On human factors

When I reached for the radio to get the weather, returning to Toussus-le-Noble, I felt heat emanating from the Cessna Nav II stack—a lot of heat. We shut off everything except one radio, and it was a nonevent, on that clear, moonless night, to get back. We learned the following day that the cooling fans in the radio stack had indeed failed, and our conservative measure may well have staved off greater worries. But why do such minor events always seem to happen at night, when it would take very little for things to get a lot dicier?

A few years later, preparing for my commercial checkride in Florida, I planned a short IFR night flight from Kissimmee to Daytona Beach—challenging because a short flight has as many tasks as a longer flight, but less time to set up and execute each one. As it turns out, the real challenges were to be of a different nature, and human factors training was to come into the picture.

The flight up to Daytona proved to be every bit as challenging as anticipated. My instructor, half my age but twice my ability, gave me a running narration of the sights of Orlando International Airport and downtown, that I was not to see as I was working under the hood trying to set up the descent and approach into Daytona. On the basis of the weather and flight plan we had filed, I requested a GPS Runway 34 approach, but was told “unavailable.”

Only slightly flustered, I requested the opposite GPS Runway 16, still easily negotiated from my position to the southwest, but was also told “unavailable.” The only approach I was able to get that night was an ILS 25R, which took me several miles out over the ocean before being turned back in to intercept the localizer. As I turned outbound, the young instructor’s running narrative became noticeably more terse out low over the ink-black ocean at night. Weather was good, but there was some mist offshore, and soon he informed me he could no longer see the shore. Silence settled in.

After only minutes—which seemed like much more—the radio call came to turn onto an intercept heading. I turned inbound to intercept, and soon enough I removed the hood to the welcoming view of a full approach lighting, heralding the 10,500-foot runway, lit like a Christmas tree. We touched down on the huge
runway with all the grace of a tossed coin on a tennis court, but it had been quite
a workout, and it was a relief to be onthe ground.

We had planned a VFR return, which should be easy going, and a relaxing conclusion, as we both had to be up early the next day for work. Return taxi instructions from the tower included an intersection takeoff, which proved to be more complicated than it should, as the intersections were not well marked or lit, and the Cessna 172’s taxi lighting also seemed pathetically dim and mostly useless. But after almost taking the wrong one we managed to stumble toward the correct intersection, to the same 10,500-foot runway.

After a quick check, I keyed the microphone to ask for takeoff—and everything went dark. The panel, the lights, the radios. Using a flashlight we were able to see the ammeter swinging wildly from
full charge to zero. I assume there were incipient signs of electrical system failure on the flight out, and that’s on me, because the instructor cannot really see it from his right seat position. Once again began the drill of turning off everything nonessential; then, revving the engine, we were able to get enough charge to turn on one radio. Hardly surprised to hear the tower trying to reach us, I asked for taxi on the runway to return to the ramp for troubleshooting.

After ruling out the alternator switch or fuse, we were faced with a flat-out electrical system failure.On the ramp, we checked everything we could and tried revving the engine for several minutes. After ruling out the alternator switch or fuse, we were faced with a flat-out electrical system failure. At several points we were able to get enough charge to turn on a radio, but it would only last a few seconds. We were parked in front of an FBO, but it had just closed for the night. Convinced there must still be someone there, I rang the bell, but no one responded. Going around back, I found a gate closed, but not locked. I opened it to see if that would trigger something, and sure enough a ramp agent came out immediately. Sometimes a guy has to know what to do to get some quick service.

The ramp agent agreed to let us park there and helped us push the airplane to their reserved area and secure it. It was then that I was faced with the biggest challenge of the night: The instructor wanted to fly it back. He called a few other people—instructors and mechanics—who gave him a few items to test, but they were all unequivocal in their admonitions. “Don’t even think about flying the airplane tonight.”

But he wouldn’t hear it. It’s an easy flight, it’s not very far, weather was VFR. He kept calling people, trying to get someone to buy in on his plan to fly the crippled airplane back that night, but no one would. I had a handheld VHF radio with me, but relying on that to take off in Class C, fly through or under a Class B to land in Class D just didn’t make sense. We were safely parked on the ground, arguing about whether to take off at night in an airplane we knew to have a faulty electrical system, with nothing but a handheld VHF radio on a flight where radio is required for the entire flight. The ramp agent, who was still there, watched in amazement as I tried to persuade the instructor that getting back in that airplane would be creating a potential emergency, where none existed at the moment. I asked the guy if there was a place at the airport where we could rent a car, and he indicated the terminal was just a five-minute walk, but they would be closing in 15 minutes, as the last scheduled flight of the evening was already in.

I told the instructor, “I’m walking to the terminal right now, I’m going to rent a car and drive back to Kissimmee”—a two-hour drive—“and you’re coming with me.”

We got a car, a Chevy Cruze, minutes before the agency closed, and I did the driving. The fault turned out to be the battery itself, which was not the result I had expected (I suspected an alternator issue).

On the FAA list of dangerous attitudes, I believe we checked four out of the five boxes that night. Anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, and probably macho, with resignation—albeit in a sense different from what the FAA intends—being the good sense that brought us home safely.

None of this is to denigrate that instructor in any way. We got along well; he is a fantastic aviator, and is in his rightful place at the moment as a first officer at a major, with a brilliant career ahead of him. I can only hope he took away something about human factors that night.

Greg Faris is an instrument-rated private pilot with 23 years of flying experience.