What moment in a helicopter gave you the most anxiety?

I had to laugh at this question at first only because it was the topic of a discussion with my wife a week ago…

Four come to mind… one of which involved plums and have previously written about. The other three were equally as… interesting.

Chronologically, the first one also occurred in Afghanistan. We were stationed out of Bagram Airfield from 2004–05 and tasked with VIP transport for the northeastern portion of the country. On this occasion, the pilots were fairly high up on the “food chain” (ranks, titles, and names omitted due to a lingering sense of professionalism), and our flight brought us out to Shindand Airbase for administrative purposes. Simple flight – no passengers, only a bit of cargo, and the plan of “being back before it gets dark,” so night vision goggles (NVGs) was added to that list of stuff we didn’t bring.

As any reader with any military rotary-wing experience has already figured out, it got dark before we made it back. Our ground time at Shindand was pushed back, and en route to Bagram was delayed by our assistance in a troops-in-contact event around Tarin Kowt. In a classic example of over-confidence and disregard for the opinions of the “backseaters,” the pilots pressed on, flying through the mountains of central Afghanistan, at night, unaided. After thinking that this flight would be an interesting read in Flightfax (Army Aviation’s flight safety magazine), I offered that we follow our escort AH-64 with their formation lights at the lowest visible setting, using the logic that their TADS/PNVS would function as our “eyes.” We made it to Bagram safely, but not without that sense of dread of being a smoking pile of various parts sliding down the face of an “invisible” mountain.

The second was also from that rotation, with different (read: more pragmatic and responsible pilots). Our passengers that day were… special… and we had spent much of the day touring assorted valleys and providing them with an aerial perspective of the wonders of rural Afghan vehicular infrastructure. Troops were again in contact with the enemy and we pressed our fuel up to an slightly past our reserve in providing assistance. After extracting our passengers, we proceeded to Jalalabad via river-carved passes in the mountains that could only be described as looking like a geologic approximation of Dolly Parton’s cleavage.

It was in these ravines of peril – no suitable landing areas – that my helicopter’s “low-fuel” light started to flicker. The pilots, associating the audible warning tone they heard as the “engine out” tone, initiated an autorotation – only to realize that, for some reason, an electrical problem was causing the stabilator system to indicate a fault. The rest of our flight was a series of “I’m entering an auto… no, I’m not” comments from the front as we looked for the least painful potential landing areas. We landed at Jalalabad with about 120 pounds of fuel (out of the 2300-ish pounds the Black Hawk carries) and my hands shaking from the experience.

Fuel and crew coordination were the factors in the last one, here in Georgia a few years ago. Our instructor pilot decided that pilot training trumped the need to go back for fuel and kept insisting that we could get “one more pilot sling-load qualified” until the last moment. As soon as we headed back, the “low fuel lights” once again illuminated. I recommended turning off the heater, saving about 120 pounds of fuel per hour; as we flew up the Chattahoochee, I started to look for parts of the wooded bank that would offer the least resistance for an emergency landing (smaller trees are your friends, in this case). We landed with less than 100 pounds of fuel on board or, at the consumption rate we were averaging, about 14 minutes’ flight time.

In the process of writing these, I have realized two things. First, my memory is not as reliable as I’d like it to be. Knowledgeable critics would point out that the AC system of the UH-60 may or may not result in the events of the second scenario, and at the moment, I cannot accurately recall why the stabilator comparators were affected by the fuel indication system. I’d love to give the details, but I can’t recall them. My apologies – perhaps I will remember everything later.

Secondly, these stories may paint myself in a less than stellar light as a crewmember. “Advocacy and assertion are practiced” was a key element of the formal crew coordination training we went through and it would seem that I failed in this sense. On the contrary, there is only so much that one can offer to those up front – especially when both are insisting that they are “right.” The decisions to press on were made at a point where I could not simply refuse to get on board – we were already airborne – and at that point, I could only continue on the mission making the recommendations that would be listened to to get us back safely. These scenarios were subsequently incorporated into my training, and the pilots from both fuel situations were accordingly reprimanded (unofficially, of course).

There are plenty of accident reports/investigations where it comes out after the fact, that there was at least one person in the crew who was making the right recommendations, yet they were casually or emphatically disregarded. My point is that, for those active aviators – regardless of position, rank, or organization – ego is typically the biggest factor in any crash where “pilot error” is a key finding. If a voice is telling you that your current action is wrong, please listen.