Fate Can Be The Hunter

Kudos to Robert Wright on achieving 50 years of accident/incident free flying and receiving the FAAs Master Pilot Award (On Getting To 50, September 2016). I too have reached that milestone, but not without accident nor incident in my 6100-plus hours of private pilot flying, most of which has been recreational. My incidents occurred despite what I believed to have been reasonable risk management.

Editorial Staff

Monday, January 30, 2017 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

A seasoned pilot, despite reasonable risk management over 50 years, recounts multiple accidents and incidents, emphasizing that "fate" and unforeseen circumstances can still lead to events not entirely preventable by individual effort, though skill aids survival.
An engineer critically corrects a previously published "Energy state" equation, stressing the importance of dimensional homogeneity and providing a revised formula for the rate of change of energy as (Thrust - Drag) * Velocity.

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Kudos to Robert Wright on achieving 50 years of accident/incident free flying and receiving the FAA’s Master Pilot Award (“50 Years a Pilot,” September 2016). I too have reached that milestone, but not without accident nor incident in my 6100-plus hours of private pilot flying, most of which has been recreational. My incidents occurred despite what I believed to have been reasonable risk management:

As a student pilot with approximately 20 hours, I landed a Cessna 150 four minutes behind a DC-6 on a calm evening on a runway too short to land beyond his touchdown point. I was caught in the DC-6’s reverse-thrust vortex, striking the prop and both wing tips.