Lockup in the Clouds
No kidding… There I was.
12,000 MSL. 180 Knots. IMC. Maneuvering.
Barely.
Looking down at my mission profile, my mind had gone blank.
How did I get here? What am I doing? How do I get home?
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Aviate.
Even after hours of mission planning the night before, I didn’t know what to do. My body was still flying the aircraft, maintaining aircraft control in complete IMC. That moment when you become your own autopilot, as your mind is racing to orient itself and make sense of the situation at hand.
/
Navigate.
Nothing. I could see the boundaries of the Military Operations Area I was cleared into. Okay, I can at least maintain that. But what do all these notes mean on my leg? The maneuvers seemed foreign to me, almost as if they were written in a different language. I know I can’t leave this area until I complete these tasks, but I can barely read my kneeboard, much less execute a precise military flight maneuver.
I was Frozen.
/
Communicate.
Well, it’s time to confess. I got on the intercom to my Instructor Pilot.
“Sir, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
To summarize, my instructor was from the old school of flight training. He refused to give me any direction and let me circle blindly through the clouds. Well, I guess I’m on my own. At this point, I’m scared. At the controls of a high-performance turboprop with no idea how to recover is not an ideal situation.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Then the realization I’m not alone. We’re never alone in the air, no matter the conditions. I scribble some notes on my kneeboard and…
“Approach, xxxxx 25… Sir, I’ll be completely honest with you. I am completely lost. Can you give me vectors back to base”?
/
A few vectors lining up for the nearest ILS and…. CLICK. Everything came rushing back. Approach plate in hand and ATC backing me up, I was Aviating on heading and altitude, Navigating onto a precision approach and Communicating with my only friend in the sky.
With a slight crosswind correction, I landed safely.
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That experience has stuck with me ever since. At first, I was so angry at my instructor. I said nothing at the time, took the brutal debrief and did my best to move on. How could he have let me flounder like that? Let me embarrass myself and put the mission in jeopardy?
The truth of the matter is: It was exactly the wake-up call I needed.
The mission was flown in the simulator. No real harm done to anything but My Ego. That grim feeling of letting a high-performance aircraft fly You has never left me. Every time I plan a flight, especially in IMC, I remind myself how quickly and severely things can go wrong. I remind myself the importance of knowing and using all available resources whenever you need a helping hand. That sortie taught me one of the most important lessons in aviation:
I never want to feel that powerless at the controls of an aircraft Ever Again.
