Memorable Emergencies in Flight Sim.

Firekitten

Emergencies... something to train for, or just a little fun. What was your most memorable?

Tonight on vatsim at the Moncton FIR event 'Moncton Mondays' in Canada, Canadian Xpress flight 796 from Greater Moncton to St Johns suffered engine failure for unknown reasons at TOC crossing Charlotte Town. Atc gave priority vectors to the flight to divert to Halifax Int, and the flight diverted, and handed over to Halifax Aproach.

25 Nautical Miles out of Halifax, The flight lost engine one, and became a glider. Thankfully, Halifax App was on the ball tonight, and gave me constant distance to airport updates, altitude discression, and vectors for the straight in aproach, clearing all waiting traffic to hold while I came in. Despite the loss of all engines, Canadian Xpress 796, a Boeing 733 made a sucessful emergency landing at Halifax, and was towed from the runway. I think i need new brakes though... touch down at 170knots, 1000ft past the threshold, I burned the heck out of my brakes and blew a few tyres before managing to stop just before running off the far threshold. No injuries, beyond the pilot's head once the Maintainance chief got hold of her!

Flying on vatsim is great at the best of times, but with full control from clearance to centre, and after asking prior permission for an emergency, it made for an exciting, and realistic experience!

Whats your most memorable incident?

Mr Benevolent

Concorde at max weight, LFPG, X-Plane. Somehow two engines failed at 67 seconds, struggled into the air and the gear wouldn't retract. Ran out of airspeed and ideas at the same time. Crashed.

So X-Plane simulated the Concorde crash with remarkable accuracy. FSX made it into a farce - took off no problem at all. Hilarious stuff, and then I got told my recreation was in bad taste :eek:

Firekitten

It is kinda bad taste... I belive simulating real air disasters is actually against vatsim and IVAO terms of use.

storker

Nothing as memorable as losing all engine power (except when done deliberately). I did lose all electrical power once in a Carenado C172 not long after leaving Wrangell. What made it memorable was how the failure manifested itself. Instead of just having everything switch off, the radios would flick off, on, off, on, off rapidly and iregularly with, I think, that hissy sparky kind of sound. I thought the effect was great, but I don't know if it was down to Carenado, FSX or FS Passengers, which I was using at the time to generate random failures.

Stork

Firekitten

I've got a narative PIREP somewhere of an incident over the mountains in BC with a 206... massive oil leak, had to shut down and glide, made it to a sandbar thankfully, but dicey dicey aproach. Will dig it up and post it with the screenshots from it.

Firekitten

Found it!
Ok, some dramatisation and fictional content, mostly in the style, and content, ie, Lara Stevens the 'character' i use for her fictional bush charter company Campbell Aviation, or as it was then, Campbell Bush Charters. All the actual aviation gubbins was as happened due to an fsx random oil leak sprung on me... pardon the pun.

here we go...

It was a chilly Monday morning when I dragged my behind up to Stewart for a charter flight. Some exploration miners had returned from surveying up river, and needed to ship their equipment up to Petersburg, Alaska. Naturally, being a starving, hand to mouth charter pilot, I readily accepted the gig, and flew up to Stewart on the aforementioned chilly morning arriving shortly after 6am.

(On the ground in Stewart waiting for my passengers)

(Climbing up over Stewart enroute)
Stifling a yawn, I preflighted the aircraft while the miners loaded up their gear, and before the tower at Stewart had even come on shift, we were off.
The first half of the flight was largely uneventful. The miners regaled me with tails of their activities up in the wilds of British Columbia hunting for new deposits.

(View of the glaciers in the Misty Fjords)
It was during a lesson on the best drilling technique that I noticed that my oil temperature was higher than usual, but I attributed it to a tough climb above some cloud around the peaks. All my other gauges were in the green, so I kept an eye on it, and continued onwards. Within five minutes, the high temperature began to get far worse and my oil pressure began to fall. I had an oil leak… Things began to happen very quickly. The engine began to sound rough, and I started to look for a place to put down. I knew that if it was a simple cause, I could get the leak fixed, but from the rate at which my pressure was falling off, it was a significant leak. Without many options, I shut my engine down to prevent it ceasing up when it ran dry.

(Doesn't take an NTSB investigator to spot the problem here)
Out here, Rescue wasn’t a certainty, If I could repair the leak, I could top off my oil, and get back to somewhere I could have it looked at properly, but for now, I had to protect our means of escape. I performed my emergency checklists and briefed the miners for an emergency landing. I called the centre and declared an emergency, and set my emergency locator beacon before turning my attention to looking for a landing spot. We were high in the mountains, with steep valleys and thick pine forest all around; landing spots were as plentiful as Moose line dancing classes.
I checked my sectional for nearby rivers; if I could put down on a sandbar, I had a reasonable chance of getting out again. There was a river 5 miles to my west, and I began my decent into the valleys. As we cleared the fog, my own expectations of a favourable outcome began to diminish. With the higher altitude, I had to modify my glide speed to reduce my rate of decent. All around me was sheer rock and dense forest; hitting either would be death sentence in a 206.
Things took a turn for the worse as my battery power ran out , taking all but the most basic of my instrumentation with it. I had to extrapolate my TAS from the ground speed indicated on my spare battery powered gps. Rounding the corner of a valley, I finally made contact with the winding river below. While rocky, the river was littered with sandbars, and I turned to follow the river as I dropped lower.

(Well, its not Vancouver International, but it will do, note how 'dark' my instruments are? damn power pixies left me)
Finally spotting a sandbar of decent length, I lowered my nose to gain forward speed. I couldn’t drop my flaps without electrical power, so had to make a fast touchdown. Dropping down over the river, I skimmed the rocky bed before touching my wheels down in the shallows to slow myself before hitting the sandbar hard with my main gear. Gingerly dropping the nose down, I applied the brakes and we began to slow.
We rolled to a stop within 30 ft of the end of the bar, and the cockpit was immediately silent. My heart was beating a mile a minute. We had made it down. Climbing out, I checked the aircraft over. Despite the hard impact, we had sustained very little damage. The gear looked sound, and the airframe was intact. While the miners chain smoked their adrenaline away, I popped the cowling and took a look at the damage.

(Safely on the sandbar... poor baby isnt a happy airplane!)
The gods of aviation were smiling down on me that morning… the sump bolt had worked its way loose, and had bounced out, before becoming lodged in a bracket. The inside of the cowling was slick with oil, but I managed to refit the bolt, and top off my oil. The engine turned over, and I left her sat running while I watched my gauges like a hawk. Pressure and temperature were stable, and I began to think about getting out of this god forsaken sandbar.
I had very little options. The bar was roughly 700 feet long. Well under my current take off performance. Much to the miners chagrin, we offloaded some of their hardier equipment, to be recovered later. Getting the weight down, I taxied the 206 back to the start of the bar, and ran up the engine. With a sheer face across the river from the sandbar we were taking off from, I would have to bank steeply very soon after take off, so reaching a safe manoeuvring speed was key. Brakes engaged, engine run up, I released the brakes and began to hurtle down the sandbar. The ride was worse than a fairground bucking bronco, but the airspeed slowly began to creep agonisingly higher. 100ft from the end of the bar, I lifted off, and began to bank far sooner than I should have to clear the rock face. With my airspeed dancing above the stall limit, and the horn screaming, I cleared with valley side with less than a wingspan to spare. In the clear, I built up my airspeed before climbing up to resume the flight into Petersburg.

(See the highlighted sandbar? yeah, that was where I just took off from)
Once I was safely on the ground, I could finally relax. Not bad for a morning’s work! Now to go get things fixed, and go back for our left luggage…

(Well, shes in the shop now, so im off the clock... Wonder if theres a bar open at 10am?)

Delights of setting a random failure for the flight to spice things up... who'da thought the evil sprits of flight simulator x would have dumped this one on me? bastards!
Hope you enjoyed it. (I didnt)

storker

Good story. Moose line-dancing classes, eh? I had to pause and let my imagination work with that one for a bit...

Stork

Firekitten

Thanks On the bush forum im on, we post all our PIREPs like that, narative form... makes for some fun stories, and when something unusual happens, quite the read!

As for the classes... Haven't you been to Canada? They offer those classes in nearly every town. Never been in the moose pit at a gig?

Mr Benevolent

Firekitten wrote: »

It is kinda bad taste... I belive simulating real air disasters is actually against vatsim and IVAO terms of use.

I'm not surprised, but it's educational for me on my own PC - to know that there wasn't anything the pilots could've done. The AF447 crash on the other hand, all they had to do was let go of the sidestick!

Firekitten

Oh true, I'm sure we've all done it. I emember doing Gimli and Air Transat, to see if I could glide that far too..


Thing with so many of the crashes these days, Air france, or a little further back, Flash Airlines, the 85 Air China 747 one, So many times, the pilots depend blindly on thier autopilots, and blame strange data on errors....

in the case of the air china, they lost an engine at 410, it started to bank right, because the captain left it on autopilot, and didnt give it corrective rudder, as he should.

They began to slowly wing over, and they just sat there, thinking the ADI's were all bust, (even the backups) then spent 30 seconds plumeting to 9000ft, where they thankfully recovered it.

I do have a feeling that today, too many airline pilots are wholely dependant on thier computer systems, almost, reluctant to disengage otto and stick fly, and dismiss sometimes, the most obvious signs, or feelings, in dire situations, leading to terrible disasters or near misses that every pilot that sees the incident, will tut, and shake thier head, and say they could do better... but could we? I think the type of training makes a big difference really, or type of flying.

I'm of the school of thought, that nothing but computerised IFR flight, with little or no actual time on the controls, FLYING the plane, ruins great pilots.