for every flight and I stick to them. But when I got into a desperate situation, I was not properly prepared.

As I think about it (over and over), I realize I did a lot of things wrong. Also, operating on full adrenaline is a lot different from working with an instructor or in a sim. The incident has caused me to do a lot of soul searching: Should I even be in the air? I can attest, post incident, I will be a better trained and more careful pilot than I was before. However, I know flying is not risk-free and the biggest risk to me and my family is me.

I am not sure how the elevator trim got into its exaggerated position; it has never happened to me before. I learned later that if the airplane has the autopilot engaged on the ground, depending on the elevation setting, it could run the elevator to its maximum nose-up position. Elevator trim is a checklist item, and obviously, I missed it and should have corrected it.

I am pretty confident the trim was somehow moved to the maximum position during maintenance. The approach to the airport that morning had been routine. Interestingly, just before I took off to leave, I had a premonition that something was not right. Even though I looked around, I did not take the time to follow my instincts and fully check it out.

I am now resolved to train better, and fully and completely follow the checklist, every time—to the letter, no exceptions and with no interruptions. I read a book years ago called The Killing Zone. It talks about aviator accident frequency relative to time. The most dangerous time, of course, is the first 500 hours. The risks then go down dramatically until at about 3,500 hours, when there is curious blip in the statistics. I currently am right at 3,500 hours. I hope this incident was my blip. After this incident, I promise I will do a better job of training, because now I better understand what training is all about.

The author of this “Never Again” has requested to remain anonymous.