When Airplanes Break

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 at 11:00 AM ET

Verified

On The Cover: Structural failure of the airplane you're riding in can ruin your whole day. But the instructor and student aboard the AA-5 Traveler pictured managed to walk away after their tail almost fell off. They had some help from a chase plane, which identified the problem for them, but the rest of it was skill. See page 16 for more.

Key Takeaways:

A flight instructor and student experienced a sudden, violent structural failure of their aircraft's left elevator and horizontal stabilizer during a routine flight.
After initially misdiagnosing an engine failure and declaring Mayday, the instructor realized the engine was only idling and decided to attempt a landing at the airport despite severe control surface damage.
The compromised elevator prevented flaring, leading to a hard nose-first landing that collapsed the nose gear but safely brought the aircraft to a stop on the runway.
Key lessons learned include maintaining aircraft control, the critical role of external observation from a chase plane, and the importance of consulting legal counsel (like AOPA) before speaking with authorities post-incident.

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I was the CFI, flying with a keen 17-year-old student in a Grumman AA-5 Traveler. As we used to say in the Air Force when describing a flying scenario, “There we were, flying along, fat, dumb and happy.” It’s just a saying, take it easy—we weren’t actually fat, but we were happy, and the student, at least, wasn’t dumb.

We were flying a straight line, direct to my home field, the Leesburg (Va.) Executive Airport (JYO), in level flight at about 1000 feet agl and 140 KIAS in smooth air. I looked at my iPad, and saw we were making over 160 knots groundspeed, and the aircraft was flying solidly, just humming along, not a vibration or noise. I remarked to the student, who was at the controls, “This thing really likes to go fast—look how stable it is.”