It is a lovely, peaceful spot set on a knoll, but most of the remains—people who went down the Ohio River and settled on the flat ground below in the late 1700s—were reinterred up here above the floodplain. That large, flat area, called the Turkey Bottoms, would become “Sunken Lunken” Airport in the early 1920s.

I’ve heard comments about how many approach and takeoff paths take you right over graveyards, but I never realized how many cemeteries are located on airport properties.

• READ MORE: Perusing Some Old Logbooks

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea. The ground between or alongside runways and taxiways is flat and well cared for, and what could be a more appropriate resting place for pilots and aviation aficionados? The thought of resting in a place with airplanes soaring into the sky nearby…hey, that makes sense to me.

But since Lunken (KLUK) hasn’t yet seen things my way, I have a plot in a little and very old cemetery at the base of the Mount Washington neighborhood water tower, sitting on a hill about 4 miles from the airfield.

The airport beacon is mounted on top of the tower, and many a night I’ve navigated home fi nding my way toward that bright light.

Out of curiosity, I “uncovered” information about the incredible number of airports—large and small—where an old cemetery is found on the property. And it’s fascinating how the problem is solved.

A Chicago field, originally called Orchard Airport and the site of the Douglas Aircraft Company, was renamed O’Hare (KORD) in 1949, and in 1952, graves in Wilmer’s Old Settler Cemetery—0.384 acres on O’Hare Airport property—were removed by court order because they were in the path of a proposed new runway. Reportedly, 37 whites and an unknown number of Native Americans interned there were reburied in three nearby cemeteries.

Just how long a grave can be “reserved” for sole use by the original inhabitant seems to depend on state and local practices. It’s common for cemeteries to rent plots, allowing people to lease a space for up to 100 years before the grave is allowed to be recycled and reused.

In Ohio, it’s 75 years, but I could find no universal law here. It seems that much depends on the preference of surviving—if any—family members. Sometimes a court order is required.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (KATL) consistently wins the title of the world’s busiest airport and it continues to grow, engulfing more and more small communities. When a fifth runway was added in 2006, it vastly increased the number of possible operations, but it also enveloped two century-old cemeteries.

• READ MORE: Sometimes the Flying Weather’s Fit Only for Turkeys

Authorities decided that these two small family and church burial grounds, Hart and Flat Rock cemeteries, would simply be incorporated into the airport’s master plan. Despite being located between runways with takeoffs about every 30 seconds, they are still publicly accessible via a dedicated access road with signs showing the locations.

Probably the most famous—and curious—on-airport remains can be found at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (KSAV).

Members of the Dodson family, Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, are buried alongside Runway 10, while Richard and Catherine Dodson’s graves are actually embedded beneath that runway. If you look really hard out of an airplane window, you can see the markers.

On quiet Saturday mornings, local pilots have been known to ask ground controllers for the “Graveyard Tour.” If cleared, this allows one to taxi out to the Dotson grave markers on Runway 10/28 so passengers can snap a picture before taking off.

Everything is haunted in Savannah and ghost tours are big business, but thus far, no one has figured out how to monetize the graveyard tour at the airport. Perhaps the two flight schools on the field could start incorporating a ghost tour into their sightseeing flights.

When Smith Reynolds Airport (KINT) in Winston- Salem, North Carolina, acquired property in 1944 to extend a runway, about 700 graves in the private African American Evergreen Cemetery were relocated to a new location. But it seems some marked graves remain in a wooded area within the airport complex.

• READ MORE: The Man Who Saved the Iconic Hartzell Propeller Company

If you watch carefully while driving on Springhill Road south of Tallahassee International Airport (KTLH) in Florida, you’ll see a break in the security fence. Pull in there and drive between the fences with signs proclaiming it is a restricted area, and you’ll come upon gravestones of a cemetery around which the airport runways were built. It’s known as Airport Cemetery and was originally a pauper’s graveyard. About 15 graves are designated with stones, but it appears there are about 20 other sunken depressions marking graves.

I’m betting you know many others, but I found one at Burlington International Airport (KBTV) in Vermont, where the graveyard is surrounded on three sides by the facility. And there’s Florida’s Flagler Executive Airport (KFIN), North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham International

Airport (KRDU), New York’s Albany International Airport (KALB), and Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport (KSHD), where Revolutionary War veteran Mathias Kersh and his wife, Anna Margaret, rest—all sites of small family plots. The behemoth Amazon recently added 210 acres as part of its air cargo hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (KCVG) and is seeking permission to move 20 graves from the land it owns there.

No discussion of final resting places and cemeteries would be complete without a mention of a glorious shrine to aviation built a quarter mile off the end of Runway 15 at California’s Hollywood Burbank Airport (KBUR), formerly known as Bob Hope Airport. It’s called the “Portal of the Folded Wings.” The 78-foot-tall structure was designed by a San Francisco architect and built in 1924, intending it to be the entrance to a cemetery called Valhalla Memorial Park.

With its location so close to Burbank Airport—then called Union Airport—and the site of the Lockheed Company, aviation enthusiast James Gillette wanted to dedicate it as a shrine or memorial to early aviators. It took Gillette nearly 20 years, but it was finally dedicated as the final resting place of pilots, mechanics, and aviation pioneers in 1953. In addition to the ashes of those actually interred inside the portal, a number of brass plaques honor famous aviators resting elsewhere, such as General Billy Mitchell and Amelia Earhart.

Familiar aviation pioneers whose ashes are found inside include Bert Acosta (Admiral Richard Byrd’s copilot); Jimmie Angel, whose remains were removed and scattered over Angel Falls in Venezuela, where he crashed flying a Cincinnati-built Flamingo; W.B. Kinner, builder of the first certified aircraft engine as well as Earhart’s first airplane; and Charlie Taylor, who built the engine for the Wright Flyer and operated the first airport on Huffman Prairie in Dayton, Ohio. You can visit the site in Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California.

But I can’t write a story about aviators who legally rest on airport properties without mentioning who knows how many ashes that have been surreptitiously scattered from airplanes flying over the deceased’s beloved home airport.

This column first appeared in the Summer 2024 Ultimate Issue print edition.

The post Ultimate Issue: The Connection Between Airports and God’s Acres appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

On a whim, I dug into some old logbooks, as well as some diaries from the years between the mid-1960s and mid-’70s, and have been alternately convulsed with laughter, drowned in tears, and flat-out amazed at the number of people I taught (or tried to teach) to fly. As far as I know, none have hurt themselves, their passengers, or their airplanes (well, except me).

By 1964, I’d graduated from college, flown briefly for TWA as a hostess, met Ebby Lunken, and worked for his Midwest Airways commuter airline through its good days and bad, accepting a marriage proposal from Ebby and then backing off. He was “the moon and the stars,” but there was an age difference of 30 years. So, we remained close and, 10 years later, finally got married. I guess I knew it couldn’t work since I backed out on a trip to Las Vegas and then let two marriage licenses expire here at home.

Well, it didn’t—the marriage ended after eight years. I had cut way back working at my flying school—depending more and more on part-time instructors—and put all my energy into playing society lady, trying to be accepted by Ebby’s friends who were 20 years or more older and the cream of Cincinnati society.

Anyway, before all that, I’d begun as a 250-hour pilot, instructing for a large flying school at the airport for several years at $5 per flying hour. Two years later, I agreed to a part-time job instructing for Johnny Lane at Lebanon Airport (I68) in Ohio, while still acting as a sort-of secretary in the mornings for Ebby at what remained of the doomed Midwest Airways.

In those years, if I could earn $100 a week and pay no more than $100 a month for an apartment, life was good—not lavish, but good.

For seven months, I commuted back and forth between Lunken (KLUK) and Lebanon, mostly in my Pietenpol Air Camper, and then came back to Lunken for the winter. I loved the characters at Lebanon—doctors, pig farmers, a radio personality, and lots of “flying farmers,” many with “interesting” airplanes.

• READ MORE: Sometimes the Flying Weather’s Fit Only for Turkeys

After instructing in a leased Cherokee 140 for a couple years, I bought a Cessna 150 for $6,000 from “Moose” at (now defunct) Blue Ash Airport and opened “Miss Martha’s Flying School” (really called Midwest Flight Training to take advantage of the name on a big hangar Ebby owned). Eventually, I added a few leasebacks, and some students had their own airplanes. In those 10 years, I logged nearly 6,000 hours of dual instruction and became an examiner for my (now) Part 141 school.

Browsing through these old logbooks resurrected so many emotions—laughter, frustration, tears, and truly beautiful memories. Of course, now I’m a defrocked CFI, but nobody will ever erase those years of hard work—sweating and freezing on airport ramps and in little trainers—and loving it (well, mostly).

My school prospered initially, I think, because most members of the Harrison Social Flyers, a flying club at the (now) Cincinnati West Airport (I67), had been flying permanently on student permits. You could do that in those days without all the required signoffs from a CFI. One hot summer day, I was at Cincinnati West in my Cub, sitting on a bench and drinking a Coke. Around the corner was a gaggle of club members who were mightily ticked off because one of the members “got himself a private license.” Well, the rules were changing, and they all were soon going to take the private written exam and get certificated.

• READ MORE: The Man Who Saved the Iconic Hartzell Propeller Company

Coincidently, I was teaching a free evening ground school at the old Cincinnati Tech High School. A large part of the class were Harrison Social Flyers who then took the written and came to my flight school to get their certificates.

Here are a few vignettes (among so many):

• Glenda was a beautiful, polite, and very Southern lady living in Cincinnati while her husband finished his medical training. My trainers had speakers and hand-held mics—no headsets. One afternoon after we landed, the tower told us to turn left at the next intersection with another runway, but Glenda turned right, and the controller was not happy.

She was quite flustered and, before I could grab the mic, she said, “Now, listen, y’all. Just shut up.” I grabbed the mic and later escorted Glenda to the tower to deliver an apology. She charmed them.

• Another student—a 40-something businessman—always scheduled his dual sessions in the early afternoon. He was a nice guy and doing fairly well when I asked why this time suited him. The air would be smoother in the morning.

“Oh, that wouldn’t work,” he said. I thought he meant it would interfere with work until he explained: “I have lunch with some buddies around 11:30 [a.m.], and I can have a couple martinis to relax myself before flying.”

My reply? “Uh, we need to talk today instead of flying. That martini thing isn’t going to work.”

• Then there was Connie, who was flying with another instructor, my friend Bill Anderson. He was getting nowhere because, when he pulled the throttle on simulated power failures, Connie would throw up her hands and scream (and/or cry). I said I would take her on, so we talked about the exercise on the ground (even though instructors at that school got paid only when the engine was running).

Off we went and, sure enough, I pulled on carb heat and closed the throttle at 3,000 feet, and she went into Sarah Bernhardt mode. I folded my arms and, eventually, said, “Gee, it looks like we’re gonna crash.” Connie got her wits about her and, at maybe 1,000 feet above a bunch of farm fields, she set up a glide and checked fuel and mixture.

I gave her back to Bill and, later on, I guess she freaked out on a solo flight in the traffic pattern. Gene Buckley, a handsome and accomplished air traffic controller, calmed her down and she landed safely. I don’t know if she ever got a private certificate.

• The ATCs, mostly ex-military, were lots of fun. My student landed with a “thunk” one summer day on the runway in front of the tower, and the left wheel pant flew off into the adjacent grass. The tower closed the runway, announcing it would reopen “when Martha found her pants.”

This column first appeared in the May 2024/Issue 948 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Perusing Some Old Logbooks appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

We don’t have much violent weather in the Ohio River Valley, but we suffer through weeks of low, gray skies, rain/snow mix, and gusty surface winds. The surface winds at the moment are 240 degrees at 14 gusting to 22 knots with a light rain/snow mix. Ceiling is 1,300 feet overcast with rime ice reports up to 9,000 feet, plus a wind shear alert—winds at 2,000 feet are from 210 degrees at 50 knots. And that wicked witch, Mother Nature, plans even stronger surface winds with high temperatures in the single digits.

I go down to the airport, KLUK, and sit in the airplane, thinking maybe I ought to take it around the patch a few times, but the thought of pulling off the heavy winter cover, preflighting, and pulling it out of the hangar for a couple landings is too daunting.

So, I’ll regale you with a great story from Lunken Airport’s early days.

It’s a special place for me, but then who doesn’t feel that way about their home field? Lunken is older than most because in the early 1920s, when aviation was “getting off the ground,” the site was uniquely natural for an airport—a big, flat area within 5 miles of downtown Cincinnati. At the time the government was pressuring cities to build airports for the new and popular airmail service.

Called the Turkey Bottoms, this mostly farmland property was eventually purchased by my ex-husband’s grandfather, Eshelby F. Lunken (Lunkenheimer Valve Company), and deeded to the city as an airport for 99 years. Later a ditzy, civic-minded aunt assigned the lease permanently to the city. Bummer.

• READ MORE: There Was Just Something About Michael

In the early ’20s, the Cincinnati Polo Club used a portion, and its members didn’t appreciate a guy landing his “flivver” on their field between chukkers—7½-minute periods in polo.

It was John Paul Riddle, a talented, handsome (even when I knew him in his 80s), and fascinating barnstormer originally from Pikeville, Kentucky, who would play a very big part in creating what is now Cincinnati Municipal Airport-Lunken Field.

I came to know Riddle in the 1980s, when the airport was planning a 50th anniversary celebration, and I was asked to write a booklet for the affair.

“Damn,” I said to an old friend, J.R. Wedekind, “I wish that Riddle guy was still alive. There’s so much I’d like to ask him.”

“He is,” said Wedekind. “Lives in Coral Gables, Florida, and, at 80-something, still plays tennis every day. I’ll give you his telephone number. He lives in a two-family house…with his ex-wife upstairs.”

• READ MORE: Martha’s Return to IFR Skies

So, I called, wondering if he’d be annoyed at the intrusion, but Riddle was, well, charming. We would talk many times in the following weeks because, like so many of us, his memories from way back were sharp and clear.

A celebration was planned, so the city and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (with which there was a quasi-connection) brought him to Cincinnati in summer 1987. Riddle hadn’t been at Lunken Airport for more than 50 years, but he recognized the hangars the city had built for what became the Embry-Riddle Company.

We talked for hours, he rode in my Cub, and we enjoyed a memorable dinner one night with my ex, Ebby Lunken, at a restaurant downtown. The Maisonette was an elegant, five-star joint, and the maître d’ was clearly uncomfortable. Ebby and Riddle were both quite deaf and communicated by shouting across the elegantly laid table.

Afterward, I drove Riddle back to Lunken and, as we neared the airport on a little street over railroad tracks called Airport Road, he muttered, “Oh, yes, I remember—Davis Lane.” That had been its original name many years before. I opened the door of one of the three hangars where, in the 1920s, the company had operated its flying and mechanic schools and kept the WACOs and Fairchilds used on its airmail route to Chicago. Standing in that dark hangar with this man with the rain beating down and not a word said was a rare experience.

• READ MORE: Gear-Up Landings: There Are Pilots Who Have and Those Who May Have To

Riddle was the guy who had landed in the polo field with a passenger and then hopped riders in the afternoon before returning to Ravens Rock upriver. That field at Portsmouth was unlighted, so he would circle town until the local radio announcer heard the airplane and asked everybody with a car to line the runway with their lights on.

On one of his Turkey Bottoms trips to hop some rides, a local man named T. Higbee Embry approached him and asked how much a ride cost.

“How much do you have on you?” Riddle asked.

“Twenty dollars,” Higbee replied.

“That’s what it costs,” Riddle said.

Eventually, Riddle taught Embry to fly, and from that a partnership in a flying company was formed with Embry’s wealthy mother putting up money to buy two WACOs and Riddle running the operation. By 1927, the city had taken legal possession of the land and built three hangars for the new Embry-Riddle Company. It was a success, offering airplane sales, mechanic and flight training, and an airmail contract for daily flights from Cincinnati to Chicago (CAM 24) in WACOs.

He told me wonderful stories, and we pored over old photographs and newspapers the company published. By 1930, Sherman Fairchild brokered a deal for the company to be sold to the Aviation Corporation (which later became Avco), and one of its passenger/airmail companies moved into the hangars. American Airways—later American Airlines—started life at Lunken.

Embry headed to California and Riddle went to Florida, where he would become a big name in the airplane world. Ten years after selling the Embry-Riddle operation, he contracted with the government and trained more than 700 pilots and mechanics, filling big hotels in Miami for civilian pilot training programs. Then he moved to Brazil, where he ran an operation training pilots for its government and, after World War II, founded and operated a large freight carrier, Riddle International Airlines.

I stumbled on a charming story about Riddle’s early years in Pikeville, Kentucky. He graduated from Pikeville College, trained in the military as a pilot and mechanic, and came home to barnstorm. At a Fourth of July celebration in 1923, Riddle, to the huge delight of the townspeople, flew his Jenny under Pikeville’s Middle Bridge.

When I found the still-standing memorial and read it, I laughed but couldn’t help wondering, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

This column first appeared in the April 2024/Issue 947 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Sometimes the Flying Weather’s Fit Only for Turkeys appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

But recently I read a National Transportation Safety Board report about a fatal accident involving a 42-year-old Cessna 182 parked on a ramp in Cleveland, Tennessee. What happened is important, I think, because so many of us fly elderly GA airplanes with key-style ignition switches that may be faulty and not know it.

While his wife stood near the right cabin door, the husband performed a preflight check before their return flight home. She heard him just slightly move the propeller, and then the engine unexpectedly fired. The husband was fatally struck by the propeller.

One of the first things drilled into me (probably you, too) when learning to fly was “always treat any propeller as if it is ‘hot.’” If you’ve ever hand-propped an airplane you thought was securely tied down or with somebody unqualified at the controls, you won’t forget if it unexpectedly roared to life, scaring the hell out of you (and the person inside).

The reason a quick mag check at idle before shutdown is taught—or should be—is to ensure the mags are grounded and the switch works properly. This man who was killed had properly shut down his 182 with the mixture control and then turned the ignition key to “off.” But the switch—and the key itself—were old and worn. Investigators found the key could be removed (pulled out) of the switch in any position: “right,” “left,” “both,” or even “start.” That’s dangerous—and, in this case, fatal.

• READ MORE: There Was Just Something About Michael

So, next time you fly and shut down near the hangar, throttle way back to idle and briefly turn the switch to “off” and then back to “both.” And try removing it (gently) from the other positions. The accident airplane was only 30 hours out of annual. Sure, the mechanic should have checked that it was grounded, but…

Another good practice is repeating the “before-takeoff” run-up and mag check on the ramp before shutting down. It could save you from an unpleasant discovery on your next flight. Just be sure you’re not blasting something or somebody behind you.

Which brings me to a story about my friends at what was once the Hartzell Propeller Company in Piqua, Ohio. Cessna airplanes use McCauley props, so Hartzell once borrowed my Cessna 180 for tests when it applied for a supplemental type certificate to install its props on Cessnas.

In a promotion, Sporty’s Pilot Shop sent a pretty girl flying in, I think, a 172 to airports in the vicinity, including Piqua, with the gift of a large attractive clock for the hangar. The clock face had big ads for Sporty’s, Cessna airplanes, and McCauley props. Obviously, somebody hadn’t done their homework, because Hartzell would hardly hang a clock with a McCauley prop advertisement on its repair station hangar wall. The company thanked her, but declined and sent her on her way. The experience went even further south when, tailed into the open hangar, she fired up the 172 with a roar and blew everything all over the place.

Memories of Hartzell for me are simply joyful. Most involve a wonderful man, Jim Brown, who bought the company in the late 1960s from TRW. Things were in kind of a mess after multiple owners, but Brown rapidly put them right. From then on, Hartzell proudly lived up to its motto, “Built on Honor.”

Jim was a special person. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an engineer, he joined the Navy, graduated from Officer Candidate School, and trained in SNJs at Pensacola, Florida. When he’d earned his wings, Jim spent his career in the 1950s flying Panthers and Demons (the Navy’s first jets) from a straight-deck carrier, “the Bonny Dick,” (officially the USS Bonhomme Richard) in the Pacific. Meanwhile, Mrs. Brown was presenting him with several of their eventual five babies.

• READ MORE: Getting Tired of Tragic Accidents After Engine Failures on Takeoff? Yeah, Me Too

I met him in the early 1970s, when I flew an airworthiness inspector to Piqua to check a Top Gun school Jim and a friend who were planning to launch with a couple of T-34s. Blessedly, that enterprise never got off the ground, but it gave me a chance to talk to “Mr. B” about doing FAA safety seminars at the airport repair station and the impressively remodeled plant near town. He was enthusiastic, helpful, and, eventually, we did a bunch.

He had been an executive at Standard Oil and Austin Powder in Cleveland but jumped when he learned the historic Hartzell company in the cornfields at Piqua could be bought from TRW. It was an arrangement made in heaven. Jim was a fine pilot who loved airplanes and was an astute businessman who ensured quality and took care of his employees. Shortly thereafter, anybody who worked there came to love him.

He had a Beech A36 Bonanza and a SOCATA TBM for company trips and an AT-6, magically “converted” to an SNJ. A couple of wonderful and talented guys—Larry Zetterlind and Mark Runge—maintained and flew the airplanes while Jim often flew himself visiting suppliers and customers. He even sent employees who needed care to the Cleveland Clinic at the company’s expense in those airplanes.

Unchained from the FAA (praise the Lord), I frequently flew my 180 to Piqua and flew the SNJ (checked out by T-6 guru Bill Leff). It was heaven. Jim and I bought a Piper Cub, Mark kept my 180 flying, and I joined Hartzell’s flying club. Mr. B taught two mantras: “Go for it,” and “Break one rule every day,” which I’ve taken to heart.

It’s difficult to describe how much Jim loved the company and its people. He’d walk through the plant, greeting each employee by name and asking about their kids. He bought a property next to the airport and named it “The Ostrich Farm” (the previous tenant had raised ostriches). It hosted employee picnics, company parties, and was command central for the biennial Friends of Harztell Airshow, with performers including Bill Bruns, Darrell Montgomery, Mike Goulian, Harold Johnson, Bruce Bohannon, Sean D. Tucker, Matt Chapman, Dale “Snort” Snodgrass, and Leff.

Jim Brown died in 2017. His sons Jim and Joe made lots of money, acquired related aviation businesses, and sold Hartzell to a venture capital firm in 2023.

I miss Jim very much, but I’m glad he’s not here. I’m afraid the sale would have broken his heart.

This column first appeared in the March 2024/Issue 946 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post The Man Who Saved the Iconic Hartzell Propeller Company appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

When I was learning to fly during winter 1961-62, there were several ratty-looking AT-6s and Beech 18s tied down in the grass outside the flying school shack. A guy named Michael who owned one of the AT-6s was, I thought, an interesting-looking guy. I’d see him at Mass at Christ the King Church—usually standing against a side wall because he’d arrived late (in those days, Catholic Sunday Masses were always crowded).

Using side glances, I pointed him out to my sister, but maybe I wasn’t as discreet as I thought because, a few days later, at the airport, he introduced himself and invited me for a ride in the T-6…at night…Wow! So, he belted me in and I was flat-out thrilled by the awesome power and noise on takeoff. We climbed on top of a thin overcast and rolled and looped with the lights of the city visible through the misty clouds below and clear stars shining above. Well, what do you expect? I fell madly in love—with the AT-6 and Michael.

After graduating from college and serving in the Air Force flying B-25s on flight check missions, Michael was working for a Cincinnati company that sold dry cleaning store franchises, and he used that T-6 for sales calls in his territory throughout the Midwest and South. Curiously, despite the Air Force training and experience, he thought filing IFR was like “being in jail.” When the weather was down in those pre-GPS days, he commonly flew airways at 500 feet below the MEA and made an approach at his destination. I know, I know…

We flew a night mission in a Piper Aztec loaded with freight from Cincinnati to Baltimore for a local character named “TV Tom.” Coming back over the Alleghenies, to avoid filing we climbed to 18,000 feet msl for about an hour to stay above an icy cloud cover. But we were young, and I guess the Lord was looking out for fools like us.

• READ MORE: Getting Tired of Tragic Accidents After Engine Failures on Takeoff? Yeah, Me Too

Before I knew him, Michael had acquired a little floatplane time at a seaplane base on the Ohio River down the road from the airport. Barely out of his teens and with Lord knows what kind of certificates and ratings (definitely not seaplane), he ferried a Piper J-3 Cub on floats to a buyer in Florida. Think about that…a 10-gallon fuel tank and a 5-gallon can of car gas strapped in the front seat. Sure, there are lots of lakes and rivers between southern Ohio and Florida, but it’s still pretty gutsy. He was good at en route repairs…rarely “by the book” or with approved parts—but good enough to hang things together. The luck of the Irish.

He wasn’t a braggart. He just did things most people wouldn’t. And I’m not suggesting anybody should emulate him, but Michael was very talented, very stubborn, very much his own guy, and could be absolutely maddening. We were fast friends, but he was married with two boys and, if we had married, we would surely have killed each other.

We both loved Cubs, and Michael found one at Blue Ash Airport, now long gone but then a wonderful grass field north of town that actually predated Lunken Airport (KLUK). A young kid had soloed in a J-3 he’d bought, but the airplane was in pretty rough shape. Michael and I warned the kid it was a deathtrap— the fabric was way beyond salvaging, there were bad fuel and oil leaks, and who knew the condition of the structure inside? If he valued his life, he needed to sell it and rent one of the Cessnas from Moose Glos, the operator. He thanked us profusely when we took it off his hands for $600.

Well, OK, it was pretty rough, but we flew it all through that summer. You didn’t drain the sumps because they dribbled rust, and it demanded nearly a quart of oil after every flight. And “40M” quit on me in a climbing turn after takeoff from Hamilton (KHAO) and, when I got it back on the ground, Bill Hogan came out and saw the rust stains at the sumps. After giving me a well-deserved lecture, we drained the tanks, filled up with fresh gas, and I was on my way.

• READ MORE: Need for Pilots Should Not Take the Place of Passion

Then cooler weather arrived, and Michael took one of his kids for a ride, but they had to land in somebody’s pasture. With the door and window closed and the heat knob pulled on, they got a good dose of carbon monoxide. So, that was it for 40M! We got it back to Lunken and pulled it apart. Since Michael lived less than a mile away, we hauled the pieces to his basement and garage, ordered dope and Ceconite envelopes for the wings and fuselage, and sent the engine out for overhaul.

Well, if you’re familiar with the smells that go with recovering an airplane, you’ll understand it wasn’t long before Michael’s wife (who was terribly shortsighted about airplanes) ordered us out. His mom, a wonderful old Irish lady, was glad to have us around, so we hauled it out to her house. In her mid-80s, she was still climbing ladders to wash windows and made wonderful sandwiches and cookies to keep us fortified.

Michael would eventually go through several divorces and marriages, buy a farm where he laid out a strip, and own and fly some wonderful airplanes—a Lockheed Lodestar, Waco UPF-7 (I took out a couple taxiway lights with that one), F-8 Bearcat, Aeronca Chief on floats (in which I gave him a seaplane rating after he taught me to fly floats), Stearman, Citabria, Heath Parasol, and Cessna 150. Then he moved to Florida, getting very sick with cancer. But he kept Cub 40M—even soloed around the patch when he was near the end.

I was with him in the hospital when he returned home, and my friend Bishop Joe came to administer last rites.

I’ll share more stories that are too good to forget. Sure, I miss him, but Michael’s “rules of life” stay with me: “Don’t admit anything, drive a beige car, and aim for the light spots.”

This column first appeared in the January-February 2024/Issue 945 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post There Was Just Something About Michael appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I’m a plain-Jane, single-engine-land private pilot with an instrument rating now, but I spent many years and lots of flight time instructing, testing, and examining, both in and out of the FAA. And, heaven knows, as well as the FAA and a large part of the flying and nonflying world, that I don’t always play by the rules. But there’s a particular emergency that bothers me and needs discussion because tragic accidents related to it keep happening.

It involves those engine failures after takeoff, and I’ll admit this is a controversial subject. So many involve severe damage and fatalities when the pilot instinctively tries to turn the airplane more than 180 degrees to land back on that beautiful and safe piece of concrete behind them.

As we all know, theories about handling this ugliest of emergencies have been kicked around forever. But it can’t be denied that pilots keep trying and fatalities keep happening.

They tried to get back but didn’t make the runway…

…had just lifted off when a so-far undefined emergency caused them to initiate a return to the ground. Though the pilots initially survived the crash…both died soon afterward … At least one of the pilots had constant exposure to and promulgated a safety culture that talked often about the ‘loss of power on takeoff’ scenario. (It didn’t work for him).

A CFI on an introductory flight lifted off about two-thirds down a 4,140-foot runway and struggled to gain altitude. The passenger reported the CFI said the engine wasn’t ‘making power,’ declared an emergency, and turned back to the runway. The airplane stalled and impacted the ground about half a mile from the airport.

While no discrepancies were found, the airplane was at or above max gross weight, and the 94-degree surface temperature significantly reduced climb performance. Making an emergency turn back to the airport, ‘the pilot failed to maintain adequate airspeed and flew the airplane beyond its critical angle of attack, leading to an aerodynamic stall.’

I assume you’re confident this won’t happen to you…and you’re right, it probably won’t. If you’re reading this magazine, chances are you keep your airplane and engine in tiptop condition and are always conscious of your fuel load. You can properly compute a weight and balance, particularly in high-density-altitude situations, and your CFI taught you years ago (or maybe during your last flight review) how to make a successful 180-degree turn back to the runway from about 1,000 feet agl.

• READ MORE: Martha’s Return to IFR Skies

Attempts to make successful, emergency 180-degree returns to a runway on climbout are too often catastrophic. Most everyone’s been introduced to the “simulated engine power loss on climbout,” using an altitude—at least 3,000 feet agl—as the pretend runway elevation. You’ve discussed the maneuver with your instructor, so at 4,000 feet or higher he pulls the power, you immediately pitch for best glide, and enter a 30-degree banked turn (probably to the left) back to that imaginary runway. And after a few tries, you’re pretty good at it. Maybe you can even do it from 500 or 600 feet.

Practice with a CFI to determine the height above the “ground” you need to successfully make that descending turn, and don’t forget to factor in skill, wind, temperature, density altitude, and the airplane you’re flying. Add a “startle” or surprise factor of at least 100 feet. With practice, using a base altitude of something like 3,000 feet agl, you’ll get an idea of how high you need to climb before making the turn back.

I hate to think of experienced and current pilots I’ve known who tried it in the heat of battle but were unsuccessful and aren’t with us anymore. It’s a dangerous and demanding maneuver—and something we rarely face.

If a sudden engine failure should ever happen, imagine the shock, confusion, disbelief, and subsequent slowness to react. Instead of immediately pitching to a best glide while looking for a decent spot or starting that turn you’ve decided to make, you’re probably checking to find what’s wrong…a fuel tank ran dry, a throttle slipped back to idle, or oil pressure. All that’s OK—after you’ve picked a spot and nailed the airspeed and flap configuration.

It goes without saying you’ll increase your odds of avoiding all this with a thorough preflight check (the fuel, visually), reviewing the topography around your home or familiar airports, being sure everybody’s securely strapped in and, without scaring the hell out of them, explaining what you and they will do in the unlikely event of a forced landing, like opening the doors before impact. But don’t forget to repeat to yourself the msl altitude you need after liftoff before attempting a return. Consider using best angle of climb (V_X) and brief it to yourself before takeoff. If you’re not yet there in the climb, pick the best spot you can find ahead—ideally a farm field, golf course, or soccer field, but a highway (even one with traffic), a road, or even a city street can work. Treetops can, too, if you’re slow enough on impact. Once on the ground, steer between trees to take off the wings. Then, as Bob Hoover preached, “Fly it through the crash.”

I have to confess that, in my heart, I wonder if you can really train yourself to do this. Think about being in that position—600 feet above runway elevation in a climb and then a sudden engine stoppage with no warning. By the time your brain freeze thaws, you’ve already lost 100 feet or more, but you rudder it into a steep turn, forgetting how stall speed rises rapidly and lethally in an uncoordinated, 45-degree bank. You’re thinking that this has to work—that runway’s right behind you and a little cross-control doesn’t make much difference. Now you’re in a lethal situation—a steep skid and airspeed nearing stall. You’re determined that you’ll make it. Nobody will be hurt or killed, the airplane will stay intact, and there won’t be any publicity or news coverage, FAA, or Monday morning quarterbacking. It’s your life back there, and with enough effort and a little luck, it will go on as before.

Except it can’t and won’t.

Think hard about it here on the ground.

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Getting Tired of Tragic Accidents After Engine Failures on Takeoff? Yeah, Me Too appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It was a beautiful day this week when my sister, Mary, and I met at the hangar for a $100—no, $200—hamburger flight. Seems like yesterday that we two very young gals were driving down Airport Road in a green Volkswagen Beetle and flying Ercoupes, Piper Colts, Cessna 120s, 140s and Cubs from right here, on the south line at Lunken Airport. It was the early 1960s, and I remember we’d giggle at the thought that, in 50 years, we two old ladies would probably still be driving down Airport Road to the south line, still climbing into airplanes.

Outrageous, but here we are.

Mary’s arthritis makes turning her head to the right painful, so she adjusts the right seat in the Cessna 180 way back, which actually helps to spot traffic—something she’s better at that than I am. She’s also sensitive to light (I call it wimpy) and wears big dark sunglasses and a baseball cap with a Bose headset holding everything in place. I just squint.

As I preflighted ’72B, Mary pointed to a pretty little Cessna 120 taxiing by the hangar.

“Remember when we used to fly Tony Maier’s N72197 for $7 an hour?” she asked. “And remember the time you showed me a really short-field landing? You touched down and stopped in the grass short of the runway. The idea was to surprise Tony by taxiing in from behind his T-hangars. It didn’t bother anybody in the tower (it was a different time), and it worked—but that landing was a bone-cruncher.”

“Yeah, I remember,” I said. “I rolled it out of a slip, cleared the fence and flared, but the damned thing quit flying about 3 feet too high. It wasn’t unsafe but definitely not pretty. Heck, I was just a kid…”

“And a showoff.”

Our lunch destination, Ohio’s Urbana airport (I74), has an interesting history. In the 1930s, an orphan named Warren Grimes purchased farmland and turned it into an airport, which was home to the Grimes Manufacturing Company. Grimes invented the red, green and white navigation lights on aircraft wingtips and tails, as well as all kinds of landing, instrument and interior lights. It’s said that every American-made airplane flown during World War II was equipped with Grimes lights.

Well, the company’s no longer at Urbana, but you can visit the Champaign Aviation Museum where dedicated—and patient—volunteers are rebuilding a B-17 from extremely small pieces. You can also join pilots and townsfolk at the venerable little restaurant, which hasn’t changed much in my lifetime, still serving the best homemade airport pies around.

While she doesn’t fly herself anymore, Mary loves flying with me in the 180, which is great because she’s (usually) good company, often buys lunch and always splits the fuel bill. But we’re a classic example of close siblings with wildly different personalities. This genuinely nice lady is sweeter, gentler, and more kindly, amiable and (I suspect) normal than her “Ms. Full Charge” sister, who she calls “Martha Braveheart.” When I worked for the feds, Mary often came along to seminars and airshows, and to this day, I rarely go anywhere without people asking, “Hey, how’s your sister?”

So, what am I…chopped liver?

Flashing back to that fateful day: At Urbana, I landed right into a brisk wind on the grass runway. We kind of thunked down, and Mary—a longtime school teacher—graded it a six. C’mon, my technique was perfect; the grass just needed rolling. But instead of reinstating my hero status back at Lunken, the 180 “won” again, and I scored something lower than that six. How can this happen after 57 years of flying taildraggers and 25 in this Cessna 180?

Well, the causes for the inelegant arrival—other than having my head up you know where—are kind of interesting, humbling and maybe worth talking about.

The airport was busy with lots of traffic after a long, dreary winter, a wet early spring and then the virus thing. ATIS was advertising the longer, parallel 6,500-foot Runway 3R, which was pretty much into the wind.

Read More from Martha Lunken: Unusual Attitudes

When I called the tower 8 miles north, there were two or three airplanes ahead of me for that runway, so they told me to report left downwind for the shorter, parallel Runway 3L. Closer in, I asked if I could slow up and maybe fit into the traffic landing on 3R. Why was that important? Well, having just spent well in excess of $200 on fuel, hamburgers and butterscotch pie, I was unhappy about the extra expense and longer taxi route to my T-hangar if I landed on 3L. Landing in the first 1,200 feet of 3R means you can exit at the high-speed Bravo taxiway—within spittin’ distance of my hangar.

The tower knows me and the 180 well enough that, with those barn-door flaps out, it can nearly hover (the GPS read 60 knots groundspeed on the downwind). With the first airplane for 3R on the ground, they cleared me to land number two behind a Husky, which my sister, “Ms. Eagle Eye,” had in sight.

I tucked in kind of tight because the Husky, a great short fielder, lives in a hangar near my airplane, so he’d surely stop in 1,200 feet and exit the runway at Bravo.

Except he didn’t. He sailed by the taxiway, and finally at a stop, the tower cleared him for a 180 back to the Bravo taxiway. Rats. So, I made some S-turning monkey motions on base and final and landed just as he cleared the runway. Like, God forbid I’d have to go around—think of the fuel!

But what was really going through my mind? “Hey, Mr. Husky, watch this and see how the pros do short-field landings in taildraggers.”

No surprise that my pure, unadulterated pride wenteth before the fall…from maybe 3 feet above the runway. It wasn’t unsafe, but it sure wasn’t pretty (and this time, I couldn’t use the “I’m just a kid” excuse). I’d held about 55 mph on final with full flaps and just enough power to stay on the visual-approach slope. Pulling the power and transitioning to a three-point full stall—wheel against the stops—take a combination of skill and luck to score a touchdown. This was a bone-crunching drop-down.

Bush pilots use a better technique for really short-field landings: minimum approach speed, full flaps, and enough power for a 500 fpm descent all the way to touchdown. Only on contact do they pull the power and glue it—tail low—on the mains.

Well, my version certainly didn’t impress the Husky pilot—or Mary, who said: “Well, you haven’t changed. You’re still a showoff.”

This story appeared in the October 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The post Dropping In the Landing appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Fearless when it comes to busting into places where other—often more competent—flyers and writers are reluctant to go, I decided to give it a try. After all, who has more firsthand knowledge of what happens when this very real, deep-rooted part of us is sabotaged by events such as a denied medical or insurance, a financial problem, or even something as weird as flying under a bridge? (And, no, I didn’t turn my transponder off!)

It can’t be “genetic.” After all, there were no powered airplanes until 120 years ago and, for many years after Wilbur and Orville figured it out in 1903, few people flew or owned one. Then, beginning with ex-World War I flyers who became the daredevil barnstormers and mail pilots of the 1920s and ’30s and feats of Lindbergh, Earhart, Post, and other household names, publicity and interest grew. In the years following World War II, a bunch of “little” airplanes appeared that were simple enough that almost anybody could learn to fly. And aviation was more accessible, affordable, and hugely popular.

Sporty’s Pilot Shop founder Hal Shevers told me one time, “Marf, we lived through the ‘Golden Era of General Aviation.’” And he was right. The 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s were the glory days before airplane prices exploded—as did tomes of onerous regulations and complex airspace restrictions—and insurance requirements, maintenance costs, and manufacturer liability issues mushroomed. Sadly, it was those liability issues and an unacceptable accident rate that began to choke private and small business aviation in the ’80s and ’90s.

But the die-hards stayed with it, forming flying clubs and partnerships, buying and renovating old airplanes, or building experimental models themselves. It was costly, but their obsession made them find a way.

• READ MORE: Let Me Tell You About Tom

Now there’s a desperate need for pilots. With that comes the danger of “enticing” applicants who lack the deep-seated desire and passion but are beguiled by the salaries and prestige that go with being an airline pilot. Flight training schools and universities are eager to enroll students who qualify for generous scholarships— some from the airlines themselves. Others are attracted by the ease of borrowing huge sums to complete “fast-track” training with the promise of an interview and likely a job in the right seat of an airliner. What isn’t advertised is that flight training dropout statistics average 80 percent.

A genuine interest in and aptitude for flying airplanes is a huge blessing for those becoming professional pilots. Despite the growing need for more pilots, it is vital that airline companies don’t lower hiring standards—as has been accused—and put marginally qualified new hires in their cockpits by maybe thinking experience will “fix” the problem.

Flight schools advertise that you’re guaranteed an airline interview by successfully completing their “fast-track” programs. They’ll guide you through the process of logging 1,500 hours of flight and simulator time. Simply sign up, pay something close to $100,000, pass an FAA medical, get a student certificate, and take the dual for solo and solo cross-country signoffs. You’ll learn enough in ground schools to pass the FAA knowledge exams and log enough time and have the skill to pass a private pilot check ride. Ditto for the instrument, commercial, multiengine, and CFI certificates and ratings. And they assure you this can be accomplished in “only seven months.” Then you instruct for the school, earning between $15 and $50 per hour until you accumulate the necessary 1,500 (or, in some cases, 1,200) hours to apply for the right seat with an air carrier. All this is possible in two to three years with no guarantee of actually being hired…and not living in your parents’ basement.

One major carrier has pledged that 50 percent of its new hires will be “people of color and females.” Its program offers scholarships from the Latino Pilots Association, National Gay Pilots Association, Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, Professional Asian Pilots Association, Sisters of the Skies, and Women in Aviation International. It is hoped that making the training available inspires young people—regardless of sex, color, ethnicity, people who may never have had the opportunity to learn about aviation—to embrace the training. That’s laudable, so long as it doesn’t exclude anyone.

A retired airline pilot friend commented: “Anyone who remembers the Colgan [Air] crash at KBUF [Buffalo, New York, in 2009] should understand the significance of airlines hiring qualified pilots. That accident was a ‘perfect storm’ of pilot incompetence, management failure, weather, and other factors causing the deaths of a planeload of people. Aviation is inherently dangerous, and when incompetent pilots are given the controls of an aircraft filled with people, the situation becomes an accident waiting to happen.”

Here’s a poignant quote from an article in FLYING Magazine in July 1953: “Ten-thousand articles have been written about the ebb of aviation enthusiasm and activity in the land. Apathy to aviation is just one of many indications that 20 years’ education that ‘the world owes me a living’ has wrought havoc with our individual spirits. We babble about Social Security and prate in terms of masses and promise ‘extended benefits.’ …It means we’ve had a flameout of the fire that molded us and gave us power. We’ve stopped running to meet life because that takes faith and courage and pride.”

It was written by no less a personage than Gill Robb Wilson, one of the magazine’s founders and editors, and a World War I combat pilot in France, devoted patriot, founder of the Civil Air Patrol, writer, and poet (and, curiously, a Presbyterian minister). I think his comments apply to young men and women today who look upon aviation training and airline flying as a quick road to success, prestige, and security.

I recently took Theo, a neighborhood kid, up in the Cessna 180 because he’s crazy about aviation and airplanes. Theo is intelligent and amazingly knowledgeable because he reads everything in sight about airplanes and pilots. He’s just beginning high school but, when I asked him if he’d thought about college, he named a large “degree plus aviation training mill” in Florida. I suggested maybe he think about a degree in engineering, business, or whatever at a good college while learning to fly “the old-fashioned way” and then instructing to learn and build time. He’s wired for an airline career, and he’ll make it—with the passion for it well in place.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Need for Pilots Should Not Take the Place of Passion appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Early in training, I made a night instrument takeoff from Lunken Airport (now KLUK) in Ohio, using a runway adjacent to a hillside with traffic on a busy highway at the base and well-lit neighborhoods climbing the slope. I unearthed a hood that was extra wide and allowed me to cheat a little with a glimpse of terrain on the sides. What seemed like a great idea was a bad mistake and an excellent lesson in vertigo. As I began to climb, I was almost hypnotized—totally confused—by moving lights I could see under the left side of the hood. I’m pretty sure we would have flown into the hill if Roger hadn’t taken the controls…and, yes, smacked me on the head.

The test presented some challenges—in night training I hadn’t experienced the turbulence of sunny, hot afternoons. Inspector Ropp and I weren’t using headsets and, unfortunately, he’d eaten something with lots of garlic the night before. On the plus side, it was pretty simple since I had one VOR receiver for approaches and holds. And, yes, I passed!

No, wait, that was the test in 1967.

In those days, the normal progression of certificates and ratings took you from private pilot to commercial, to flight instructor, and then you went on for an instrument rating. It was five years from the time I became a genuine private pilot in 1962 to accumulate the time and pass the writtens and flight tests for the commercial certificate and a flight instructor rating. And getting that CFI was critical because the only way I could eat regularly and earn enough to keep flying was to instruct. And, boy, did I instruct…about 6,000 hours total over the next 10 years.

First, I worked part time for Cincinnati Aircraft, a Cessna dealer. The Cessna 150s and 172s were great trainers but had the world’s worst radios—the Cessna 300 series. We reentered traffic patterns on lights nearly as often as we did communicating over the radio waves with the tower. When the Midwest winter was grounding the airplanes, owner Witham Smith demanded those of us with instrument ratings file IFR, climb above the overcast, give an hour of basic dual, make a VOR approach into Greater Cincinnati Airport (KCVG), and then fly VFR underneath the 13 miles back to Lunken. At best, an “hour” of dual was closer to two. I “declined,” got fired, instructed for Johnny Lane at Lebanon (I68), and then started my own flight school.

Well, fast-forward 56 years and here I am back at it again. During the year of enforced downtime after the “bridge” revocation, I crammed and passed the private and (wickedly brutal) instrument writtens. Then, on Christmas Eve 2021, I did the private practical in a Cessna 150. So, I assumed getting the instrument rating in my Cessna 180 would be a piece of cake. Wrong again.

• READ MORE: Martha Lunken Earns Her Wings (Again)

At risk of boring you with a lengthy tale of woe, it was another year before the airplane and I felt the sprinkle of holy water. I sat out a lengthy annual inspection in January and February and miserable weather during the Midwest’s February and March. But late in March 2022, I hooked up with Steve Reinhardt, a CFI who is consummately patient and intimately familiar with my Garmin GNS 430 (about which I knew little more than “direct-to”) and ForeFlight (which was a total mystery). Best of all, Steve doesn’t hit students on the head. Then my elderly DG failed, so I put 72B in the shop for installation of two flush-mounted Garmin G5s. Three weeks passed, and I was struggling to learn the equipment while precisely hand flying my “very light on the controls” 1956 Cessna 180. And the various intricate approaches and holds were at airports about 10 miles apart—it was a bitch!

Next, a guy ran into the tail of the 180 on the ground at Lebanon, and it would be close to a month until we got the vertical stabilizer and rudder back from Williams Airmotive in northern Indiana. They’re great people with an outstanding shop for control surfaces. At one point, a very special guy named Dean Mallory, who hangs out at Waynesville’s Red Stewart Airfield (40I), offered me the use of his Cessna 182. Talk about friends!

But the delay wasn’t only damage, avionics installations, and weather. It was a steep learning curve for me to master the intricacies of the Garmin equipment and ForeFlight. More than once, I nearly lost heart.

GPS technology wasn’t intuitive for me. Thermals on sunny days below 4,000 feet made for lots of turbulence, and the variety of approach procedures and holds mandated by the FAA at three or four airports within 10 miles of each other was difficult. I was scrambling to enter the information and push the right buttons while trying to hand fly the 180 precisely on altitudes and headings.

Yeah, I did it, and Steve recommended me one month short of my 81st birthday, and I flew a no-holds-barred, good practical test with Brian Trapp at John Lane Field (I68) in Lebanon, Ohio. Brian holds more designations than anyone in my experience and travels across the country—even to remote places like the Fiji islands—as an examiner, administering everything from medical check rides to re-exams and every conceivable airplane and lighter-than-air certificate or rating. Additionally, he owns and operates the Gentle Breeze Hot Air Balloon Co. with his talented and delightful pilot/partner, Laurie Givin. Brian knows his stuff, cutting no corners on the test.

Was so much time, effort, and expense worth it. Yes! Steve pounded the intricacies of the GPS equipment and procedures into my head, and I became more adept at precision flying in the 180. So many people kept me going—superb instructor Reinhardt, Mallory (“Hey, use my airplane.”), Flying Neutrons Club members at I68 (many of whom I’d certificated), IA mechanic Mark Day, and Givin, and Trapp, who flew in late the night before from Phoenix for the test.

As Henry Ford rightly said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

This column first appeared in the October 2023/Issue 942 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Martha’s Return to IFR Skies appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I was a kid hanging out in the old Lunken Airport control tower the first time I saw one…and it was pretty spectacular. It was the mid-’60s, and a derelict B-25 was heading for the airport with a cabin full of reptiles. Really! Some “wild kingdom” exhibition opening downtown was evidently in financial distress and badly needed to attract a good, paying audience.

The pilot called far enough out and told the tower about his cargo. Problem was he’d had to shut one engine down and needed priority to land. By now the press got wind. As he neared the airport, he radioed that he couldn’t get the gear down and elected to land in the grass. The copilot (I’m not making this up) bailed out just north of the airport, and the B-25 skidded to a halt in the grass. It was wintertime and firemen had to unload and incapacitate a bunch of snakes and alligators. The papers had a heyday. I don’t remember if the show made any money.

That was my first but certainly not last experience with gear-up landings and what put it on my front burner is the latest. A friend with a beautiful A36 loans it to a couple guys—one is a pilot for a large corporation who’s probably among the best airplane drivers I know and a pretty good mechanic to boot. I don’t know the other guy, but he recently put the beautiful Beech in on its belly at Lunken. There were claims that “the electrical system was behaving strangely” and, fearing a fire, he landed with no gear, damaging the prop, engine, flaps, and belly skin.

• READ MORE: How Well Do You Know Aircraft Landing Gear?

You can almost bet that any pilot involved in a gear-up landing does two things: They put the gear switch or handle in the “down” position before any rescue arrives and usually have an explanation about why it failed to be down and locked. Almost never did they just plain forget.

If there’s any doubt, you do a tower or airport flyby. Even if it appears to be down, you leave the area and use the emergency gear extension procedure(s) in the pilot’s operating handbook. That’s what happened in a Bonanza with no gear lights I was flying a few years ago. I flew by, went out and cranked it down, and then asked for the equipment on the runway (Why not?). I landed without using any brakes and let it roll out.

The other time was at night with an alternator failure in a retractable gear Cessna Cardinal, totally out of “juice.” I pumped the gear down and could see it, but there were no lights, so I circled the field, hoping for a green light from the tower, but there was nothing. Finally, after watching a corporate guy clear the runway, I landed and, again, stayed off the brakes, letting it roll onto a large, adjacent ramp. When I called the tower on the phone they said, “You did what?” And I responded, “If you guys can’t see any better than that, I’m going to fly my Cub at night.”

These days, there are several aids to total electrical system failures. A handheld transceiver works or, lacking that, keep the telephone numbers of the FBOs, control towers, and approach control you commonly use. I did that a few years ago coming back from Oshkosh, when the generator failed. The landing gear in my Cessna 180 is welded down, so that wasn’t an issue, but at least I could call the tower on my cellphone.

As you might imagine, I’m not always that heroic. As an FAA inspector who did lots of Twin Beech check rides, I rented one of our Part 135 operators’ Beech 18s for proficiency flying with quite possibly the world’s coolest and best Twin Beech driver, Kevin Uppstrom, in the right seat. As we lifted off Runway 18 at Connersville, Indiana (KCEV), Uppstrom simulated a left engine failure by retarding a throttle. I chanted and did the “max power, flaps approach, positive rate, gear up, identify, verify and (simulate) feather.” It was beautiful and, smugly, as we rounded the pattern onto final for a landing, I said, “C’mon, Kev. Admit it. Nobody could handle it better.” He said, “Yeah, so far a great job. Do you plan to put the gear down before we land?”

I guess my funniest gear story involves a rather important CEO of a Cincinnati machine tool company who had a penchant for unique airplanes. He’d owned a single-place Mooney Mite with manually retractable landing gear. But he’d forgotten to use the awkward Johnson bar to extend it before landing. That was before I knew him. By now he was on the cusp of a divorce and rather taken with me (I was nearly seduced by his recently acquired Grumman Widgeon). I was at the hangar after the Mite had been extracted (gear up) from the runway and deposited in his large multi-airplane hangar.

Way before my FAA days, I still knew inspector John O’Rourke, who was walking around the broken bird, pipe in his mouth and clipboard in hand. Mr. CEO was explaining he had no idea why the gear hadn’t extended—he’d certainly put it down before landing. Then the back door of the hangar opened, and the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. CEO came in, surveyed the scene and, in her distinctive upper class, Down East Maine accent said, “Well, I see you’ve done it again.”

I’m not making light of landing an airplane with the gear not securely down and locked. It’s a dreadful experience, but pilots and passengers are rarely hurt. Hopefully, you have hull insurance and knowledgeable people extracting the airplane from the runway without further damage. There’s usually a long wait for overhauled or new engines, props, and repair to other airplane damage. The main problem is ego…and that’s a biggie.

I’ve always loved the memory of a big guy named Ed Creelman, an excellent pilot who flew a Beech 18 for a local paper company. I was nearby as he sat in the Sky Galley restaurant when somebody asked, “Hey, Ed. What happened to your airplane?” Without hesitation, in his signature gruff voice, he answered: “I forgot to put the f—ing gear down.”

He was (and is) my hero.

This column first appeared in the September 2023/Issue 941 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Gear-Up Landings: There Are Pilots Who Have and Those Who May Have To appeared first on FLYING Magazine.