Lesson Learned

There is an old saying in aviation. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots. When you are at the backside of the learning curve, you do things that more expierenced pilots would not do. Why? Because the expierenced pilot has already done that and realized its not a good idea. But thats how pilots learn. You need to learn your limits, learn what you can and cannot do. That comes with expierence.

I've been a professional pilot since May of 2000. I got my first flying job a week after taking my Commercial/Instrument/Multi checkride. At that point in my career I had zero expierence. The more hours I flew, the more expierence I got. A botched VOR approach with the weather at minumims boosted my level. I only got on the ground by pure luck, I'll have to tell that story at a later time. But the incident stuck in my head as a learning expierence because now I wont do that again. Yesterday we were dodging a few thunderstorms enroute to an outstation when I remembered another learning expierence from a few years ago.

After I got out of college, it was very hard to find a flying job. The industry was still reeling from 9-11 and I barely had 1000 hours. It took a while, but I finally landed a job flying a Navajo and Twin Commander for an aerial photography company. It was at this company that I had several more learning expierences. The one that I was thinking about yesterday had to do with thunderstorm avoidence.

We were in the middle of IL doing our summer work. The forcast was calling for clouds for the next few days, so we decided to pack up our stuff and head back to base. There were scattered t-storms in the area and both planes headed back north. The expierenced pilot flew VFR at 5500ft. My dumbass thought I'd do better with the storms if I flew IFR at 11,000ft and used my onboard radar and ATC to avoid the wx. Somehow I thought I'd be better able to see the storms and keep myself out of trouble. My thinking was flawed. It was on climbout I quickly realized the error of my ways and changed plans. As we were climbing out, I was talking to atc and trying to work out a plan to get around a few cells I was seeing. Due to atc being busy with traffic and my inexpierence with t-storms and avoiding them, I made the mistake of penetrating a thunderstorm cell. Thankfully I only managed to scare the crap out of myself and the photographer and didnt do any damage to the plane or photo equipment, but at the time I was convinced I did.

I saw the clouds as I was flying tword them. I didnt think it was a cell because I didnt see any rain below the clouds and the tops were not that high. I thought it was just going to be a bumpy cloud. A quickly found out how wrong I was. As soon as I entered the cloud, we were immediatly jolted by moderate to severe turbulence, deafening rain (thankfully no hail) and a violent up draft. I entered the cloud at 10,000ft and rapidly got shot up to 12,000. I slowed the airplane, dropped the gear, and just tried to maintain wings level. I told ATC I was in a cell and was going to descend as soon as I exited the storm. Thankfully it was a small cell and I punched out after about 30 seconds. We got bounced around so bad, the laptop that was in the co-pilots seat ended up in my lap and most of the unsecured stuff in the cabin got tossed everywhere. As soon as I saw clear air, I started descending to get out of the rough stuff. I dropped down below the cloud deck and proceeded to fly VFR the rest of the way back to base dodging the cells by avoiding the rain which I could now see.

So, lesson learned. Dont screw with thunderstorms. Listen to more expierenced pilots and ATC is not to be relied upon to keep you out of the rough stuff. Its another one of those dumbass moments that I learned from and will never do again. I'm just glad I moved up the learning curve a lot before I ever got to the airlines. Some of the low time regional guys have no expierence outside of the airlines. Sometimes you need to scare the crap out of yourself to learn. Its a shame that some guys do that with 50+ passengers in the back with them.

Two Screws

Who woulda thought that 2 little screws could down an aircraft? Turns out, 2 little missing screws really can delay a flight for over an hour.

At my airline, we have several outstations in the system that serve as maintence bases. What that means is that crews will fly the planes in to the outstation, then mechanics will take the planes to the hangars to work on them overnight. While the crew is enjoying an excellent reduced rest overnight in style at the local Clarion or Best Western or whatever low level, cheap hotel there is in the area, the mechanics are up all night working on the aircraft. In the morning, the mechanics bring the plane back to the gate is all is well.....sometimes. Mechanics are not perfect, they make mistakes. Its up to the pilots to catch those mistakes before taking an airplane into the air. I just happened to catch an error that the mechanics made.

As I was putting my flight kit in the fishbowl, I hapened to notice 2 little screws were missing on the panel in front of my oxygen mask. Having come out of maintence, I made a comment to the guy I was flying with that the plane wasnt out back together yet. I then showed him the missing screws. We called the mechanics to come take a look and fully expected them to DMI it (DMI means deferred maintence item). DMI's are usually for non-important items such as scratch's and worn paint. But when the mechanic stuck his head in the cockpit, he let out a noticable "ohhh". He knew that the screws would have to be replaced and could not be deferred. We figured since this was a maintence base, replacement screw's would be readily available. Nope. Not even close. The first attempt to fix the problem resulted in a second trip to the hangar because they brought the wrong screws. The second attepmt was more sucessful, but the damage was already done. By the time we got out of there, we were 1:20 late and most of the pax had missed their connections. Doh!!!!!