In his timeless classic Fate Is The Hunter, Ernest K. Gann regales readers with several tales of in-flight emergencies, hairy takeoffs and grateful landings. Perhaps the book’s most memorable takeoff involves a grossly overweight C-87 departing Agra, India, on a hot day, aimed directly at the nearby Taj Mahal mausoleum. Of course, Gann didn’t know the airplane was overweight before beginning the takeoff. How he and his crew flew it could be viewed as a clinic on how to handle an overweight airplane.
Gann was getting paid to fly fully loaded and minimally equipped airplanes over long distances, and his skill and experience cheated fate on numerous occasions. I’ll crawl out a fairly stout limb and suggest neither you nor I will ever accumulate a similar record. So, when you find yourself forced to deal with your own Taj Mahal takeoff, it’s likely you’ll have no experience whatsoever in handling what suddenly is a very reluctant airplane. Let’s try to at least give you some tools with which you can try to cope.
