Cockpit Chronicles: Speaking Up

Good Morning, My Friends,

Last week, I started a story about an incident in Argentina. I’ll circle back to that next week. Meanwhile ~

Sometimes in life, we have to speak up.

I once hitched a ride in the cockpit jumpseat of a Boeing 757 from Panama City to Miami.

We were approaching Miami at dawn. The Captain was flying.

“Gear down,” he called.

The First Officer moved the large landing gear lever on the panel. I watched the indicator lights. The two green lights for the main landing gear illuminated. The nose gear light stayed dark.

The Captain called for final flaps and the Before Landing Checklist. The First Officer read through the challenges for the flaps, spoilers, and brakes, then reached the landing gear.

“Landing gear?”

“Down, three green,” the Captain answered.

“Down, three green,” the First Officer repeated. “Before Landing Checklist complete.”

He put the checklist away.

I sat there looking at that dark nose gear light.

There were definitely not three green lights.

I considered my next move. The runway was in sight. We were about 1,300 feet above the ground, four or five miles from touchdown. The gear was probably down, I reasoned.

What if the nose gear was down, but not locked?

It would collapse when the Captain lowered the nose to the runway. Sparks would fly. The airplane could veer off the runway to the side, or off the end. People could get hurt, and the airplane would suffer substantial damage.

Then I imagined sitting before an accident investigation panel.

“Did you observe the landing gear indicator lights?”

Yes.

“Was the nose gear light illuminated?”

No.

“Did you hear both pilots say, ‘Down, three green’?”

Yes.

I knew what the next question would be.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!”

I had to speak up.

I gestured toward the landing gear indicators and suggested that the nose gear light bulb might not be seated properly.

The First Officer pressed on it.

It came on.

I suspected the Captain was embarrassed that a pilot from another airline had caught the discrepancy. Whatever he felt, what he displayed was anger.

He berated the First Officer relentlessly.

I didn’t say another word. I felt bad for the First Officer, but I had no regrets.

On another occasion, I was the Flight Engineer on a DC-8 flying from Miami to South America.

We had a full load—roughly four and a half tractor-trailer loads of cargo.

The Captain was flying. He set full takeoff power, and we began rolling down the runway.

The acceleration was slow.

The First Officer called, “V1.”

We had reached our calculated takeoff decision speed. We were committed to continuing unless the airplane could not fly.

The No. 1 engine was getting hot. Its exhaust gas temperature had climbed into the red.

The end of the runway loomed closer.

“Rotate,” the First Officer called.

The Captain pulled back on the control column.

The nose rose.

The airplane stayed on the ground.

We continued rolling on the main wheels for what seemed like an eternity.

I reported the rising engine temperature and asked whether the Captain wanted me to reduce the throttle.

“No,” he said, breathlessly.

He was not breathing.

Finally, with very little runway remaining, the airplane staggered into the air.

We struggled across the strip of land between the airport and the Atlantic. Once we were over the water, with no obstacles immediately ahead, we could breathe again.

Ever so slowly, the airspeed increased. We began retracting the flaps on schedule and gradually established a shallow climb.

Apart from the necessary calls and responses, the cockpit was silent.

Once we were above 10,000 feet and headed south, I pulled out the takeoff performance charts. Working backward from the performance I had observed, I estimated that we had been approximately 25,000 pounds overweight.

Twelve and a half tons.

That was an estimate, not a measured weight. But what I had just witnessed left me convinced that, had we lost an engine at the critical moment, we would not have made it.

Was the apparent overload a mistake? An oversight? Intentional?

I didn’t know.

I did know that I had to speak up.

If it happened again, and the next crew lost an engine, they would crash.

And I would have to live with knowing that I had not said anything.

The following day, I went to the Chief Pilot and reported what had happened.

Sometimes in life, we have to speak up.

Lorenzo