Dumbest mistake in an airplane

[gyoung]

I started early. I still had wet ink on my PPL with a grand total of 35 hrs in my log book (141 school) and bought a T-craft. Didn't need an endorsement back then but I was scheduled for a check out the next week. Then another T-craft owner who's plane was down for recover suggested we go to a fly-in in mine. All was good until we landed and rolled out in the rotor wash of a just landed National Guard helicopter. The resulting gyrations popped of one of the tail wheel springs loose. I was in the left seat which had the brakes. With my unfamiliarity of heel brakes and ineffectiveness of Shinn brakes we were along for the ride. We headed for a parallel grass taxi way passing between two runway lights and stopping between two taxing aircraft pointed 180 deagrees from where we started. Fortunately there was no damage to anything. We put the spring back on and flew it home. I got checked out the next week and flew that plane another 450 hrs.

[skylor]

Originally Posted by DanH

It's just a little bitty oil door. Ummm, just so you know, an RV-8 flies just fine with the front baggage door standing open. Actually, it's AOA sensitive...closes itself on downwind, then opens automatically in the flare so all your buddies can see

The unlatched RV-8 baggage door is just fine in flight ...until slipping to lose altitude on final, then it opens all the way...

Don’t ask me how I know...

I never did find the keys that fell out on short final. Now I only use one set of keys on the plane...and if the baggage door is unlocked, the keys stay in the lock!

Skylor

[airguy]

I had a grand total of 8 hours post checkride for my PPL back in the spring of 2000, and knew everything there was to know about flying. It was early March and I saddled up with 2 buddies and some bags in a tired old rental 172 and set out for the mountains to go snow skiing. My instructor had covered density altitude, and I figured I had a good handle on that - but all our training had been at 600' ground altitude and we had never handled or discussed high altitude leaning for best power, I didn't even know that was a thing.

The cross country went fine, stopped in Albuquerque and topped off the tanks then headed for Durango. Landing north that day with a stong west wind, approach was mostly good down to about 200 feet - of course I was coming in full rich and full flaps like I had always done before, and at least 15 knots left crosswind which I was confident I could handle because I had done it at least once before. I passed downwind of some hangars on very short final and caught some good rolling winds off those, dropped like a rock, and did the only smart thing I would do for the next 30 seconds - went to full power and forgot about landing.

At full rich and 8000 density altitude, in a tired old 172 that was near gross, the result was predictable. The rpm came up, the descent shallowed a bit, but we were still going down. Riding the stall horn the whole time, I quit fighting the crosswind and concentrated on keeping wings level (still full flaps - never pulled them up in full blind panic) and went east of the runway over the grass. I was yelling "We're going in!" to my passengers as we finally stopped the descent at 2, maybe 3 feet AGL in ground effect with a half dozen angels pushing up on the wingtips, and finally eked out about a hundred feet per minute climb when I remembered to pull up one notch of flaps. I pleaded, cajoled, whined, and sweet-talked the airplane up to near pattern altitude and tower asked me if I would like some assistance. I replied that I would be selecting a different airport with a runway more into the wind, and standby while I get myself sorted out.

We went to Animas Airpark uneventfully, my buddies went skiing the next day while I found an local instructor and got 5 hours of real mountain flying training. Best lesson I ever could have learned, and just barely avoided wrinkling metal getting there. They say the 100-hour mark is the most dangerous point for a new pilot, guess I was ahead of the curve.

[PilotjohnS]

Just after my solo, I was coming to my local airport. This place was always busy with straight ins and trainers in the pattern. So tower told me I was number three. So I looked down, one Cessna had crossed the fence, second Cessna was on short final, so I immediately turned base to slot behind the second guy. As soon as I turned final, I heard a plane over me and looked up Thru the Cessna skylights to see another Cessna over me climbing away. The guy I cut off must have been on a high final because I never saw him. Only thing the controller did was ask if I saw him, and then cleared me to land. Still cant figure out how he was counting planes on final. Now if the count is more than 2, I ask the controller to call my turn to base.

[jpowell13]

A few days ago I was covering my 6A after some mild aerobatics and noticed that the last time I put the engine cowl on I totally missed the lower half of the port side hinge with my hinge pin. Breathed a little prayer of thanks that the top half of the cowl came back with me and the plane.

Funniest dumb mistake was trying to taxi off with my wings still tied. My first time passenger was not impressed, but didn't bail and we went on to have a very nice flight. John

[RhinoDrvr]

As an Intermediate Jet student about halfway through Flight School in Meridian, MS my class and I were going out for a night, solo, field carrier landing practice (FCLP) flight. Planning to takeoff as a flight, the four of us start our jets and taxi to ?Marshall? to wait for the rest of the group.

-4 (who is a super cautious / timid student) calls us on the inter-flight frequency and says he?s going to have to down his jet for a burned out map light. All of the rest of us proceed to give him a hard time, until we shame him into launching. We continue giving him grief the whole taxi to the runway.

Throw the power up on takeoff, and get the master caution because the ejection seat isn?t armed, wait, the flaps aren?t down, every one of us were so busy giving -4 grief we forgot to do the takeoff checklist!!!

Of course we took off anyway and didn?t say a peep to our IP?s. We still laugh about that one...

[TomVal]

Originally Posted by DanH

It's just a little bitty oil door. Ummm, just so you know, an RV-8 flies just fine with the front baggage door standing open. Actually, it's AOA sensitive...closes itself on downwind, then opens automatically in the flare so all your buddies can see

As I stood there watching the buyer of my RV8 taxi away, I was a bit puzzled when he shut down the engine at the runway hold short line. He got out of the aircraft to lock the forward baggage door.

Tow bar story: At a monthly breakfast fly-in we watched a Cessna enter downwind with the tow bar attached. We broadcasted that fact to him but much to our surprise he then departed the pattern I guess rather than facing the wrath of his peers.

As a newly minted PP my mother-in-law was my second ever passenger. Just as we lifted off in the C-150 her passenger door popped open. That was the first and last time she ever flew with me.

[Mel]

Took my girlfriend for her first-ever airplane ride in the Globe Swift. Made a high speed pass down the runway with a rather steep pull-up at the departure end. Only notice I gave her was "Hang-On!" My right arm got VERY sore during the climb out. Stupid Stunt!

She eventually forgave me. We've now been married for over 42 years and she's had her Private Pilot Certificate for 35.

[rvanstory]

A "friend of mine" had just had his autopilot control unit replaced in his Mooney 201. Before the 1st flight with this new controller the avionics shop showed him how to tweak the unit in flight so the it would fly the heading bug more accurately. After the tower gave him taxi instructions to the furthest runway, he decided to engage the autopilot and play with the settings while taxiing. Before departure, runup went good and off he went. The 1st sign of something not being right was when the plane didn't rotate at it's usual airspeed. The second sign of trouble (about 1/2 second later) was when the mains lifted off the ground and the nose didn't. Instead of an instant abort, reflexes had my friend pull back harder on the yoke! The plane did get airborne, but it was trying HARD to dive back to the ground.

Luckily, the runway was 5,600 feet. So, plenty of time to abort and get this thing back on the ground. The 1st attempt to plant this thing back down led to a bounce. That's when his Mooney transition instructor voice played in his head to "NEVER try to salvage a bounce in a Mooney, always go around". So, with another 1/10th of a second to think, he added full power. Again, the plane REALLY wanted to dive to the earth as if it were a navy fighter dive bombing the enemy! It took every bit of his strength to keep it flying.

At this moment, he realized 2 things at once... 1) he could not go around, the forces to go down were too strong. 2) he was QUICKLY running out of runway!

Fortunately the fence was a good 100 yard past the runway end, so grass didn't seem so bad of a choice right now. After a quick call to tower to announce an aborted takeoff and the impending exit off the runway at the end, he FINALLY got the plane down on the 2nd attempt and rolled off the end of the runway between the lights and coming to a complete stop about 25 yards into the grass!

After informing the tower that he could taxi on his own power, he turned 180 to taxi back to the avionics shop with one simple question in his head, "WHAT THE H_ _ _ JUST HAPPENED?" Luckily, the only damage to the plane was a slight brownish stain that now appeared in the pilot's side leather seat ( along with an awful smell).

Soon, after the heart rate slowed to 175 BPM and he was taxing back to the avionics shop, he then realized what when wrong!

Evidently, the autopilot has no ideal if the nose up attitude it's sensing is while on the ground (while taxiing) or in the air flying. It just knows to trim the plane down!
So, at takeoff, the planes trim had traveled to FULL down without him noticing it!

My "friend" felt really stupid and is embarrassed that I'm sharing his story here in public. But he realizes that maybe it will prevent some other idiot from making the same mistake some day.

[Tom023]

My friend in his brand new SR22 flew in to pick me up for the flight to OSH. After loading the plane we took off and couldn’t reach anyone on either radio or from either front seat position. All we got was “aircraft calling center, receiving carrier signal no voice”. So after 30 minutes of that, trying to trouble shoot the issue and landing at a small strip in a Kansas corn field I got my handheld out and walked down the ramp “can you hear me now?” Several times then his voice came in loud and clear “get back here let’s go”. He didn’t say a thing and once airborne I told him to “fess up”. Seems that during the loading and rearranging the cargo when he picked me up, he inadvertently grabbed the two rear seat headsets and placed them up front. The pilot/copilot headsets were buried somewhere in the back seat.