Skip Miller
Final Approach
I was involved in a runway incursion yesterday. Fortunately I was the incursee not the incursor!!! Even more fortunately, no skin or tin was damaged, I’m not so sure about the other guy’s ticket, though. If I had a little more time I would have declared an emergency but things happened so fast I was pretty busy just keeping things under control. Here is what happened:
I was doing a few touch and go’s at KHVN, and on the last “go” I smelled a strange odor just as I was rotating. I couldn’t recognize the odor although seemed familiar. I knew it wasn’t smoke from any kind of fire, all the engine gauges were normal, and the plane was flying normally. The odor went away as I climbed away so I continued, with the next stop intended to be my last, back at KHPN, home base. The working assumption was that the odor came from something on the ground.
The flight was routine until the very end. ATIS noted calm winds and the runway was patchy SIRBRAP but with over 6,500 feet in front of me I could just coast and would need minimal braking. I was following a small business jet so in the mighty Archer I set my aiming point beyond the ILS touchdown zone, for potential wake turbulence avoidance.
On final to 34, after clearing me to land, the tower cleared a helicopter to land on Taxiway A with further instructions not to cross 34. Tower then called me and informed me that the helo was making a high approach to A and would stay clear of the runway. So far, so good….
I had just put the mains down when the helicopter descends into my vision (or maybe my vision finally caught the helo, I was concentrating on landing before that) and the helo is centered on the runway, descending with no apparent motion left or right. It descended to an altitude of about 15 feet and appeared to be hovering there! Plan A (rolling long) goes out the window. I didn’t think I could abort the landing and climb over the helo at Vx – he was too close by that time. Plan B was either take off and make an abrupt early turn, or stop now. I went with stop!
Here is where it got exciting! The right brake pedal went to the floor! Suddenly I recognized that odor back at KHVN as brake fluid. Yow! I pushed the yoke in to increase the load on the front wheel to improve its traction and got on the left brake as hard as conditions would allow, using right steering to counteract the yaw. The nose of the plane was jinking right and left as the left wheel and nose wheel alternately lost traction on the SIRBRAP portions of the runway. It was quite a ride! I think I could have stopped in time, but I could not go under him and could not climb over him. I formed plan C which was, if I couldn’t stop, to turn left (the plane seemed really good at that! LOL) and park it in a snowbank. The snow was pretty soft and at the greatly reduced speed I would have hit the snow at, I don’t think much if any damage would have been done. It would have closed KHPN, though, as the only other runway 11-29 was still closed for snow removal.
All this became unnecessary as the helo finally cleared the runway.
This was clearly an emergency situation for me, but I did not declare it due to workload. The brake failure was a total surprise to me. I was firmly in the “Aviate” portion of the old adage “aviate, navigate, communicate.”
The tower, meanwhile, was screaming at the helo to clear the runway. When the helo finally did, the tower told the pilot to call the tower and to have his instructor on the line when he did so. It was evidently a solo student flight.
I taxied back to the tiedown and the single brake caused me more problems on that route than on the runway because the taxiways were all iced over. I was glad to get to the tiedown and pull the red knob! After that, pushing the plane back into the tiedown is still a problem when you are on a taxiway with solid ice, but I got it there without falling on my butt, got it tied down, squawked, etc. etc. I looked at the left brake and the caliper was dangling by what appeared to be one bolt with the brake hose broken. I did not inspect it closely; it was pretty cold and the wind was no longer calm. I’ll report back when I find out what happened.
Now the question. Was that runway incursion on the part of the helo? On one hand, a Class D tower (like KHPN) is responsible for separation ON THE GROUND, and the helo never touched down. On the other hand the tower had cleared me to land and the runway should have belonged to me. Yet it was effectively blocked.
There is clear fault here on the part of the student helo pilot as he disobeyed an ATC instruction. Are there any other apparent faults here? I recognize that I may be criticized for not returning to KHVN to check out the odor, but my decision at the time was to fly home. Given the very brief odor incident with the plane flying normally, I bet most of you would have done the same. It was something on the ground, I thought.
How does a brake line failure at the wheel get odor into the cockpit anyway?
-Skip
I was doing a few touch and go’s at KHVN, and on the last “go” I smelled a strange odor just as I was rotating. I couldn’t recognize the odor although seemed familiar. I knew it wasn’t smoke from any kind of fire, all the engine gauges were normal, and the plane was flying normally. The odor went away as I climbed away so I continued, with the next stop intended to be my last, back at KHPN, home base. The working assumption was that the odor came from something on the ground.
The flight was routine until the very end. ATIS noted calm winds and the runway was patchy SIRBRAP but with over 6,500 feet in front of me I could just coast and would need minimal braking. I was following a small business jet so in the mighty Archer I set my aiming point beyond the ILS touchdown zone, for potential wake turbulence avoidance.
On final to 34, after clearing me to land, the tower cleared a helicopter to land on Taxiway A with further instructions not to cross 34. Tower then called me and informed me that the helo was making a high approach to A and would stay clear of the runway. So far, so good….
I had just put the mains down when the helicopter descends into my vision (or maybe my vision finally caught the helo, I was concentrating on landing before that) and the helo is centered on the runway, descending with no apparent motion left or right. It descended to an altitude of about 15 feet and appeared to be hovering there! Plan A (rolling long) goes out the window. I didn’t think I could abort the landing and climb over the helo at Vx – he was too close by that time. Plan B was either take off and make an abrupt early turn, or stop now. I went with stop!
Here is where it got exciting! The right brake pedal went to the floor! Suddenly I recognized that odor back at KHVN as brake fluid. Yow! I pushed the yoke in to increase the load on the front wheel to improve its traction and got on the left brake as hard as conditions would allow, using right steering to counteract the yaw. The nose of the plane was jinking right and left as the left wheel and nose wheel alternately lost traction on the SIRBRAP portions of the runway. It was quite a ride! I think I could have stopped in time, but I could not go under him and could not climb over him. I formed plan C which was, if I couldn’t stop, to turn left (the plane seemed really good at that! LOL) and park it in a snowbank. The snow was pretty soft and at the greatly reduced speed I would have hit the snow at, I don’t think much if any damage would have been done. It would have closed KHPN, though, as the only other runway 11-29 was still closed for snow removal.
All this became unnecessary as the helo finally cleared the runway.
This was clearly an emergency situation for me, but I did not declare it due to workload. The brake failure was a total surprise to me. I was firmly in the “Aviate” portion of the old adage “aviate, navigate, communicate.”
The tower, meanwhile, was screaming at the helo to clear the runway. When the helo finally did, the tower told the pilot to call the tower and to have his instructor on the line when he did so. It was evidently a solo student flight.
I taxied back to the tiedown and the single brake caused me more problems on that route than on the runway because the taxiways were all iced over. I was glad to get to the tiedown and pull the red knob! After that, pushing the plane back into the tiedown is still a problem when you are on a taxiway with solid ice, but I got it there without falling on my butt, got it tied down, squawked, etc. etc. I looked at the left brake and the caliper was dangling by what appeared to be one bolt with the brake hose broken. I did not inspect it closely; it was pretty cold and the wind was no longer calm. I’ll report back when I find out what happened.
Now the question. Was that runway incursion on the part of the helo? On one hand, a Class D tower (like KHPN) is responsible for separation ON THE GROUND, and the helo never touched down. On the other hand the tower had cleared me to land and the runway should have belonged to me. Yet it was effectively blocked.
There is clear fault here on the part of the student helo pilot as he disobeyed an ATC instruction. Are there any other apparent faults here? I recognize that I may be criticized for not returning to KHVN to check out the odor, but my decision at the time was to fly home. Given the very brief odor incident with the plane flying normally, I bet most of you would have done the same. It was something on the ground, I thought.
How does a brake line failure at the wheel get odor into the cockpit anyway?
-Skip
