Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/28/pilots-nightmare-canopy-bursts-mid-flight-leaving-her-fighting-for-control-video.html
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They already have, that’s why pre-flight checklists exist, and that you ignored by failing to perform a
[quote=“EllsworthToohey, post:1, topic:277986”]
proper visual inspection to ensure the canopy locking pin had engaged correctly
[/quote].
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Not just any small plane, either! The Extras are high-performance planes that fly much faster than something like a Cessna 172, with a cruise speed of about 236 mph. The slowest that an Extra can fly without stalling is around 70 mph. Impressive that she was able to see at all.
Is that why so many spaceship pilots in Star Wars always keep a pair of goggles strapped to their foreheads at all times? It would suck to get space dust in your eyes, I suppose.
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I’m finding it weird she’s tilting so much towards the hinge side and has a camera already set up …
Sharp turns and cameras like this are actually pretty common in high-performance planes like this one. Filming yourself doing crazy maneuvers is half the point of flying these things. This event is far less suspicious to me than, for example, that guy who had multiple cameras filming himself jumping out a small plane that he claimed had had engine troubles on a routine flight.
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Couple of comments.
First, pilots spend a lot of time going over accidents to understand the chain of events that lead to the ultimate failure. Pilots are mercilessly hard on themselves after an incident. Good on Narine for discussing this in public.
Second, she exemplified ‘fly the plane’ when there’s an incident. She was remarkably calm, had control, and landed a damaged plan. Kudos to her. Ain’t nothing easy when things go sideways in a plane.
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A teacher of some engineering course I took one time was also a pilot and because it was a “short course that covered a lot of material” he warned us that he would occasionally pre-empt a question or discussion by invoking the phrase “you’re trying to close the door during takeoff.”
He explained it as that as the pilot the most important job of was keep the airplane level and in control and everything else didn’t matter. If the door was open, yeah it was noisy and distracting but it did not matter and was not important. He said a lot of investigations of small plane crashes, especially during take off or landing was pilots being distracting or trying to do too many things at once. And also, you are probably not strong enough to close the door. Keep calm, land the plane, then fix the problem, live to fly another day.
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I think she is the epitome of keeping cool under extreme stress. Opps, the canopy is open, I just need to get back and land, no problem. Maybe pilots experienced in this plane can find fault, I hope they would also commend her for staying calm.
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The top three rules of flying: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate…always in that order.
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If she hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt she might have had “Defenestrate” added to the list.
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Don’t forget the French jet fighter pilot the other day, whose ride-along guest accidentally triggered the ejection seat and removed himself (and the canopy) from the aircraft – but even so the French aviator managed to land his Dassault Rafale B safely. That was some righteous flying. Eat that, Tom Cruise.
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I’m wondering how you’re supposed to ensure the locking pin had engaged correctly, other than noting its relative position along the short channel you slide it to lock. There doesn’t seem to be any indication of where the exact “lock” position of the handle is.
Also, perhaps more concerning, is the apparent ease with which an errant push or tug on the locking pin could cause it to disengage, at least from what I can see. That doesn’t seem to be what happened here, but I could see it happening to somebody.
Glad you posted that. One too many non-pilots dumping on her as if they could never, ever make any mistakes.
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Also landing checklists. Accident investigators surmised that NY Yankees Thurman Munson’s failure to extend his Cessna Citation’s flaps (an item in his checklist) was a factor in his a/c’s crash, leading to his death. Odd that his flight instructor (with Thurman, injured but survived) didn’t catch the fatal error.
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Even with checklists people make mistakes, or random factors intervene. The real trick is how to recover from them.
This lady seemed to do very well. As a non-pilot, I couldn’t fault her on anything except not wearing goggles or even sunglasses (though they probably would have been blown off anyway.)
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She said it herself:
My guess is that it’s like looking at a padlock, pretty easy to see if it’s locked or not. In her case if the locking pin isn’t fully engaged, it’s not locked. But since she didn’t look, she put her life in jeopardy.
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Anything that means life or death better have a checklist, and you better believe that I’ll be following it to the letter!
As the kids like to say these days “fuck around and find out”.
No need to guess. I saw a cropped, shortened version of this vid on Instagram earlier which really didn’t make anything clear.
But Melkumjan’s YouTube video has all the detail needed - you can see she checks the sliding bolt multiple times with her hand during prep and taxiing (look at 04:53 for an example). Pulling it back towards her - to see if it moves.
For some reason she doesn’t realise the rear sliding bolt is not pulled fully back towards her - this is from 06:12 as she starts the right hand bank that ends up with the canopy popped:
It should be lining up with the red line, like the fixed one. You can see at 00:05 that she squeezes the two together with her left hand, closes the canopy, and must be expecting the spring mechanism (?) to seat the bolt correctly.
Then once the canopy pops you see this:
Fully locked position.
In her words:
Still looks like an equipment failure added to her mishap - surely the bolt wouldn’t slide back at all if the canopy wasn’t correctly seated?
ETA: Damn, that Extra shifts quick - the takeoff run was so short!
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I have to say, if that happened to me, my first action would be Defecate, then Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.
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