There is no such thing as routine.

Expect the unexpected.

I was told early in my Private Pilot training by several instructors, in jest I thought, that the role of the student pilot is to try to kill the flight instructor.  The instructor’s job is to not let him succeed.   There is a lot of truth in those statements.

When life is going too good to be true and you feel like the King of the Sky, be ready for the unexpected.  When you are sitting in your seat enjoying the first calm, warm, spring evening, be ready for the unexpected.  When you think that you and your student (or fellow flight instructor) knows what the other is thinking, and will do next, you really don’t so be ready for the unexpected.

Student pilots of any skill level; Sport Pilot, Private Pilot, Instrument Rating and Commercial or future Flight Instructor certificates, are under intense pressure to learn and master a new task.   Their focus is not always on the big picture, but the task at hand.  At least, we hope that is where they are focused and not drifting elsewhere.  How many times has your student turned left when you told him to turn right during maneuvers training?  There is no such thing as routine. 

I recently experienced the usually unsurviveable ‘stall spin crash land on a go-around’.  There is no such thing as routine.

While practicing ‘routine’ ground effect drills over the runway, my student pushed his left rudder pedal when the airplane briefly touched the ground during a centerline low and slow pass.   This turned us 90° to the runway and headed for the taxi lights and grass.  What should we do next?  Accept a prop strike and run off the runway, or attempt to get airborne at less than a desired speed and try to keep flying in ground effect?

In an instant, we (I) chose to go around like most pilots would do.  Full power was applied and the airplane was flying inches above the taxi lights and hopefully headed over the nearby corn field with a long slow climb in front of us.  So far so good.   In the next instant we were pointed higher than the setting sun and gravity has grabbed our tail and is pulling us back to earth.  My student has pulled the stick all the way back trying to wish the airplane higher.  No time to get the 50° of flaps up.

When I politely told him to let go, for the second time, he did so by leaning back in his seat and holding his hands up to show me that he was ‘not touching a thing.’  Only in doing so his right foot slid off his right rudder pedal and came down straight and hard, and locked down on my left rudder pedal.

How were you taught to enter a controlled spin?  Slow it down, point it at the sky, and step on the left rudder.  Now imagine an unexpected spin at less than 50 feet AGL.   Ah good times, just another routine go-around on Saint Patrick’s Day 2009.

So, here we are, stalled at 50 feet and rolling over to our left.  Every CFI I ever flew with was whispering in my ear.  Fly the airplane all the way home, power to idle, center the ailerons, push the nose down and point it at the ground and step on the right rudder pedal. 

The only problem was that we kept turning left and doing a 180° U-Turn no matter how hard I pushed my right rudder pedal.   At this point in time I did not know that his right foot was on my left rudder pedal.  Between the two of us fighting opposite rudder inputs, we bent the iron attachment arm to a 45° angle.  I sprained my right ankle; my student who was stronger than me was able to push harder which is why we kept turning to the left.  In the process of locking his right leg down solid, in the crash he broke that leg at the ankle quite severely.

What saved us from completing the roll and landing upside down on our heads was that we only made it to 50 feet AGL.  Had we started the go-around a split second sooner we would have been 10 feet higher and we would have had enough altitude to complete our spin roll and impact upside down rather than to spear the ground with our left wing tip.  A delay of a split second in the go-around would have been a certain prop strike and only a wounded pride from damaging a new airplane slightly. There is no such thing as routine.

In the post crash analysis of the photos and talking to eyewitnesses from the student pilot ground school class that watched the whole event, we determined that the airplane first impacted on the left wheel in a sort of sideways dragging motion.  This ripped off the (before) seemingly indestructible carbon fiber composite left strut, and helped to absorb much of the impact energy.

During the initial spin roll to the left, the leading edge of the right wing crumpled like a musician’s accordion during its’ high speed, high G, counter clockwise rotation.  My student thinks he may have momentarily blacked out during this as he said that he ‘saw stars’ which then cleared.  I had tunnel vision on the EFIS to my left and watched the left wing tip spear the ground, which also absorbed a good amount of energy.

As the dust cleared from our heads, we found ourselves sitting in a field strapped into our seats like we had parked there in our lawn chairs to enjoy the evening.   We were surrounded by twisted sharp metal and sitting in a convertible with the top down, it was almost a cool feeling.  A quick mental checklist of gas off, masters off, key off and the fire danger was eliminated.  At least, that is what we told ourselves.  (There was no post crash fire, nor fuel leakage of any sort.)  Good thing because we did not have a fire extinguisher handy and my student was not able to walk.

We then checked ourselves for injuries and to our surprise (the biggest that we were alive) was that we had no visible cuts and all of our parts were still connected to us.  My student mentioned that his foot ‘sort of hurts’.  A quick look showed a compound fracture.   I looked down at my own feet expecting to see the same, but was surprised to see nothing amiss.  I told him to sit tight and I exited my seat to call 911 out of his earshot as I saw our friends were running toward us to help.

Even though the emergency helicopter team was only a few hundred feet away, the dispatcher made us wait for the ground rescue to come as only they could dispatch the air rescue team.  What a crock of bureaucracy as I had told the dispatcher on the phone the severity of the injuries and where we were in location to the needed help.  The 911 dispatcher was more concerned that I had someone at the FBO unlock the door than to listen to where I was (across the taxiway in the field).  There is no such thing as a routine call.

A few days later I went back to the field and tried to make sense of the skid marks and debris trail.  I found my eye glasses behind the airplane path and my student’s out in front.  Our headsets and all the papers were also tossed about.  The propeller slices in the ground were interesting, 6 inches apart, several slices before the big dig.  A pen from our clipboard was found sticking out of the tail of the airplane.

Seeing the crumpled up airplane in the hangar was an odd feeling, and still is.  The last time I saw it I was sitting in it and easily hopped out.  Looking at it now, it is a squished piece of aluminum and I cannot find the space to get back into the leather seats which left a pretty black, blue, and yellow bruise imprint on my backside to match the design.  A tattoo artist could not have done a better job.

Each time I visited the airplane in the days and weeks that followed I found another part or dent that would leave me wondering how that one happened and when.  It is amazing to me, and those who watched the event unfold, how the different vantage points made for different reports.  In the blink of an eye, a routine flight lesson proved that there no such thing as routine.

In the days since the accident, we met with our flight instructors and students to review our policies and procedures and safety plan.  We did not have a lot of changes to make as we already ran a pretty safe and conservative flight school.  We had an informal policy not to do an hour of ‘touch-n-goes’ unless required by that student’s particular course lesson that we changed to a formal policy.  All students and renters now do full stop taxi-backs when practicing landings.  This, in our opinion, provides more training value and teaches more about airplane control at changing or decelerating speeds, procedures, and builds good habits over a momentary touch the wheels and fly away for another.

A month prior to the accident we started requiring all students and renters to purchase renters insurance.  This has helped to pay for our medical plan deductibles and make up for the airplane insurance deductible. 

From the time we opened our flight school we required all students to call the local Flight Service Station and get a standard briefing prior to each flight.  They were also required to complete a weight & balance worksheet before each lesson.

Our weather, visibility, and wind, flight release minimums for students and licensed renters are very conservative.  We turn down numerous flights when other schools or pilots are flying.  The weather on the day of our flight was near perfect.  There is no such thing as routine.

We met with the President of the aircraft manufacturing company and presented a list of several design changes that we hope he will take to heart and implement into the design of the airplane.  I know it was our fault that we got into the situation, but due to the design of the rudder pedals we were unable to get out of it.  The suggestions are all low cost, simple changes and will in my opinion prevent accidents like mine and save future lives.  He assured me he would have his engineering team look at them, but would not promise if, or when, any changes would be made to the aircraft design.

I look forward to the day when I will feel that I can safely get back into this model of airplane and fly it again.  No other airplane gave me the sensation of sitting on the back of an Eagle, holding the reins and being Master of The Sky, as did my Evektor Sport Star.  There is no such thing as routine.

**The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not be those of the management of LSA North, Inc.** 

Scott D. Johnson, CFI/AGI has over 1,000 flight hours and is a flight instructor with LSA North, Stick-n-Rudder Flight Training™ in Lakeville MN at KLVN.  LSA North is the premier training center for Sport & Private Pilots in Minnesota.   He is the founder of  Your Benefit Resource!™  an employee benefits consulting firm.  A community volunteer, he is a Captain in the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol and serves as an instructor pilot and cadet orientation pilot.  He earned the Professional Pilot degree at Inver Hills College and has taught numerous courses on aviation and safety to fellow pilots.  He has many friends and considers himself to be one of the luckiest people alive.