What is one of the most important things you must do to survive an emergency? Well known aviation expert and survival specialist Doug Ritter of Equipped to Survive suggests that your first task is to avoid panic in any emergency situation.
Panic is the most disadvantageous reaction for survival in almost any serious situation, especially in an airplane. Panic is fight or flight magnified. It's the loss of the rational intellect, where body chemicals (adrenaline) drive our biological engine at full afterburner for one purpose - escape.
As a terrestrial defense, a fight or flight response is immensely valuable. After all, if you're being chased by a bear (intent on making you a rug in his den), you run. But the cockpit offers no place to run. In the air, an escalating fight or flight response often sires panic in the unprepared. It's almost always deadly. Preventing panic during in-flight emergency situations requires three things: having a plan, believing the plan and working the plan.
Having a Plan
Be it a single item to implement or an extensive checklist to follow, a plan is fundamental to handling in-flight emergencies. Without such a plan, benign situations often become serious business.
A student pilot discovered this several years ago in the traffic pattern at Long Beach airport. On the downwind leg, the door of his Piper Warrior popped open. Never having planned for such an occurrence, he was unaware of the most fundamental, holy and sacrosanct of all door-popping rules: Fly the airplane, not the door. To do otherwise is as risky as a predemocracy jump over the Berlin wall.
Without a plan his mind was lost in an avalanche of emotions. "Grab the door, shut the door," was his primal response. Distracted by this singular thought, his airplane spiraled out of the pattern. A quick thinking controller (who was also a flight instructor), quickly assessed the situation and instructed him to forget the door and fly the airplane. The results: airplane OK, door OK, student OK. Without a plan, there's little assurance that you'll be guided by your intellect and not your emotions.
No one can deny the value of a good plan, even one devised on the spot. Apollo 13 command pilot James Lovell knew this quite well. Two days into the lunar mission an oxygen tank ruptured, crippling two of three oxygen fuel cells. Left with only one drained cell, Lovell, his crew and mission control had only minutes to devise a plan.
With the ebb of life support in the command module, they decided to powered up Aquarius - the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) - and spent the next four days riding home in this life-supporting cosmic condo. Nearing Earth, they jettisoned the LEM and returned to the command module for protection against their fiery atmospheric reabsorption. Lovell, Swigert and Haise survived because they had a plan.
We airplane pilots (on a less stellar scale) need similar plans to cope with in-flight emergencies and avoid panic. Unlike the situation of our three heroic astronauts, we may not have the time or resource to devise a plan on the spot.
Like a hungry baby, an airplane with a failed or faltering engine demands immediate attention. If you don't have a plan, this isn't a time to create one. A preformulated, step-by-step procedure is the key to safety. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, at least do the following three things: pull your carburetor heat (or alternate air), switch fuel tanks and turn on your electric fuel pump (if equipped). Don't forget this. As simple as this sounds, this little plan solves more than 95% of most engine problems.
But what about other serious in-flight problems? Fortunately, prepackaged plans for such emergencies are found in the checklists of most pilot operating handbooks (POH). Handling in-flight fires, dealing with engine malfunctions, coping with electrical problems are but a few of the delineated emergency procedures. Your job is to familiarize yourself with every one of them. By familiarize, I don't mean to simply know where to find the emergency checklist in the handbook. You must memorize these procedures.
Instant recall of the most crucial emergency items is mandatory. In other words, have this knowledge stored in RAM before every flight. After all, if a trained martial artist is attacked, he doesn't pull out his "How to kick someone's empennage" check list, does he? He responds reflexively. Consequently, time-critical emergency items must be memorized. Less time critical items - landing with a flat main tire, ammeter showing insufficient rate of charge, emergency descent through clouds - can be handled to the cadence of a written checklist (although I'd still recommend familiarization).
A plan is only the first step in panic prevention. Additionally, you must believe in the plan you're working. Without this, the foundation of confidence in your plan cracks like icebergs calving on hot days.
Believing the Plan
Perhaps you've experienced something similar when flying with a trusted flight instructor. Deep down inside, you know this person wouldn't expose you to danger. So you willingly do stalls and spins with minimal apprehension. What if you didn't trust your instructor? It's unlikely you'd believe he or she would keep you safe. You're less likely to follow their instruction without some anxiety. Similarly, if you don't believe in your plan, you're less likely to follow it during an actual emergency. This is a prelude to panic.
There is only one way to gain confidence in the plans and procedures you implement: understand the reasons behind them. During one in-flight training session, I was having trouble convincing a pilot to turn his master switch off during the simulation of an in-flight engine fire. He reasoned it was better to keep it on so he might make continued emergency transmissions during the descent.
He didn't know that this model Cessna 172 has avionics cooling fans which inhale air from front side of the fuselage to cool the radios. With the master switch on, smoke, as well as air, might easily be drawn into the cockpit. Once he understood the reasoning behind the action, he willingly complied with my request and turned off the switch.
People do things for a reason. The more meaningful the reason, the more motivated the person and the more likely he or she is to act properly. Therefore, to develop confidence and a belief in your plan, try understanding the reasons behind it. Examine those checklists in detail. If you don't understand why it's done a particular way, find out. Such knowledge is the glue which strengthens you commitment to act rationally in an emergency.
Working the Plan
Having a plan and believing it isn't an inoculation against panic. Your response to an emergency situation must be subconsciously driven. It must be habitual. Take a trained martial artists for instance. Anywhere from three to six years of practice is necessary to achieve the rank of black belt. In that time, thousands of punches, kicks and blocks are exchanged with a training partner (with an occasional and accidental self-inflicted punch). Through constant repetition, a valuable, defensive reflex develops.
At this point, martial artists don't think of using karate to protect themselves; they are karate. Their reflex is part of being, not something they consciously do. They block, kick and punch as easily as you might throw your hands out while protecting yourself during a fall. This is the purpose of reflexive training. In an in-flight emergency, this type of reflex is your ticket to preventing panic.
For instance, during cruise flight, a sudden SUPER SEVERE vibration might result from flutter of the flight controls or propeller blade fracture. Either situation requires the reflexive habit of pulling back the throttle and applying a slight amount of pressure to the flight controls. You simply have no time to think; you must act now!
A fractured propeller or broken blade might easily pull an engine off its mounts. A reduction in power lessens these destructive forces. Similarly, divergent flutter, a rare but serious problem, is best handled by slowing the airplane (reduction of power) and loading the vibrating control surface (applying back pressure on the control yoke).
The late martial artists Bruce Lee once said that if he ever injured someone while defending himself he would accept no responsibility for the action. He stated that "It" would be responsible, not him. In other words, "It" is the subconscious action, the reflex.
Thorough training, he reasoned, demands that he act in accordance to the habits he's developed. While a jury might not find his defense persuasive, an attacker most certainly would. In an airplane, this reflexive response is invaluable.
If your behavior isn't reflex, then you don't own it. It's not part of you. Chances are, in an emergency, you won't respond appropriately. Thus, you are one step closer to an escalated "fight or flight" panic response.
Mother Nature provided us with two get-away sticks (legs) for use in an emergency. While millions of years of genetic honing reinforced their use, they are of little value in an airplane. Therefore, survival means we act contrary to our instinctual response to run. Knowing what to do, believing it's the proper thing to do and having the reflex to do it, helps us master our emotions.
For more information on this subject, see "Understanding personal limits."
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