lessons learned
Narrow Escape
An Air Force flight instructor who has become complacent with his students realizes he has landed them in a life-and-death situation over the Arizona desert.
By the summer of 1981, I had been a flight instructor at Air Force undergraduate pilot training for more than two years. Confident in my ability to handle any situation, I began waiting considerably longer to intervene when my students erred. This gave them more time to fix their own mistakes, developing their decision-making skills more rapidly. However, I was about to learn a valuable lesson regarding the difference between confidence and complacency.
I was stationed at Williams AFB, Ariz., flying a T-37 twin-seat, twin-engine, primary jet trainer. One day, we were scheduled to reverse our normal flow and do our landing practice first. I briefed a student that, with more fuel, the heavier aircraft would require more power to maintain airspeed than he was used to. Summer temperatures at our desert runway could soar above 120 F, and at those temperatures, acceptable engine acceleration from idle to full power was as long as 21 seconds. At landing speed, the airplane traveled a mile in that time. On that hot summer day, I discovered just how long 21 seconds could be.
During a simulated engine-out landing (one engine at idle), the student set himself up low on the final approach. Without the assist of gravity, even more power would be needed. Our minimum airspeed for this approach was 110 knots. As the airspeed approached 100 knots, the student added only a little power. I immediately took control of the aircraft and set both throttles at full power, expecting this to fix the situation as it had in the past. I was wrong!
The engine windup was agonizingly slow, and the airspeed continued its rapid decay. To prevent a stall, I had to trade altitude for time and “milk” the airplane for everything it would give me. This violated the maxim I taught my students: Superior pilots use their superior knowledge to avoid situations requiring their superior skill. As the desert cacti became ever larger and the airspeed continued to decrease, I became concerned. My complacency had put us in serious trouble, but I was doing all I could. I continued to trade altitude and airspeed for time and tried to will the engines to accelerate faster.
Then, at about 50 feet above the ground and at 85 knots, the engines developed sufficient power for me to arrest the descent and begin a climb-out. Later, when I was assigned to teach pilots to be flight instructors, I used this incident as a real-life example of how deadly complacency could be.
MO
— John Collins is a retired Air Force major. He resides in San Antonio. For submission information, see page 6.
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106 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2013
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