Student pilot trained for the worst
By Morgan Steger
The Collegian
Fresno State student Sam Robinson
said he watched the televised landing of JetBlue Flight 292 with a critical
eye last Wednesday.
The 145-passenger flight was aborted after the pilot noticed the plane’s
front landing gear was facing sideways. The plane circled Los Angeles
International Airport for three hours to burn off fuel before touching
down on its rear wheels and grinding to a stop on its mangled and flaming
front landing gear.
The suspenseful ending of Flight 292 caught Robinson’s attention
because he is a licensed private pilot with more than 300 hours of flight
experience in the cockpit of Cessna 172. Though he said he was impressed
with the performance of the JetBlue pilot, the landing wasn’t as
dramatic as it appeared because “as a pilot you always expect something
to go wrong.”
Robinson said air transport pilots, such as the captain of Flight 292,
train four times a year in flight simulators, running through all kinds
of scenarios to be prepared for any instrument or equipment failure.
“All pilot training is about something going wrong,” Robinson
said.
Fellow Fresno State student Sam Greer, who has been a licensed pilot for
five months, also said he didn’t consider the JetBlue landing to
be a particularly high-risk procedure. He said as a pilot he would have
been more concerned about telling the passengers something was wrong than
about landing the plane.
Greer said his father, a pilot for Southwest Airlines since 1992, once
had one of his engines fail during a commercial flight. He said his father
wasn’t worried, though the passengers were, and his father was able
to land the plane without incident because of his extensive training.
Robinson said he received his flight training through Scott Air, located
at Fresno Yosemite International Airport. He said as a student pilot he
was trained to deal with engine failure, fire onboard the aircraft, instrument
failure and adverse weather conditions. Robinson said he never has to
worry about problems with the landing gear on his Cessna because it is
stationary.
Robinson said he has had a copious amount of training regarding the effects
of weather on aircraft.
“I feel like I have a master’s degree in meteorology,”
he said.
He said this training paid off when he was able to safely navigate a flight
to Oakland between thunderstorms, developing no complications other than
ice on his wings, which melted before he landed.
Jeremy Hawkis, a member of Fresno State’s Air Force ROTC and a licensed
pilot for two years, said the bulk of the training he received at Mazzei’s,
a flight school at FYI, focused on what to do in the event of engine failure.
Hawkis said his instructor would cut the power to his engine while he
was in flight and then guide him through simulated crash landings over
agricultural fields as part of his training.
In the event of an actual engine failure, Robinson said he would pitch
his plane’s trajectory to the correct angle to maintain a speed
of 68 knots and then continue his descent, landing in the safest strip
of land available.
“If the engine quits, it turns into a glider,” he said.
Though his engine has never quit, Robinson said he was once in a tense
situation that tested his skills as a pilot.
Robinson said he was flying his family into John Wayne International Airport
when the headset and microphone he was using to receive landing instructions
from the control tower stopped working.
Robinson said his heart was pounding because he was landing his Cessna
next to a descending Boeing 747, all while trying to reestablish contact
with the control tower. He said he finally resorted to using the passenger’s
communication set in order to restore contact and land safely.
“I was a nervous wreck when I got out of the plane,” Robinson
said. However, he said once the tension had passed his first thought was,
“I’ve got to do that again.”
Robinson, who plans on getting his commercial license in 2006, said after
all the training he has received he feels equipped to handle any scenario
he might encounter as a pilot.
“I would rather have something go wrong in that atmosphere than
anywhere else because I know I can handle it,” he said.
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