Mid-Lesson Misstep: Student’s Flap Lesson
Story For Printing (Final Word Version)
Lynn W Grace
This story takes place in the mid 1970’s at Pontiac Airport in Michigan.
A couple of months prior to this story, a man who owned his own business, decided to learn to fly. As a personal gesture, he invited his two most valued employees to take flight lessons alongside him. One was eager and motivated. The other, not so much. He struggled to stay focused during training flights and seemed easily distracted.
Guess which one I ended up with as a student.
Even though my student was a slower learner, there was no reason he couldn’t succeed. He just needed a little more time and encouragement. By this point, he was capable of handling most of the landing sequence with a few gentle reminders along the way.
The airport where we trained had two parallel runways running east and west, and one shorter runway running north and south. That north-south runway was short enough that it had to be specifically requested by a pilot, or the tower might ask if an inbound aircraft could use it.
The weather that day was almost perfect for flight training: light breeze from the SSW at 5 to 10 MPH, clear skies, and comfortable temperatures. A great day to go flying.
We were just returning from about 45 minutes of instruction in the training area north of the airport. I knew that traffic around the airport was about to get busy, with many students returning alongside their instructors. When I called the tower to report that we were entering their airspace and requested landing instructions, they could tell, based on the tail number, that we were a trainer, and that an instructor was on the radio.
They asked if we could use the short north-south runway on a straight-in approach. I replied that if it helped them out, we’d be happy to do that.
The student looked a little anxious about the change. I reassured him: “Relax—it’ll be a lot of fun, and I’ll be right here with you.” My attempt at humor did little to ease his evident anxiety.
Within moments, we were about half a mile out from the north end of the short runway. Everything looked good on final approach: altitude decreasing along the glide slope, air speed steady, and flaps set to 25 degrees. There was a slight crosswind from the right, nothing unusual. It looked like just another day at the office. What could go wrong?
By the way, have I mentioned what was just past the end of that runway? About 50 yards beyond, there was a ten-foot-high fence marking the airport boundary. Another 30 to 40 yards beyond that was Highland Road, also known as M-59, a busy four-lane highway. Between the airport fence and the highway ran a very tall electrical transmission line. And just south of M-59 sat several commercial buildings.
Final approach continued smoothly, until we reached the point where we would normally begin to flare. Something must have caught my student off guard, maybe a gust of wind, maybe nerves, but he suddenly pulled back on the elevator. Naturally, the nose came up and we began to gain altitude.
That’s when I was reminded just how quickly things can go sideways. I immediately told the student I was taking over and grabbed the yoke with my right hand, pushing the throttle full forward with my left. At the same moment, I caught movement from the corner of my eye: my student had reached down and retracted the flaps completely, from 25 degrees to zero.
By the time I moved my hand from the throttle and reset the flaps to 10 degrees, we’d already lost valuable altitude and a good portion of the remaining runway: just when we needed both. And now, I have a whole new critical situation to address.
I quickly brainstormed for options. One was to try to put the airplane on the ground immediately, hit the brakes, and hope we could stop before the fence. Another was to try to climb over the top of those high transmission wires. A third option, less desirable but possible, was to fly over the fence but under the electrical wires.
I went with the second option: try to climb over the top of the transmission wires, knowing that if we could not get high enough, I would have extra altitude to use in executing the squeezing between the fence and the electrical lines. The airplane responded well, and within seconds I had it trimmed for the best rate of climb. It was performing better than I’d hoped.
Still, I kept that third option, slipping under the wires, in the back of my mind as a fallback.
Then I had an idea. If I turned just a few degrees to the right, I could buy a little more time before reaching the wires by approaching them at a shallower angle. It was a small adjustment, but it might make the difference.
Those next few seconds felt like minutes. The closer I got to the wires, the more I believed we could clear them. But the final decision still had to be made at that moment: and when it came, I committed to going over.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I noticed something strange: complete radio silence. Nobody else was talking on the frequency.
Then, just after we cleared the transmission lines, the tower came back on. A calm, clear voice said:
“Whoever the instructor is in that airplane: nice recovery, and congratulations.”