On a beautiful day in San Diego, we loaded our two small airplanes for a trip to the Baja Peninsula. My friend Rick would fly his Cessna 177 with his friend Ted. Greg and I would fly the Finley Flyer, a vintage Piper 140 modified with a 180-hp Lycoming retrofit engine with only 500 hours on it. This little airplane had taken us faithfully to Baja many times, and we were confident she would do the same this weekend.
Greg loaded up three five-gallon cans of fuel, due to the scarcity of avgas in Baja. I noticed the cans were secured with a bungee cord. “Greg, if we crashed, we would be wearing those cans,” I remarked. From flying with John and Martha King I had learned to secure anything that could fly around in the cockpit. In one of their safety seminars the Kings recalled crashing in a field and a flying toolbox taking off a swatch of Martha’s scalp. I used the seat belt to grab the cans through their handles, tightening them down so hard one of the vents popped. I thought that ought to hold them. This simple precaution may have saved our lives.
