Near death experiences?

Well every pilots worst nightmare happened to me today, a legit engine failure in a single engine airplane. As you can probably guess due to the fact that I am actually typing this story out all is well now but man was that an intense few minutes. Ok I will start at the beginning. I was up with a student doing normal commercial aerial maneuvers with everything going well. The only things left to do for this lesson was emergency procedures and ground reference maneuvers, perfect, I pulled the throttle back to simulate an engine failure and the student did very well in picking a road to land on and a suitable place on that road to land. At about 800 AGL (non densely populated area) I told the student nice job lets recover and set up for some 8's on pylons he applied full power smoothly as to not upset the engine in the cold weather (-8c)not too long later after climbing out about 4-500 ft the engine started to cough and vibrate quite violently. I grabbed the throttle and retracted it thinking that he had advanced the throttle to quick in the cold and flooded it. As the throttle came back it settled down a bit but didn't really stop vibrating. I immediately was looking for places to land and then all of a sudden it stopped shaking and ran smooth. I told the student ok we are done lets get back however we were still 20 or so miles away. As I started to apply power to climb up and get some safety altitude the engine started shaking and sputtering again. Thankfully there was an airport less than 6 miles away, I pointed the nose towards it and ran through every checklist I could think of. As we neared the runway I left the throttle in with the engine running rough as long as I dared, on short final (1/2mile) I realized I was high for a short runway (2500ft) so I pulled the throttle back to start a descent, well that was when the engine gave up the ghost and stopped, simultaneously my heart stopped. Now I'm flying a 1 ton glider... great! the plane crossed the threshold at about 1 foot and skidded on to the numbers (literally) by the skin of my teeth. The plane slowed to a stop and I started to breath again. We had to push the plane off the runway to the ramp as no one was around at this rural airport, the whole time laughing (mostly out of nerves) at the situation.

In hind sight everything happened so damn fast all I can say is thank god my training payed off, I literally had no thoughts at all it was all just instinct and I just did it with little to no input, mentally, on my part. I now can attest to the life of a professional pilot being 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror. I will say this to any aspiring or current pilots..... STUDY YOUR EMERGENCY CHECKLISTS!!!! You may scoff at emergency flows and prudent planning but damn if it doesn't pay off when you need it to.

 

Anybody else have any similar stories?

Glad you are OK

Glad you are safe. Excellent job!

Wow, glad everything turned out the way it did! Is your student ever getting into a plane again? lol

Glad you're okay man, truly.

 

I have a similar story:

 

A few years ago I was driving a friends 996 GT2 to get my groceries (I was baby sitting the car for him while he was on an extended honeymoon at Epcot.) So, I drive to Whole Foods, (note: this is a highly tuned car, around 800 WHP) and get everything on my list, meanwhile, I ask my GF at the time to buy some stuff at Jewel (she doesn't though, that bitch, I dumped her shortly after this,) so now I have to go to Jewel, which is cool because I enjoy driving this beast.

 

So I buy the Jewel stuff and also get some extras like a French Silk Pie and 10 pieces of Chicken Tenders and half a pound of Tater Babies, mmmmmm.

 

So I get home, finally, and before I set after the chicken and potatoes I decide to take a pre-game dump.

 

I'm in there for like 20 minutes, and still the business isn't done, but the food's getting cold, so I say fcuk it, I'll make this a two parter, it's half-time baby.

 

I turn my head toward the TP and that's when my heart stopped, I remembered I locked the key's in the car. fcuk!

Glad you're okay man, truly.

 

I have a similar story:

 

A few years ago I was driving a friends 996 GT2 to get my groceries (I was baby sitting the car for him while he was on an extended honeymoon at Epcot.) So, I drive to Whole Foods, (note: this is a highly tuned car, around 800 WHP) and get everything on my list, meanwhile, I ask my GF at the time to buy some stuff at Jewel (she doesn't though, that bitch, I dumped her shortly after this,) so now I have to go to Jewel, which is cool because I enjoy driving this beast.

 

So I buy the Jewel stuff and also get some extras like a French Silk Pie and 10 pieces of Chicken Tenders and half a pound of Tater Babies, mmmmmm.

 

So I get home, finally, and before I set after the chicken and potatoes I decide to take a pre-game dump.

 

I'm in there for like 20 minutes, and still the business isn't done, but the food's getting cold, so I say fcuk it, I'll make this a two parter, it's half-time baby.

 

I turn my head toward the TP and that's when my heart stopped, I remembered I locked the key's in the car. fcuk!

 

While reading your story I was imagining the whole thing. That really is a heart stopper and I'm glad to hear that you're ok. "It isn't time for you to go!" (echo echo echo) hehe anyway. Had some experience like this but wasn't aware of it.

 

My family and I go to a place (I forgot where coz I was little back then) where there's an ocean, where you cannot swim coz there's a border so people won't go into it. BUT, there was this small opening where people can fit through and get pass through the border. The ocean however, before you reach it, got this, pile of big stones in shore and you have to be careful stepping onto them coz they're too slippery. I tried to go there because I saw some people taking a nice swim, then after I went pass through the small opening, everything stopped and went black. Then when I opened my eyes, my uncle was carrying me and a lot of people were looking at me as if I was a dead man. That's when I figured out my foot slipped in one of those rocks and got my head hit really hard that I lost consciousness. They thought I'll get an amnesia, asking me everything I already know.

 

That's pretty it. Thought I won't wake up again, and the funny part of that is, I really didn't know how it happened.

Saleen....glad you were able to pull it out. Good job staying calm and in control.

 

I actually am fascinated by Near Death Experiences (NDE), so to nitpick what you had wasn't an NDE in the literal sense because you were completely conscious and not physically dying. The true NDEs are those that are clinically dead for a few seconds/minutes and then come back to life.

 

However there are often cases of someone experiencing some of the NDE symptoms if they feel they will die (imminent car crash, free falling, etc). And what is actually just a few seconds can feel like an eternity.

 

Regardless of pure NDE or not, I'm sure your system got quite a jolt and you feel quite different now.

 

 

I've used up about 4 of my 9 lives....

 

Choked twice as a very young child. Recall only one of them.....don't remember any drama except hearing the story of how panicked my mom was. She carried me outside the house, screamed very loud and a neighbor came running and was able to dislodge what I was eating and I bit his finger so hard that it bled.

 

Around that same age I got into our Herbie (a real Herbie...'73 VW bug), parked on a hill in front of our house in SF. Got the car out of gear and handbrake down......car went rolling down a hill and it would have been ugly if the car stayed straight, but luckily the wheels were turned and the car went about 30 yards diagonally across the street and got stuck in a neighbors bushes (which also saved the car from smashing into her house). Tow truck had to pull the car out. I remember getting in the car and the aftermath of the extraction, but not the during. The hill was at least a 30 degree slope, enough to get that car up to some scary speeds, and luckily no traffic too.

 

Lastly, several years ago after a night of partying, I offered to take my friend home in NJ. I uncharacteristically got lost trying to get on the FDR, George Washington Bridge, etc. I also got unexpectedly wild behind the wheel and got up to about 120 on the highway in a Volvo 850. There was a long right hand sweeper on the Major Deegan and my brain told me I was not going to be able to hold the lane and avoid hitting the car in front so I jerked the wheel to miss him and initiated one of those NASCAR slides going back and forth, barely missing the median and the right shoulder. My mind calmly said "you will hit the median, and bounce around, but you will be ok". I remember the immediate smell of burnt rubber in the car, and some heroic countersteering....felt like an eternity. Eventually the car came to a stop sideways and right in front of our exit. I drove onto it as if nothing happened. My friend then said "Dude, that shit was awesome!".

 

And what could have been a very frightening experience was now full elation, screaming and just pure adrenaline. I remember my phone battery died and driving to a payphone at 3 AM just to call a friend about this ordeal, crazy. I still can't believe how calm I was throughout the whole event. I've had far less dangerous encounters on the road and in other situations scare me more than that. The next morning and all day after however, when my mind processed what happened......I was a wreck. And I also felt bad for having a passenger with me throughout.

 

I still refuse to come to grips to what really could have happened had I not been as fortunate at the wheel. I think because I was so calm, it didn't seem like it would have been my last day, but impartial observers would probably say otherwise.

 

A lot to be grateful for overcoming some stupid behavior, knock on wood. I'm not really religious but I am pretty sure I did not get out of all these jams myself.

So what was up with the engine?

i was t-boned by a dump truck, rolled over 4 times and hit a tree, I was in a Caddy SRX.......

gld you all survived.

Ur very lucky. Do u think ur student will come back? Lol

 

i won't ride a single engine for this reason. Heck i won't rode props either. Had a blown engine on a 747 twice in my life. They do happen.

Thinking about it, in response to Whitney Houston's death the other day a tv channel here put The Bodyguard on. I could not find my tv remote. I mean I nearly watched it all the way through.

Wow. Glad you and your student are ok.

Wow. Glad you and your student are ok.

I've had some close calls myself. But nothing beats good training. Glad you're alright. Interested to hear what was wrong with the engine... I'm looking to get my pilot's license sometime after college (when I have more disposable income) and my biggest fear is losing an engine up in the air. You hear about them quite a bit, only because when it does happen - it's serious shit - unlike in a car where you can glide to a halt.

 

 

Holy wow! That's intense. Reading your story was like watching an episode of Mayday, a TV show about flight investigations. You sounded like my favorite episode... the Gimli Glider.

 

Glad that you are okay, and like the pilot said at the end of that one episode in an interview... every pilot wonders how he would do in a situation like that, and now I know.

 

Good for you! Again, happy you're okay

Wow, that sounds intense. Glad you're OK. The closest I've come to anything like that was the day I discovered trailing throttle oversteer on a mountain road with no guardrails.

Glad you are ok....congrats on one amazing life experience that you got through which unfortunately you HAD to go through.

just talked to the maintenance techs today... bad valve in the engine.

"Airspeed is cash in your pocket, altitude is money in the bank." Good job getting it back on the deck!

 

My good times list from about 15 years of tactical aviation and various aircraft: Fires, fuel leaks, chip lights, flight control failures, oxygen failures, lost comm, landing gear failures, single engine to the boat at night, getting shot at down low, countless turkey vultures trying to kill me, a few near mid-air's, and two class A mishaps. One of which was a 15G impact with the ground on fire. For the record, not at fault and just happy to be here.

and yes my student and I will be back up in the plane, we were planning on going today but the weather rolled in.

I have one but its not really that interesting. I was out practicing launches on my old 05 ZX6R. I had no gear on at all, just jeans and a t shirt. Not the smartest thing to do when you plan on screwing around or really ever on a bike. But I did it. I was launching then going to the 1-2 shift and letting off and doing it again. One time I launched, made my shift, and let off. Then I got the front end wobble. I didn’t know WTF to do so I just waited for it to end. Then went on my way and rode nice the rest of the day.

 

Later I found out there are two ways the front end wobble ends. A) it stops on its own. B.) You go down. If B would have happened I would probably not be here right now since I didn’t have any gear on. Defiantly scared the crap out of me. Thinking about the incident more I think what I did was grab the clutch hard while the front wheel was still in the air thus moving the front tire to no longer be straight. Then when it came back down it caused the wobble. After that I made sure to let off the gas before pulling the clutch in.

Back when I was a teenager I came within a few inches of hitting a telephone pole head-on at 190km/h (~120 mph), missed it by the width of my driver's side mirror. When my car finally came to a stop I thought I was dead; it took me a couple seconds to realize that I'd missed the pole. Definitely the closest I've come to death and probably the scariest experience of my life. There's no question I would've been killed instantly if I had hit it.