The YouTube video P-51 Engine Out, Off-Airport Landing – full analysis shows pilot Mark Levy having an extremely candid discussion with Richard McSpadden (Executive Director of the AOPA) about what it’s like when your brain tries to focus during an accident and the lessons he learned from a forced landing.
History:
Mark Levy started flying planes when he was 19 as part of his Air Traffic Control training. He went on to fly planes in British Airway’s long-haul fleet and is also a certified flight training instructor. He was given the opportunity to be a warbird pilot, and of course, he said yes. He trained in a Yakovlev and then he completed training for a P-51 Mustang in Florida, USA and England.
What happened?
It was the second day of the Duxford air show and Levy was part of a 21 plane flight formation at the end of the show. He was in a P-51 and the formation was on their final pass, preparing to breakout and land’.
All was going well until he had a partial ‘engine out’ and had to crash land in a cornfield. Thanks to an in-cockpit camera the whole incident was caught on video.
Levy had to work out almost instantaneously how he was going to trade airspeed for altitude, in the hope that he could get a 7000-pound plane landed, without making ‘his emergency someone else’s.” Here are just some of the decisions he had to make:
- What radio calls to make?
- Will my engine start up again?
- Where am I going to land?
- What am I going to do with my canopy?
- Am I going to lower my landing gear?
Key Learnings from the Accident:
Task Saturation v.s. Reinforced Instincts
Levy explained that everything happened so quickly, there was no time for fault finding nor symptoms as to why the engine failed. Levy and McSpadden discussed task saturation, and how hearing is the first sense to go when you are facing an emergency and then you lose the ability to process new information as you are so focused on the moment.
For example, each time the engine failed, the plane got closer to the airfield and the ‘Tower’ was shouting ‘gear not down’. Initially, Levy lowered his landing gear, then retracted it when he realised he wasn’t going to make it to the runway. Despite the Towers radio traffic, he knew he needed to stop the plane cartwheeling.
Levy discussed how decades or training had reinforced his instincts. Even as an experienced pilot, he had taken the time to practice ‘engine off’ landings every month. He also was very candid about how frustrated he was that he didn’t turn the magnetos off (engine driven electrical generator that produces high voltage to fire the aircraft spark plugs) before he landed. Despite relentless training, he didn’t remember to this and it is something that he had drilled into his trainee pilots.
Standard Operating Procedures & Checklists
Standard operating procedures and checklists are an integral part of being a pilot on a commercial airline. Even in smaller private planes, pilots have scan flow and pneumonic checklists to make sure their aircraft stays safe.
Admittedly, in a forced landing there is no time for physically filling out a checklist, yet just like the years of training, logically following a set process helped the Levy calm his ‘Monkey Mind.’
Mind Management – ‘Put the Chimpanzee Back in the Cage’
Initially, Levy was that he went into denial (the engine will start again), and in hindsight, he realises that the decision-making process for a ‘partial engine out’ is far more complex than a ‘total engine out’.
There was an epic struggle between his ‘Prehistoric Fight/Flight Brain’ vs. commanding complex modern machinery frontal cortex’. Levy and McSpadden discussed at length how military training focuses on taking three seconds to make an optimal decision, instead of a relying on a one-second panic response.
By following ingrained procedures, Levy managed to take a breath, get over the ‘startle factor’ and do his scan checks to bring his brain back into ‘logic mode’.
Key Questions for the Week:
- How well do your key leaders respond to stressful situations?
- How could you support them?
- What emergency response training does your team do?
- Do you have any ‘Standard Operating Procedures’ SOP’sor checklists?
- When was the last time you reviewed your ‘SOP’s’ or checklists?
I genuinely hope that no one reading this blog becomes part of an anatomy of an accident review, and if you are, you are as ready to learn from the experience.
Have a safe and productive week.
SB