Some background on demo flights. A demo flight is a $59 half hour of flight time and a half hour of ground time as a first flight. It's a loss leader and is intended to hook the student into getting their Private Pilots License.
I have a love/hate relationship with them because you can get students out of them but it's frightening for me as a CFI because you have a student with zero experience and skill and literally anything can happen. Sometimes, the student kicks ass and takes names. Other times they try to kill you and you end up flying half the flight to keep everyone from dying.
The student wanted a demo flight, so I gave him a demo flight. The preflight went quick and I explained everything, and I was hoping it would go well. The student was a student in a groundschool of another instructors and I figured they would know something about flying. Sadly, no.
Taxi went ok, not great but not exactly we're going to run into that jet over there. The takeoff went amazingly bad.
We lined up with a position and hold clearance, and then reviewed what we would do. When tower cleared us to takeoff, the student pushed the throttle fully in and start rolling down the runway. Sadly, the student is using the brakes to keep it on the centerline. Brakes are not good to use during the takeoff roll (for the obvious answer and some not so obvious). I tell the student to not use the brakes and we start veering left. Right rudder... more right rudder... even more right rudder...
At this point, we are seconds away from the edge of the runway and about to hit the runway edge lights. My normal trick is to remind the student to pull back because we are at 60kts by this point. So I say pull back ;(
The student takes it literally and pulls the elevator FULL back. This is VERY bad because we are 1) slow 2) low 3) about to run over some runway lights 4) about to stall 5) turning (the student also somehow turned the yoke putting us in a 30° bank). Witnesses said I came within 1ft of hitting the wingtip into the ground. After a successful recovery and a little breather, I put us in a gentle climb and get us to a few hundred feet (it's not that I don't trust you, it's just that I don't trust you).
The student ended up taking alot of photos on that flight. I was happy because when he was taking photos, he wasn't trying to kill us and I was flying.
The ironic/bad part of the story is that one of the witnesses that saw the event was the 2nd highest manager of the line crew. He called the flight school to report me :( I have a bad feeling it's going to get back to my boss/bosses and I'm going to get a lecture :(
And in the end, skill is good to have in aviation. Reflexes are even better to have. And if you have luck you don't need either of the two above :)
4/17/08
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1 comment:
LOL...great read.
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