Navigating the ‘Scariest Moment’ as an Aircraft Owner

That said, scary moments in flight indeed still occur.

Fortunately, my own “scariest moment” still dates back to my renting days. It was around 2003, during my commercial training at a large Part 141 school in Michigan. I was on a stage check with a senior instructor I’d never met, undergoing a mock check ride in preparation for the real one. I recall him being a gruff, no-nonsense guy who was far more intimidating than friendly. It would, I conceded to myself, be good practice.

While heading to our practice area to work on maneuvers, I caught a very subtle whiff of what I thought smelled like smoke. I asked the instructor whether he smelled it, and he replied he did not. This exchange occurred once more on the way to the practice area.

Finally, as I was preparing for my first maneuver, I caught a strong, distinct odor of smoke. The instructor maintained he smelled nothing and firmly ordered me to perform my first clearing turns.

At this point, I decided one of two things was occurring. Either this unfamiliar instructor was somehow surreptitiously creating the odor as a test to evaluate my reaction, or it was the real thing. Either way, the proper course of action was the same—get back on the ground ASAP.

I informed him we would be aborting the flight altogether and began a 180-degree turn to head back. For a moment, he protested—until he finally detected the smell himself. At this point, he took the controls and instructed me to run the relevant checklist, which I did. When I shut off the landing light, the metal toggle switch left a red burn mark on my fingertip. That’s when I noticed the wisp of smoke rising from the smoldering switch.

This was particularly concerning, as the switch was positioned only a few inches away from one of the fuel lines. For all I knew, licks of flame were beginning to reach them, and a severe fire or explosion was imminent. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and pulled the pin in preparation for the worst.

Getting on the ground as soon as possible was the priority, and the instructor firewalled the throttle to expedite the 10-mile flight back to the airport. We ended up beating the fire trucks to the departure end of the runway, which the instructor nearly overran as he locked up the wheels in an attempt to stop. But we were safely on the ground, and disaster was averted. 

Among the scariest moments in my own airplane, the top two occurred on two consecutive takeoffs during my first month of flying it. And both, I came to learn, were at least partially attributable to a poorly designed checklist.

Inherited with the airplane, the checklist inexplicably combined the run-up into the “before takeoff” section. This meant that when performing multiple full-stop, taxi-back landings, one must sift through the long “before takeoff” section, carefully skipping irrelevant steps related to the previously completed runup and only performing the steps that matter.

Inevitably, an oversight eventually reared its head when I noticed the airplane became airborne much earlier than usual, before then refusing to accelerate. A glance downward revealed the reason—the big manual flap lever remained in the fully upright, 40-degree landing position. With the departure-end pine trees growing ever larger in the windshield, I carefully eased the flaps back to the takeoff setting of 20 degrees, finally built some speed and energy, and cleared them with room to spare.

On the subsequent takeoff, I ensured the flaps were set to 20 degrees but noticed another alarming lack of climb performance. This time, I traced the cause to the carb heat left in the “on” position, which robbed me of critical horsepower. Furious with myself, I quickly remedied the oversight and completed an otherwise uneventful takeoff. I then performed one final trip around the pattern, meticulously completing every item on the checklist to finish the day on a positive note.

Clearly, while skipping over run-up-related items in the “before takeoff” checklist, I had been inadvertently skipping over some key steps. A new, redesigned checklist was obviously in order. However, as an additional safeguard, I created a dedicated takeoff flow that I now require myself to perform immediately prior to advancing the throttle for takeoff.

Starting at the floor between the seats and working my way upward, my flow consists of the following five checks:

As a short flow, it is committed to and performed by memory. Although I continued to use the original checklist for some time since those hair-raising takeoffs, adhering to the flow has totally prevented any additional oversights. To this day, I swear by it, and while I’m still evaluating new checklist formats and some intriguing “create your own checklist” solutions available online, I’ve been happy with the results.

It seems that when purchasing one’s first aircraft, buyers spend little to no time evaluating their checklists and flows. Many people, myself included, simply assume that the checklists in the airplane must be correct and optimized for any pilot. But looking back, it would have been wise to sit down with an instructor for a couple of hours—one with significant experience in the aircraft type—and create entirely new checklists from scratch.

Even if the resulting checklists end up closely resembling the ones that came with the airplane, these couple of hours of education and thought will undoubtedly pay off simply by thinking through the various situations and processes ahead. Ideally, such foresight and preparation will ensure that the most stressful moments as an owner remain on the ground and related to maintenance bills.