What follows this disclaimer is an article I submitted to Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s monthly publication, AOPA Pilot. It was accepted immediately for the Never Again section of an upcoming issue of the magazine.
At one point in the process, my article was assigned to an editor for review. It seems this individual did not understand that his job is not to write, but to edit. Apparently, this enthusiastic editor liked my idea so much that he set about rewriting the entire article in his own image. His is the version of my article that the magazine published in the July, 2017 issue. Thus, he got published, but I did not.
I write deliberately, and I take my writing seriously. So, when I discovered what AOPA Pilot published on my behalf, I was outraged and inconsolable. I immediately wrote the magazine a letter detailing my complaints. Writers generally understand that words, phrases, and punctuation require correction; occasionally, even entire paragraphs must be deleted. However, in my case, such sweeping changes were made to the text that my original article is no longer recognizable within the body of the published copy.
Instead of a sense of pride for my latest writing achievement, in fact, my first paying gig, as it were, I am embarrassed to display to the world what the magazine published on my behalf. In the letter, I wrote, “While I did sign over to AOPA Pilot first publishing rights, as well as the power to edit my piece as necessary, what amounts to rewriting my article, then attaching my name to it, to my mind, falls outside the purview of editorial license.” AOPA did not respond.
Thus abandoned by the Association, I shall try to redeem myself as an author by publishing the original article on my own website. What follows is the article as I wrote it.
Several years ago, a man contacted the powers-that-be at my school, asking if one of our flight instructors would be willing to ferry his Cessna Skyhawk from Manassas, VA, to the airplane’s new owner in Niagara Falls, NY. My boss asked me if I would do the honors. Naturally, I agreed. Hey, what impassioned, self-respecting pilot would turn down an all-expense-paid adventure and free flight hours?
The seller, henceforth called Henry, and I agreed over the telephone that the following weekend would be perfect timing for the trip, so we each made plans accordingly. Henry assured me the systems aboard the Skyhawk were in perfect working order.
Subsequent checks of the weather charts and chats with Flight Service briefers revealed the approaching weekend increasingly less promising for the flight. Several hours in IMC, moreover, flying in what was then an unfamiliar airplane, to me is not prudent decision making for any pilot.
Through our frequent telephone calls, I learned that there had been several unfortunate, somewhat-prolonged maintenance delays, so delivery of this airplane was already long overdue. As a result, I knew Henry was anxious to get the airplane airborne and en route.
As the weekend departure time drew nigh, I was coming under increasing pressure to fly in what was shaping up to be heavy IFR all the way to my destination. This normally would have been an easy trip, but as the hours ticked down toward wheels-up, an anxiety gnawed at me. Something about this adventure did not feel right.
Back and forth over the telephone Friday, then again Saturday, Henry pressed me each time to set out IFR. Flight Service continued forecasting heavy IFR Saturday and Sunday. Again Henry urged me to set out. Each time he urged me, the gnawing feeling worsened. Still, I stuck to my guns. I am not going, I told him, with the weather as bad as it is.
Finally, he asked if it clears by Sunday afternoon, would I still be willing to go. I told him yes, but let’s see how it all plays out. Early Sunday morning, Flight Service was now calling for clearing around noon. I telephoned Henry and said that if it indeed does clear even close to what is forecast, I would go.
Sure enough, around noon on Sunday, the heavy low overcast did indeed clear off, leaving higher scattered, sunny, breezy skies. Driving to Manassas Airport late that morning to meet Henry and his Skyhawk, along the way I asked myself some pretty searching questions. What was I afraid of that would make me not want to fly in the soup? After all, I am an instrument-rated flight instructor with years of experience teaching. Was it fear or was there something else driving my reticence?
Arriving at Manassas, I parked on the west side of the field, eased myself through the security gate to the ramp, meeting Henry as he was readying his Skyhawk for the trip. We chatted briefly, exchanged necessary contact information, his, mine, the buyer’s. Then, he left. The Skyhawk was in perfect working order, Henry assured me several times, so there should be no issues. According to him, on this adventure, I should want for nothing.
After a thorough preflight inspection, I filed my SFRA flight plan with Flight Service to exit via the Martinsburg Vortac. Then, I climbed aboard, lit the fire, ATIS, Ground, eventually Tower for my takeoff clearance. Once airborne, I stayed with Potomac Approach through to Martinsburg, then bid them thank you and farewell.
Finally on my own, navigation by VOR northbound all the way to Niagara Falls Regional Airport seemed a breeze. Several hours of tuning in VOR after VOR, flying To, then From the station, careful scanning for traffic, taking in the breathtaking scenery of Western Pennsylvania from several thousand feet, then scanning my instruments and systems, this flight was bordering on the routine, which, as many a seasoned aviator will confess, is a dangerous word in aviation.
I was at this point some twenty miles south of Bradford Airport when another scan of my instruments revealed my left fuel needle not bouncing on “E”, but well past it, with my right needle not far behind. Suddenly alert, I kicked myself for not watching my fuel more carefully. What could have gone wrong? I took off with full tanks, easily enough to make Niagara Falls with fuel to spare. The winds were not that strong. Besides, I had been including my fuel gauges in my scan.
No time for that now! A quick check of my chart, I found Bradford Regional Airport ahead. The familiar spikes on the airport circle indicated they have fuel, of course. How far ahead? What, twenty miles? Could I make it? Not a chance! A quick check again of my gauges put that notion to rest immediately. Although I had no way of knowing at the time how serious my condition was, this was already a fuel emergency!
I searched for a closer field. There, a small airport, with fuel, to my luck, and it was just a few miles ahead. Descending smartly, I set up for landing, flew the pattern to an easy touchdown, taxiing to the ramp. I shut down, relieved to have weathered this sudden storm.
The first thing I did after shutting down was to climb up onto the step to inspect what I was convinced was a fuel cap I had failed to secure. The caps were tight. I climbed down, inspecting under the wing, paying special attention to the sumps. All normal, by the look of things, but then again, there is no gas in the tank, so how can I be sure? Upon inspection of other areas, I found blue staining at the left trailing edge of the wing and onto the fuselage, directly in line with the fuel cap. Hmmm, I thought, there may be a fuel leak.
Another curious pilot nearby strolled over to chat. I related to him my dilemma, my haunting experience, the danger, my frustration with myself; my predicament, now being stuck at this tiny field on a quiet Sunday afternoon with not enough fuel to get to my destination. He told me that Sunday is usually the fuel man’s day off. “However”, he said pointing, “he lives in that little lone house on the hill there, overlooking the field. He might be persuaded to make an exception in this case.”
He telephoned the man. Within a minute or two, the man walked out of his house, climbed into his truck, driving down across the ramp, the friendly driver stopping directly before my now-empty aircraft.
As I chatted with both men, I kept an eye on the truck’s fuel meter as the man filled the left tank. If memory serves, it stopped right around twenty-two gallons. Ouch! Now that tank was dry!
After moving his ladder, he began filling the right tank. It has been now more than ten years, and much has happened to me since this adventure, so I cannot remember exactly how much fuel he put into the right tank, but I do remember my growing anxiety at the time leading me to consider that I may have had roughly five or ten minutes of powered flight time left. Anything more after that would have been as a glider.
I suppose it was not until years later that I stopped to figure the approximate rate of fuel evaporation for this flight. The flight had lasted thus far about an hour and a half. A Skyhawk burns around seven gallons an hour, so the engine has now burned around eleven gallons. If the fuel added at my emergency pit stop totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-nine, forty gallons, that means that in an hour and a half, I lost over twenty-seven gallons of raw fuel to the atmosphere. That’s around nine gallons every thirty minutes, or, to put it into perspective, around one gallon every three and a half minutes.
So, having no idea how much fuel I actually have in the remaining tank, taking other variables impossible to know into account, including the possibility of the rate of evaporation increasing for some unknown reason, how many minutes, or even seconds, I finally considered, do I actually have before the engine quits?
Finally, fuel bill paid, I thanked both men for their courtesy. As they left me alone, I climbed up to check the fuel level and the security of the caps once again. Tanks now full, there is no obvious fuel leak, I thought. This time, I will be sure the caps are secure. After all, what else could it be?
I climbed back aboard, lit the fire once again, then taxied for takeoff. Everything normal, fuel tanks full again, engine strong on the takeoff roll, I rotated for the second time on this adventure, lifting effortlessly into the clear blue breezy sky. Turning north again, I picked up my radial on course, climbing to my altitude.
As I came in sight of Bradford Airport again, I noticed my fuel needles already bouncing. Having just been through this emergency not thirty minutes before, I became understandably concerned and decided to land at Bradford, some fifteen or twenty minutes away, as a precaution. Landing, I taxied to the fence at a corner of Bradford’s commercial ramp. While ground and flight crews busied their jets for the next leg of their journeys, I climbed once again onto my Skyhawk’s step to assess my predicament.
The caps were secure, but the fuel level was noticeably lower. Still, even now with mostly-full tanks there was no obvious fuel leak. Puzzled, I knew there was nothing I could do about it here, so back into the cockpit I climbed, determined to get to my destination. With a recently-freshened fuel supply, I knew I could make Niagara Falls, although I monitored my reserves closely en route. Finally, I landed safely at Niagara Falls Regional Airport with fuel to spare. Taxiing to the ramp, I was met at parking by the Skyhawk’s new owner.
I have this annoying tendency to blame myself first when something goes wrong. I’ve done this all my life, but I am working on it. I must not have replaced the fuel caps securely, I thought, or I didn’t lean the mixture properly. Instead, unbeknownst to me at the time, the rubber gasket on the left fuel cap was old and dry, or maybe it was that the cap itself simply did not fit properly, allowing the low pressure above the wing to suck fuel from the tank. Once the left tank was dry, and I mean bone dry, the same low pressure now sucked fuel from the right tank via Cessna’s fuel vent connecting the tanks.
The siphoning of the fuel was occurring at such a rate during flight that the scan I had been employing of my instruments apparently was not adequate to keep up with the fuel leak. That was my mistake. Lesson learned.
On the other hand, once again in my defense, even if I had been more closely monitoring especially the left fuel gauge, this was still so early into the flight, to my mind there would have been no way for me to use that much fuel in only the last hour and a half or two hours. I might just as easily have dismissed the reading as instrumentation error. After all, we learn to trust the fuel gauges in only two modes: tanks full and tanks empty.
Still, how could I have known? Besides, the Skyhawk had just days before this flight emerged from her annual, so to a great extent, I was at the mercy of the mechanic and the owner as to the airplane’s airworthiness. In my case, after careful scrutiny of the airplane, I had narrowed down the problem to the fitting of the fuel cap rather than something more serious such as a leaking fuel tank, lines, or carburetor.
Initially, I thought the problem lay with me for not refitting the cap properly. It never occurred to me that the fuel cap itself might be problematic. Thus, in my mind, my simply refitting the cap more securely this time should fix the problem. This is the reason I took off again each time.
I suddenly had an epiphany. I discovered right then and there the meaning of the earlier fear beginning several days ago, lasting through this morning, the fear that kept me from flying in IMC; my reluctance, the gnawing pit in my stomach, my Guardian Angel, call it what you will, the little voice that was telling me that something was wrong with this adventure.
It occurred to me that if I had succumbed to Henry’s pressure, simply blasting off IFR into heavy IMC, into the unknown, moreover, in an unfamiliar airplane, no less, I would have suffered the same fuel emergency, not necessarily at the same place geographically, but it would have been somewhere. Since the entire East Coast was socked in earlier in the day, that somewhere would have been heavy IMC. At that point, I would have had to declare an emergency, enlisting the help of ATC for vectors to the nearest field with an ILS.
Apart from command decisions, apart from Aeronautical Decision Making, the big questions here involve fuel availability. What if I could not make it to the recommended field with the fuel I had left? What if I had to go missed, then fly the approach again? This is the sole reason glider pilots do not fly IFR.
A lesson I learned from this experience is to trust the feeling that had been gnawing at me, maybe it was a premonition, which I had interpreted as fear, that may, in fact, have been this little voice within me telling me that what I was being pressured to do was not a good idea. I listened to the little voice this time and it saved my life.
In this case, without a moment’s hesitation, I elected to disregard all on-going arguments concerning precise flight planning, pre-flight inspections, checklists, fuel gauge accuracy, ego and bravado, what I should have done, what I should not have done, whose fault this is, mine, the inspector’s, the owner’s, shifting instead into emergency survival mode to get the airplane on the ground as quickly as possible.
Doren K. Weston 