Don in Hollister Mon 08 Jul 2013, 3:47 pm
Hi DearWife. Some pilots like to pull the throttles all the way back to idle and coast in when they are on final approach. That was what got the pilot flying flight 214 in trouble. I have never agreed with that procedure simply because you are no longer flying the plane. You really don’t have 100% control of it although there are times I do believe you are never really 100% in control of the plane you’re flying.
In all of the years that I flew never, never, never did I ever pull by throttles back to idle with on final. If my desired landing speed was 100 knots I came in at 115 knots. I maintained that speed for a couple of seconds even after the wheels were on the runway. This way if something suddenly came up in front of me all I had to do was pull the yoke back a little and I would be airborne again. I would declare a missed approach and go around for another try.
Only once did I ever have to abort the landing. This was because my nose gear gave me an indication that it was not down and locked. When the alarm went off it scared about 20 years off of me. It took me a couple of seconds to find the damn switch to turn that noisy thing off. I contact the tower and told them what happened and requested that I could make a low slow fly by so they could check the nose gear for me. They confirmed that it was down, but had no way of knowing if it was locked. I got some altitude under me and bounced the aircraft to see if I couldn't get the light to go out. It didn’t blink one bit. By now the tower was more than aware I had a problem so they were rolling the crash vehicles. I told them I was going to land and keep the nose up as long as I could. When the nose started going down I would kill the engines and coast to a stop so the crash crews wouldn’t have to worry about getting wacked by a prop. When the nose gear touched the runway everything worked the way it should. When the plane stopped one of the crash crew people opened my storage compartment pulled out the gear lock pins and inserted them into the landing gears.
Maintenance confirmed the nose gear lock was working perfectly. The problem was a loose electrical wire to my indicator prevented the signal from getting to it so it thought my nose gear didn’t come down. A couple of days later I got the clean shorts award for not soiling my underwear or sucking a hole in my seat.
I don’t fly anymore as I can’t afford the insurance, cost of fuel, hanger fees and maintenance. That and having had 3 heart attacks I thought it was time to hang my wings up. Do I miss flying? Yes and no. I enjoy it but you have got to be on your toes every second you are at the controls. You have to be aware of what you are doing, but you also have to be aware of what you’re going to do. You’re always thinking of where you are going to be a second from now as much as you are thinking about what you’re doing at that exact moment. Take Care…Don