your most embarrassing flying moment?

Early in primary training, turning base to final, my instructor said pull out a little power. I take my hand off the throttle and yank the mixture all the way out! About the time I realized it he is screaming NOOOOOO and then it happened...man on man contact. I can still see it, his hand on top of mine as we both are shoving the mixture back in.

I'm not sure what was more upsetting, our man on man contact or the fact I took my hand off the throttle and yanked the red knob all the out when I was asked to pull some power out...sigh hahaha
 
simtech said:
Early in primary training, turning base to final, my instructor said pull out a little power. I take my hand off the throttle and yank the mixture all the way out! About the time I realized it he is screaming NOOOOOO and then it happened...man on man contact. I can still see it, his hand on top of mine as we both are shoving the mixture back in.

I'm not sure what was more upsetting, our man on man contact or the fact I took my hand off the throttle and yanked the red knob all the out when I was asked to pull some power out...sigh hahaha
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Well, you *did* pull some power out. Mainly, ALL of it!
 
Once when I was flying I was reading PoA and I read about some dude that thinks the Big Bang Theory of the Universe is completely wrong. I was pretty embarrassed for that guy. So I did a few turns around a point to reset and continued my flight in bliss.
 
I got straight on a commercial flight after a couple weeks at sea doing a yacht delivery.

You know what boat shoes are, right? Well, after a couple weeks at sea with minimal showers and getting soaked in saltwater, they smell like a buzzard ate a bowl of chicken crap, died and got so bloated it exploded, then apply heat and moisture to that mess. I reeked, I probably looked scary and that's the only reason I didn't get kicked off the flight. It was so embarrassing.
 
Lachlan said:
So I did a few turns around a point to reset and continued my flight in bliss.
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but did you make sure to add the appropriate amount of power when turning downwind to make sure the plane doesn't fall out of the sky?
 
Flying into Grand Prairie, TX from the east, I have visual on the airport, called it, just about to cross over the top of the field to make left downwind traffic when tower asks me if I want to land at KGPM or Arlington? I', like Uh, Im not sure what you mean, I want GPM.

He was like, OK, I need a 180 turn to the left and come back to Grand Prairie. You passed Grand Prairie and just crossed over the top of Arlington Airport. I never saw GPM but damn sure it was what I saw. But Foreflight doesn't lie.... Or does it>?
 
Ryanb said:
go!
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These have been fairly tame responses. My most embarrassing was taxiing to the wrong end of the runway and telling the tower I was ready to depart.. had to make a u-turn and taxi all the way down to the other end, with a passenger on board. Granted this was maybe a week after I got my license, and in a plane without a GPS and well before the beautiful foreflight moving map taxi diagrams
 
Or at a busy training field in a 152, I bounced a landing and was sure I was gonna die.... After the 3rd bounce and then down, tower, over the air for all to hear says, " Cessna bla, bla, bla, you were cleared to land, not land, depart, land depart, land. Next time, try to get it on the ground the first time or go around."
 
Landed at Long Beach on my first real cross country IFR and it had been solid IMC till about 1200 ft. Landed, taxied up and parked. Line guy greats up and I get out. Without missing a beat, he says, were you sweating that much or did you fly with the windows open through that storm?
 
Happened on the ground. I always keep my plane in a hangar. I never chock it, ever. Don't even know where the chocks are. It was my first Lifeline Pilots flight, and I flew into Flint's Class C. I pull up, park get out. Get my passengers. Didn't need any services. Load the passengers into the plane after I climb in - Cherokee 180 at the time - and go through the whole start up process. Try to move forward. Nothing. Add a little more throttle. Dammit, the line guys chocked one of the main wheels. Have the patient get out, I get out. Remove chock. Climb back in and now we are finally a go. I joked about this must make her feel real confident. She did laugh about it. I did redeem myself at the destination where she said my landing "was better than any I had on the airlines."
 
My last landing. First bunny hop ever. It would have to be when I was flying with a DPE doing a flight review.
 
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Mine and Leslie's first cross country after her getting her PPL. We were entering the pattern at KEYW. Tower said we are number 3 behind the Mooney. I pointed to an airplane in the pattern and Leslie began to follow it in. Suddenly, the Mooney driver yelled into the mic "the Cessna cut me off". At the time, neither Leslie or I could tell a Mooney from the Cherokee, which we had actually followed. ATC told the Mooney to go around. When we landed, we didn't get a number to call, but when the Mooney landed we both went over and apologized. He was quite forgiving.
 
Most of my experiences was in Cherokee and arrows. When I first started flying the club 182 after a 15 year absence in flying. I would close the door. But not lock the handle down. I’d go up and 10 min in I’d hear the door pop open. Damn! I’d land. Pull it closed and on my way and pop again. Probably happened a dozen times. I mention to one of my friends in the club that we need to get the door latch looked at. I show him what I’m doing and what I think is wrong. Then he shows me how to turn door latch to lock. Had a laugh. Felt like a tool. Now it is the most boldly stated part of my preflight checklist.
 
benyflyguy said:
Most of my experiences was in Cherokee and arrows. When I first started flying the club 182 after a 15 year absence in flying. I would close the door. But not lock the handle down. I’d go up and 10 min in I’d hear the door pop open. Damn! I’d land. Pull it closed and on my way and pop again. Probably happened a dozen times. I mention to one of my friends in the club that we need to get the door latch looked at. I show him what I’m doing and what I think is wrong. Then he shows me how to turn door latch to lock. Had a laugh. Felt like a tool. Now it is the most boldly stated part of my preflight checklist.
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The problem is those things are nearly impossible to latch in flight. Suggestions range from closing the vents and putting the plane in a slip to apply aerodynamic pressure to get the latch to close but they haven't worked for me.

Worst one for me was I took off for a destination airport, set the autopilot, got going, a few miles out heard the dreaded "whoosh." So, I tried everything. Slip, no bueno. But, now I had a new problem.

Yoke was locked, as if something had jammed in the ailerons. I could not turn the plane right. I could not force the yoke to go past level wings, and didn't want to break a control cable in the process. So....

...I called home base tower, asked them for a precautionary (technically, probably it should have been a mayday but things worked out) and told them the situation, that I had rudder only steering, and needed a straight in for the non-active runaway I was lined up for. It wasn't a pretty landing, but nothing got bent. And then, I got to the ramp area, turned of the master, and...

Yoke was free again. The ****ty Piper Altimatic AP never disengaged, and once it was off course it was fighting me. Real hard. All the way to the end.
 
I landed downwind at a big fly-in. I missed all the signs, like the fact I was tearing down the runway and having trouble slowing down. The big clue was when they said to land in the middle and exit to the left because the right side of the runway was wet. I really thought they were idiots since I could see standing water on the left side of the runway... here's your sign. Parked my plane and got away from it quickly!
 
I get dyslexic with directions. All the time. I’ve learned now just to own up to it, but right after I got my license I was for some reason concerned with trying to save face with the controller. So when I realized I had mistakenly asked to depart West instead of East, I called back and told him we’re actually going to head north first before we turn in course. I flew north out of his airspace, and as soon as I heard frequency change approved I made my turn eastbound. Did he notice? Maybe. Did he care? Doubtful.

When I was a solo student I also managed to get my directions backward. I entered the pattern for an airport I wasn’t as familiar with and called downwind, base, and final for runway 28. It wasn’t until short final that I saw the big 10 at the end of the runway. I got my touch and go in, planning to quickly and quietly leave the area, but I wasn’t to be let off that easily. Someone taxiing out, seeing me land on 10, called out, “Didn’t I hear traffic on final for 28? Because someone just departed 10”. I was silent, willing the mighty 152 to fly away faster. Someone else chimes in that there was definitely a Cessna that called final for 28. I sheepishly called up and admitted that I was both planes.

In both situations I can only say: thank God it was a rental.
 
In a 1970-something warrior, the transponder was the analog style such as shown in the photo. The fourth knob was inop - and I didn't notice it was inop until in the air and requesting flight-following. Had to ask ATC to assign a squawk ending in zero.

GTX-320A-Store-Closeup__10622.1484875326.1280.1280.jpg
 
More than once I was on a “left final”.

Another time I was getting back late at night, after midnight. I was approaching the airport from the west and saw a landing light in the east. The other aircraft was not moving relative to me, so we were approaching head on. I turned and finally realized I was trying to dodge Jupiter.
 
Matthew said:
More than once I was on a “left final”.

Another time I was getting back late at night, after midnight. I was approaching the airport from the west and saw a landing light in the east. The other aircraft was not moving relative to me, so we were approaching head on. I turned and finally realized I was trying to dodge Jupiter.
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Did the same thing with Venus one late late late afternoon while enroute - had two passengers with me.
 
I was a young King Air 135 captain, and just shot an approach into Nampa Idaho.....pretty much in heavy rain.

The airplane was full of Bon Marche (now Macy's) executives. The women always were dressed to the hilt.

Well, being an idiot that morning in the pouring rain, I cut the corner on the taxiway and ended up with the left main stuck in deep mud.

God almighty, the FBO was filled with good old boys who brought out the pax rides. Of course, there was serious needling of the young epilate equipped moron. But in the end, those farmers got their big tractor out, chained my KA65-A90 up and pulled me out!!
 
I pulled the mixture control on roll-out on 27 landing at Oshkosh about 3 weeks ago.

I had sufficient momentum to keep it rolling, and managed a restart while still at a good taxi pace, but...aargh...
 
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kyleb said:
I pulled the mixture control on roll-out on 27 landing at Oshkosh about 3 weeks ago.

I had sufficient momentum to keep it rolling, and managed a restart while still at a good taxi space, but...aargh...
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I did the same damn thing!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Both of my worst ones were confusing headings. The first was during training. Coming back to the tower from one of my first solo Xc, tower says, enter downwind for 18, so I turned to 180. I didn’t figure it out until he came back and said “downwind for 18 would be a heading of 360.....”

Then, after my checkride I was landing after a 4 hour flight at an untowered field and entered the pattern for the runway everyone else was using. Never saw any of them, none of them seemed to be where they said they were. Then, when turning final I see the numbers say the reciprocal of the runway I’d been saying I was heading for. Oops. I fessed up on the radio and just got laughs back.
 
Mid-field downwind, started running a bit rough - instead of waiting to troubleshoot it on the ground, where I would sagely be in in a minute or two, I decided to see if it was one of the mags. It was. The silence was sudden and surprising. . .what a maroon. . .
 
Matthew said:
The other aircraft was not moving relative to me, so we were approaching head on. I turned and finally realized I was trying to dodge Jupiter.
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I've soooo done that too. Frantic evasive maneuvering... Fortunately when alone.


...I'll nominate: the time I was attempting to park, and I backed up my husband's plane into a big pile of dirt.
 
My iPad overheated once about to depart for home on a long XC and I wasn't sure what to do...

I never get scared in the cockpit but that was a real deer in the headlights moment.
 
Does actually managing to hit a glider on a parking meter count? Sure, it was on a trailer at the time.
 
I was once flying a C182 Heavy into 3M0, and when I say heavy, even after an hour and a half flight we were still pretty much at the max landing weight for a re-start 182. About 10ft above the runway I pulled power like I normally did in that 182, but I'd never landed it anywhere near that heavy. The thing dropped like a rock onto the runway with a might "WHAM!" My friend in the right seat yelled "Jesus Christ, that the HELL was that!"

Luckily the airplane was still usable.
 
Maybe that time I turned down the radio 'cuz the atmospheric conditions were such that I was getting three airports on frequency. Then forgetting I turned it down. Then getting no response from unicom or traffic at my destination ('cuz radio turned down.) Then seeing a twin take off, so I landed on that runway. In a quartering tail wind (20G30, more than I had expected, no wind sock!) A gust slammed me right at touchdown; I made a perfect three point landing: right wing, right gear, propeller.
The airport management had the FAA inspect the runway for damage! (At least the FAA people had a little sense of humor about that.)
In the corner of my music room resides that propeller, as a reminder.
 
JOhnH said:
At the time, neither Leslie or I could tell a Mooney from the Cherokee, which we had actually followed.
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Don’t worry.... most pilots can’t do that. You have to wait till they land and see who gets out to decide if it’s a Mooney or Piper.
 
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