When faced with an emergency, should you always react quickly?
PILOTING
There I was, at 30 deg. W. Long with one engine on fire, the other engine about to quit, and a load of passengers wondering why the cabin lights had gone dim. Questions were adding up, but there were no answers in sight. The only thing certain was the altimeter, which was unwinding itself quickly as we held on to whatever airspeed we still had.
So goes a recurring nightmare of mine, either a product of all the simulator time in my logbook or the few times where one element of the dream happened in real life. In any other profession, these dreams could be part of a neurosis, a mental condition caused by anxiety and stress. But since I am a pilot, these dreams seem nothing more than “chair flying,” mentally preparing myself for what I hope never happens.
While instructing pilots about abnormal procedures when flying in remote or oceanic areas, I find it helpful to go through the “there I was . . .” routine. While it would be impossible to cover every possible scenario, two that I’ve seen over the years may serve to illustrate a few helpful concepts.
Cabin Smoke“. . . There I was, the cabin filling with smoke and nothing but open ocean in front of me.”
A cabin fire training exercise. Credit: Aircare International
It was almost a routine flight, from Anchorage, Alaska to Honolulu. We were flying an Air Force Boeing 707, what we called an EC-135J, with about 20 Navy passengers and an Air Force crew of 10, including three mechanics. It had been a fun week in Alaska, but now everyone looked forward to getting back to Hawaii. We had been airborne for about 30 min., and I was getting ready for my oceanic duties as the crew’s co-pilot. But something was nagging me. Oddly, the air felt and tasted oily. I immediately suspected the engines, but the gauges looked perfectly normal. I was about to say something when the navigator beat me to the punch: “Fire!” I saw the cabin filled with dense, acrid smoke. Everything within a few feet of the ceiling was “WOXOF” (ceiling indefinite, visibility zero) but below that it was clear. Now what?
“I’ll turn us back to Anchorage,” the pilot said, “you get back there and figure it out.” I unstrapped, not having a clue what I could do. My first thought was the galley, which was right behind the cockpit, but the steward was seated, and his ovens were off. He shrugged his shoulders, as if this was just another day at the office. I could see the smoke spewing from an overhead duct. I doubled back and turned off the engine bleeds. The smoke stopped almost immediately but I knew our old airplane’s cabin leak rate meant our ears would soon be popping. One of the mechanics came forward and said the smoke was almost completely gone but so was our pressurization.
A North Atlantic plotting chart. Credit: James Albright
We had to dump over 100,000 lb. of fuel, but 30 min. later we were on the ground. That night at the bar, the second-guessing began. “The pax are unhappy,” our steward reported. “One of the mechanics complained to them that we didn’t need to turn back as quickly as we had, we should have isolated the bad engine by turning the bleeds on one-by-one. Then we could have made it home on the other three.” The pilot’s face reddened. “Better safe than sorry,” I replied. He brooded for the rest of the night, thinking word of our divert would filter back to the squadron about prematurely aborting the mission.The next morning, we met for breakfast and the pilot greeted us with a hearty smile. “Well, we done good after all,” he said. The base’s maintenance shop found that an oily rag had somehow been ingested by the air cycle machine and the fire was contained to our air conditioning pack and was only extinguished once all the bleeds had been cut off. We only had one air conditioning pack and once that was shut off, all other options were out of the question. The divert, it turned out, was our only option.Sometimes the only option you have is to head for the nearest runway and land.These “no other option” decisions turn out to be the easiest to make but sometimes the hardest to execute. A fire of any kind, loss of an engine on a two-engine aircraft, or a flight control problem that leaves you with any doubts about the aircraft’s airworthiness are examples of when the right answer is to quickly turn your air vehicle into a ground vehicle so someone else can sort it out after making a safe landing.Equal Time Point“Our Equal Time Point (ETP) was ahead of us but the situation wasn’t anything we had trained for...”Twenty years ago, our attitudes about drift down were more, shall we say, self-centered. “We are the emergency, everyone else can get out of our way.” We taught that if an engine fails, you set a specified maximum thrust on the operating engine, allow the speed to decay to a speed calculated to maximize your forward distance, and then you descended at that speed. If you were past the ETP—the position along your route that results in an equal time continuing forward as the time turning around—then you pressed on. Otherwise, you turned around.Most of us today know these decisions are rarely this cut-and-dried, but back then, I believed the conventional wisdom. Until I was faced with reality.We were flying a Challenger 604 from Europe to the U.S. at flight level 360 on the North Atlantic Track System (NATS), with airplanes above, below and to either side of us. Our Standard Operating Procedure required us to compute three ETPs. The one-engine- inoperative ETP considered the need to descend to an optimal altitude with one engine out and less speed. The loss of pressurization ETP assumed the need to descend. Finally, the remain-at-altitude ETP was used for medical and other emergencies to minimize the remaining time in flight. While an ETP is computed using time, the “T” in the acronym, it is more properly thought of as geographic point, the “P” in ETP. Our company procedures required that we compute all three, but if all three were grouped within 100 nm of each other, only the middle point was plotted.That was the case on this flight, and our ETP was at 53 05.0’ deg. N Lat., 37 17.3’ deg. W Long. Passing the infamous 30 W Long. waypoint, we made the necessary switch to Gander Oceanic on our high-frequency radio and busied ourselves with the many checklists triggered by waypoint passages. I briefed the other pilot that our ETP was still in front of us and that if we had any problems, the plan was to turn 180 deg. back to Shannon, Ireland. We would drift down in the turn if we lost an engine, complete a rapid descent if we lost pressurization, or remain at altitude if we could. “Obviously,” my fellow pilot said. “Obviously,” I agreed.Back then, we were required to take wind and temperature readings at each halfway point between waypoints and I was doing just that when an engine indication turned amber, letting us know one of our engines was vibrating excessively. The FAN VIB readout showed the left engine at 3.5 Mils, well above the 2.7 Mil limit. I pulled out the Quick Reference Handbook and read. The fan is the first set of blades in the engine compressor section, and the largest. An excessive vibration risks separation of a blade with risk to the fuselage and the rest of the engine. The procedure called for us to reduce the throttle until the vibration was within the limits. I did that, but it resulted in enough thrust loss that our Mach number decreased from our filed Mach 0.80 to Mach 0.76. The procedure also called for the engine to be shut down if there were any other abnormal engine indications. There were not.“Back to Shannon?” my fellow pilot asked. I stared at our plotting chart, which clearly indicated the ETP was still almost a hundred nautical miles in front of us. “Give me a moment,” I said. “I need to think about this.”Turning around at this altitude would take us about 25 nm left or right, almost halving the distance between us and any aircraft on the next track and increasing the risk of running into an airliner carrying hundreds of passengers (many more than the three we had onboard). But I also thought about losing the engine and wanting to minimize my distance to a runway should that happen. How much distance would be taken by the turn itself?Looking at the plotting chart, I thought that we might end up taking longer to turn around than just pressing forward. Finally, I looked at the engines, both of which seemed to be operating fine, albeit one at a reduced thrust setting. “Let’s press on and let Gander know we have to slow down,” I finally said. “I’ll phone a friend,” using a phrase from a game show popular at the time.I called our mechanic, who asked for a few minutes to speak with technicians at General Electric, the engine manufacturer. A few minutes later our mechanic called back. “They’ve been seeing more and more of this lately,” he said. “They say there is a coating on the fan blades that sometimes delaminates and causes these indications. There isn’t any increased risk of the engine failing. Just keep the engine at or below where you have it and bring the airplane home.”Sometimes the best decision is to delay and take time to consider your options. In some cases, a diversion decision needs to be made quickly because fuel and altitude are robbing you of time. In other cases, the best decision might be procrastination. A mid-oceanic diversion carries with it added risks that must be considered. Will drifting down put you into the path of another airplane? Do your ETP fuel computations consider the winds at lower altitude or any abnormal fuel burns that have taken you off your planned numbers? If the decision doesn’t have to be made immediately, perhaps it shouldn’t be. Many in the Air Force used to say, “Flexibility is the key to air power.” To that I would add, “Procrastination is the key to flexibility.”
Sometimes decisions need to be made quickly at a crossroads—but not always. Credit: Shutterstock/Kaliantye
The Divert DecisionThere are two, almost primal, motivations tugging at us when faced with a divert decision. As mission-oriented pilots, we want to press on to the destination. This isn’t “get-home-itis,” it is mission accomplishment. But we are also highly trained to think in terms of action-reaction scenarios. “In case of ____, I will do ____.” Both instincts serve us well, until they don’t.In the case of a cabin fire, a structural failure or any scenario where the ability to fly the airplane is in doubt, an immediate action may be necessary and the divert decision becomes easy. But for most situations, the right answer could be to take a breath and consider your options. It’s just like we used to say back in the days when bad things happened in the air almost routinely:Question: “What’s the first thing you should do in the case of an inflight emergency, and when should you do it?Answer: “You should do nothing, and you should do that immediately.”
—James Albright is a retired U.S. Air Force pilot with time in the T-37B, T-38A, KC-135A, EC-135J (Boeing 707), E-4B (Boeing 747) and C-20A/B/C (Gulfstream III). Since turning civilian, he has flown the CL-604, Gulfstream GIV, GV, G450, and now the GVII-G500. He is the webmaster and principal author at Code7700.com
