First jet emergency. whew.

Lance F

Lance F

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Lance F
It was supposed to be a simple 64 mile VFR flight to take a Lear 25 to a paint shop. No passengers. FORTUNATELY, it was Bill's leg. The take off roll was normal. I did the normal calls, which are airspeed alive, V1 and Rotate(@ 127 kts as I recall). Just as we rotated, we heard a bang,maybe two, the plane yawed right about 30 deg. off the runway centerline and pitch went to about level. Normal pitch up here is anywhere from 10 to 15 deg. We were looking at the trees.
Bill called a deployed thrust reverser and earned my forever respect as he brought the plane back under control and started climbing. I did my after takeoff stuff and called the tower. I said we had a serious problem, were coming back around and we wanted the runway.
As we went downwind at some point the T/R stowed. The emergency stow had not worked initially. Now we had bleed air coming into the cockpit. Very light smoke and warm.
We treated the approach as a single engine landing. I called the speeds, did my flap and gear stuff. We landed OK and taxied back to our hanger.
The whole thing probably took 5 minutes, but felt longer.
It was quite the experience.

Here's the lesson: fly the airplane. No matter what, first fly the airplane. I know that attitude is deeply ingrained with Bill. I hope it is with me. It saved our lives.
 
Scary, Lance. Glad that everything worked out alright and you two are alive!
 
Interesting that it actually happened to you. I can't begin to count the times I've done it to crews in the sim so they would know what it feels like, but can't remember anybody actually having one in an airplane. As you now know better than most, an unlocked T/R and a deployed T/R ain't zackly the same.



Lance F said:
It was supposed to be a simple 64 mile VFR flight to take a Lear 25 to a paint shop. No passengers. FORTUNATELY, it was Bill's leg. The take off roll was normal. I did the normal calls, which are airspeed alive, V1 and Rotate(@ 127 kts as I recall). Just as we rotated, we heard a bang,maybe two, the plane yawed right about 30 deg. off the runway centerline and pitch went to about level. Normal pitch up here is anywhere from 10 to 15 deg. We were looking at the trees.
Bill called a deployed thrust reverser and earned my forever respect as he brought the plane back under control and started climbing. I did my after takeoff stuff and called the tower. I said we had a serious problem, were coming back around and we wanted the runway.
As we went downwind at some point the T/R stowed. The emergency stow had not worked initially. Now we had bleed air coming into the cockpit. Very light smoke and warm.
We treated the approach as a single engine landing. I called the speeds, did my flap and gear stuff. We landed OK and taxied back to our hanger.
The whole thing probably took 5 minutes, but felt longer.
It was quite the experience.

Here's the lesson: fly the airplane. No matter what, first fly the airplane. I know that attitude is deeply ingrained with Bill. I hope it is with me. It saved our lives.
Click to expand...
 
Nice job Lance! Are those Aeroncas or Dee Howards on that plane? I've had the unlocked indication complete with horn and lights on rotation in a 55 with Aeroncas, but no deploy. That was startling enough. Plus we had passengers. The microswitches were just out of adjustment.
 
Good job, Lance!

Have you checked how many of your 9 lives are left?
 
The T/R's are Aeroncas. Those on the ground (and inside the tower) thought the bangs were compressor stalls. We're guessing the the first one was the T/R banging open, and the second was a compressor stall with the engine suddenly trying to put full thrust through a very restricted outlet. Anyway we went from about 3000 # of thrust on one side to negative something real fast. It got our attention.

Not counting used up lives at this point :tongue:. (but my book of aviation "experiences" is growing)
 
BucketOfLuck--;
BucketOfExperience++;

Good for you.
 
Lance F said:
The T/R's are Aeroncas.
Click to expand...
I've always heard the Aeroncas have more problems. The ones on the 55 were Aeroncas too. The other thing is that the Aeroncas don't have a snatcher like the Dee Howards which automatically brings that thrust lever back to idle (at a pretty rapid pace) when a TR deploys uncommanded.
 
:eek:

Glad that worked out OK!

And so true about Rule #1 ("fly the airplane"). What a big difference that can make!

Question: how was it the problem confirmed? Is there a specific warning display for that item, or did Bill just deduce it?
 
Okay, I do not know. Which T/R was the problem? It sounds like the right one, but this is slightly above my experiences in the mighty Apache.:confused:
 
Hopefully you had an overnight bag packed.... so you had some clean underwear to change in to.

Great experience to have and be able to live to tell the story about!
 
Glad that was just something to add to your experience bucket. Could have been a lot worse. BZ to both of you.
 
holy crap! Glad everything turned out ok.
 
ApacheBob said:
Okay, I do not know. Which T/R was the problem? It sounds like the right one, but this is slightly above my experiences in the mighty Apache.:confused:
Click to expand...
AFAIK there's no "critical" engine on a jet. In my opinion they're both quite critical :yes:. Actually it was the left T/R that deployed, which yawed us quite nicely into our left downwind.
 
Lance F said:
It was supposed to be a simple 64 mile VFR flight to take a Lear 25 to a paint shop. No passengers. FORTUNATELY, it was Bill's leg. The take off roll was normal. I did the normal calls, which are airspeed alive, V1 and Rotate(@ 127 kts as I recall). Just as we rotated, we heard a bang,maybe two, the plane yawed right about 30 deg. off the runway centerline and pitch went to about level. Normal pitch up here is anywhere from 10 to 15 deg. We were looking at the trees.
Bill called a deployed thrust reverser and earned my forever respect as he brought the plane back under control and started climbing. I did my after takeoff stuff and called the tower. I said we had a serious problem, were coming back around and we wanted the runway.
As we went downwind at some point the T/R stowed. The emergency stow had not worked initially. Now we had bleed air coming into the cockpit. Very light smoke and warm.
We treated the approach as a single engine landing. I called the speeds, did my flap and gear stuff. We landed OK and taxied back to our hanger.
The whole thing probably took 5 minutes, but felt longer.
It was quite the experience.

Here's the lesson: fly the airplane. No matter what, first fly the airplane. I know that attitude is deeply ingrained with Bill. I hope it is with me. It saved our lives.
Click to expand...

Just curious, since you knew you had a TR issue on the engine, and now you had the bleed air smoke why didn't you just shut down the engine?
 
Wow...glad the training and preparedness worked!

That must have been freaky...
 
Oops, I misspoke. The T/R's are Dee Howard. Hydraulically actuated. Supposedly, the plane must be on the ground (Squat switch) and throttles at idle to be actuated. For those interested I will post when the mechanics diagnose what went wrong.

In hindsight we would have done a few things differently. Shutting down that engine would have been one of them. Fact #1...it happened very fast. Fact #2...it ain't like the simulator. In spite of this I think our CRM was good and things turned out OK.

BTW, after our pulse rates went down a bit, we jumped into another of the Lears that needs paint and took that one to the paint shop instead. Can't jump back into the saddle soon enough.
 
Lance, sounds like good lessons taken away from the experience. Most importantly, though, you're still here to think about those lessons! Scary to have that happen anytime, especially on takeoff.
 
Good job Lance -- how common is such a failure? For example, is it more common to lose the engine than to have the reverser deploy uncommanded?
 
Lance F said:
Oops, I misspoke. The T/R's are Dee Howard. Hydraulically actuated. Supposedly, the plane must be on the ground (Squat switch) and throttles at idle to be actuated. For those interested I will post when the mechanics diagnose what went wrong.
Click to expand...
I would definitely be interested in what they find. We have one LR-35 with Dee Howards. Although I don't fly it any more it would be nice to know. As far as I know that airplane has never had an issue with its TRs since I've been here.
 
Everskyward said:
I would definitely be interested in what they find. We have one LR-35 with Dee Howards. Although I don't fly it any more it would be nice to know. As far as I know that airplane has never had an issue with its TRs since I've been here.
Click to expand...

+1, if only to learn another story about how "not supposed to happen" events happen.

Great work to you and Bill -- glad you kept it cool and the brown side down!

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Woah! Dude!

One question - did you use the "E" word?
Click to expand...
Actually no. I just stated the problem and said we want the runway. I'm pretty sure the tower declared one though. The fire station doors were open, but they didn't even have time to roll.

It was really very quiet and serious in the plane. I don't think a single extraneous word was spoken. Now once on the ground...that is another story.

I'm quite sure this was a very, very rare event as is an engine failure. But I doubt anyone knows. If nothing happens there is no report, so no statistics.
 
Lance F said:
I'm quite sure this was a very, very rare event as is an engine failure. But I doubt anyone knows. If nothing happens there is no report, so no statistics.
Click to expand...
I'd hope that in some way it would be reported back to the FAA, or at least Dee Howard, so it could be investigated for possible AD action.
 
Some of the 731's have power lever snatch actuators, so the engine would be at idle power anyway. If the engine was running, you might want to consider shuting off the pressurization/environmental on that engine but keep it running in case you needed it.

Rotor&Wing said:
Just curious, since you knew you had a TR issue on the engine, and now you had the bleed air smoke why didn't you just shut down the engine?
Click to expand...
 
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