Acknowledgements: AIR FACTS/Dick Collins
“When I read of take-off accidents I
think about how unforgiving airplanes can be if you fly away without the old
ducks all in a row.
Take-offs seem easy, but they can
quickly go wrong, as I found out. My airplane, on the ramp. Another pilot (my
son) was flying. He started the engine, got clearance, but even though the
airplane was parked on a downslope it didn’t start rolling with the application
of a little power. There was really nothing to do but tell ground control we’d
be a minute, do a complete shutdown, get out and pull the chocks, and then start all over again!
Whilst leaving a chock under the nose-wheel
is not a life-threatening event, it can portend bad things. It comes from the same
place that
a neglected control lock, or inadequate sump draining, or not double-checking
the fuel, or not properly latching doors comes from. And those things can all
hurt.
Take-offs are wonderful manoeuvers,
and I never fail to think it pure magic when the weight of the airplane shifts
from the ground to the wings. It’s still the same airplane but when it flies it
comes alive. That’s the happy part of taking off. But what comes next is a period of flight with few
options and where any problem can quickly become serious.
One source indicates that ten percent
of fatal accidents happen on take-off. Because the period of time is relatively
short, this suggests that the risk is quite high. But many of the things that
lead to trouble in the first three minutes
of flight can be anticipated, so it
is important not to rush through the pre-flight work. It is also likely that
most accidents occurring in the first ten or fifteen minutes can be traced back to something neglected before departure.
I’ll give you another example. I was
preparing for a low-visibility take-off one foggy morning. That meant moving
deliberately through the pre-flight, checking everything at least twice. Such a
take-off is demanding but I never thought it particularly risky. Something
being askew would change that, thus all the double-checking. The need for
careful preparation might not be quite as important on a clear day but it can
still be pretty important. From that day forward I treated all pre-flight preparations
equally, regardless
of the weather.
Accidents occurring on or soon after
take-off generally fall into two separate categories:
· On an IFR
departure, it usually relates to the pilot losing control of the airplane in roll
· On a VFR
departure, it usually relates to power - not enough, or not running well, or at
all. A loss of control often follows, where the flaw is in pitch control. The pilot stalls the airplane after having a
problem with the available performance.
There are proportionately a lot of
IFR departure accidents. When departing in IMC I have always been a proponent
of climbing straight ahead at full power in the take-off configuration until
1,000 feet above the ground. The transition from visual to instrument flying
must be made when the airplane is rotated to a flying attitude. Doing it that
way means that you can give your absolute attention to the attitude of the
airplane. Staying visual for as long as you can see is not the way to do it.
So how do we approach this problem? Before
take-off the pilot has to acknowledge that the next three minutes will be
totally critical and that the mind-set can and will be on nothing but
controlling the airplane.
All take-offs have a lot in common
and even though instrument and visual departures have different requirements
they share one strong similarity: if you don’t have all those ducks in a neat
row before advancing the power, those first three minutes could be long and
potentially painful”.
FLY SAFE!
