Fact Checking Nelson's "Doors Of Death" light aircraft near death experience

[Dr Exiled]

I wonder if Nelson secretly supported Dunn remaining when Dunn was caught telling tall tales by Lynn Packer? I also wonder how often the tall tales flow from Nelson currently? He stupidly said to Africans that paying tithing somehow will lift them out of poverty. He lied about Nov 5 and the subsequent "revelation" to get the church out of the bad knee jerk decision to punish kids because the SC went against Oaks and Nelson in the Obergefell decision. He lied about the robbery in Africa and I'm sure he is lying about his magic schedule changing pen "revelations." What a joke.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

AZflyer,

A precautionary landing, generally, is less hazardous than a forced landing because the pilot has more time for terrain selection and the planning of the approach. In addition, the pilot can use power to compensate for errors in judgment or technique.

Why would the pilot risk an emergency descent for a precautionary landing?

- Doc

[azflyer]

Because men in the 70’s were more likely to stereotype women as hysterical?

Fair point. I guess the point I was more trying to make here was that Nelson would be much more inclined to view any form of emotion from the woman sitting next to him as hysterical.

Glad to hear you had examples of strong women in your life.

[azflyer]

Doc,

There is zero risk in using the "Emergency Decent" technique. It is only a technique that allows the pilot to descend (nearly) straight down as quickly as possible. You're conflating the descent and the landing. They are separate phases of flight.

Also, I'm not arguing that anything about the landing was forced. I have no doubt they pilot touched down in a very uneventful manner (which calls into question the whole, "landing in a field") I'm just arguing that in this circumstance, given where they likely were (between Delta and Fillmore) the pilot would not have been able to follow a normal decent profile. Turns would have been required. If I were the one flying, I would go straight over Delta in cruise flight, then descend in a spiral over the airport to setup for a nice easy downwind pattern entry and landing.

Here is a video of a pilot demonstrating an emergency decent in a Cessna 182. This is a single engine airplane, but note that even though the engine is running fine, he reduces power to idle in the engine. Start at 2:00 in the video if you want to save time. Also, look at the still image at 2:12 in the video. Non-pilot passengers would easily interpret this as a "death spiral".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWp316DUBVE

Now, I admit that I am not multi-engine rated, so if anyone here is, and wants to weigh in, please correct me if I'm wrong. But the procedure in a twin would very likely be to pull power to the "good" engine during the emergency decent. "IF" this is what happened, this would also explain why in Nelson's story, the "good" engine had to be "restarted".

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Edit - Here is a post on a CFI board talking about the "emergency decent" procedure in a twin. It suggests that the procedure for a twin is to cut power to idle on both engines. However, to be certain, you'd need to look at the POH (Pilot Operating Handbook) for a Navajo, and I can't find one online.

http://www.askacfi.com/2569/emergency-d ... a-twin.htm

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The more I've looked into the details of this, the more I believe that Nelson was just a non-pilot passenger that was overreacting to what was a pretty uneventful pre-cautionary landing. In his mind, the situation was very likely much more dire than it actually was.

[Lem]

Because men in the 70’s were more likely to stereotype women as hysterical?

Fair point. I guess the point I was more trying to make here was that Nelson would be much more inclined to view any form of emotion from the woman sitting next to him as hysterical.

Can’t argue with that!

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Azflyer,

You’re right, I was conflating the two. That said, if one engine is shut off and feathered and the pilot compensates for yaw with the other engine and it’s operating fine, I guess I don’t understand the need for an emergency descent when a regular descent is in order.

The need for an emergency descent is typically associated with an uncontrollable fire (sounds familiar!), a sudden loss of cabin pressurization, or any other situation demanding an immediate and rapid descent. The objective is to descend the airplane as soon and as rapidly as possible within the structural limitations of the airplane.

There was no need to do that, and it seems unnecessarily risky.

- Doc

[azflyer]

You’re right, I was conflating the two. That said, if one engine is shut off and feathered and the pilot compensates for yaw with the other engine and it’s operating fine, I guess I don’t understand the need for an emergency descent when a regular descent is in order.

Great question. Let me try and explain a little better. I suspect the airplane was about 10 miles south of Delta Airport when this happened. It was at 20,000 feet and cruising at around 200 knots. Once the decision is made to divert to Delta, it has to descend ~15,000 feet (about 3 miles) and cover about 10 miles of terrain. Airplanes like this are not capable at descending at that steep of an angle. That's what it really comes down to. The pilot would have had to make turns to shed all of the altitude and kinetic energy.

Also, I fully admit that I am taking some liberties and speculating here. I could totally be wrong. But I do believe that what I'm suggesting is just as plausible as any of the other suggestions that have been made.

Lastly, I want to clarify that while the maneuver I'm referring to is called an "emergency decent", just because the word 'emergency' is in the name, that does not mean you have to be in an 'emergency' to use the procedure. I do recall in flight training my CFI discussing this in particular. He mentioned to me that he used the "emergency decent" procedure to get through a 'hole' in the clouds when he was flying VFR on top and wanted to stay VFR while getting through a cloud bank. (in hind sight, I'm hoping he was exagerating, becuase now that I'm a certified pilot, I wouldn't be caught dead trying to do that)

I am most certainly trying to be reasonable here, and I conceded that some of the way I'm approaching this situation could be from a SEL point of view.

...it seems unnecessarily risky.

I just don't understand this statement. Why are you assuming that performing the emergency decent maneuver involves any sort of risk?

[azflyer]

Also, as a point of reference, here is a thread on the pilotsofamerica forum. The author of this post wrote this up a few years back. I remember that he posted it shortly after I became a pilot. This speaks a bit to what pilots consider an "emergency" and what is "urgent".

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/communi ... day.89402/

This pilot declared an emergency to ATC when he had two engines running because he THOUGHT he was going to lose the second engine.

The splitting of hairs by RFM and Bill over the difference between "precautionary" and "urgent" is... well... splitting hairs.

Go read that post and tell me you can't feel the stress in his writing. Shoot, I remember reading this five years later BECAUSE I could feel how stressed he was. Losing an engine in a twin is no picnic. It was indeed a big deal for the pilot, and it was a big deal for the passengers.

Oh ya, and the engine was definitely leaking oil.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Because the objective is to descend the airplane as soon and as rapidly as possible within the structural limitations of the airplane. There’s no point in that when making a precautionary landing. Additionally, we can speculate where the flight was, but we’re not really sure other than it was ‘at the point of no return’, which was an absurd statement to make. We really don’t know how far out the pilot began his descent nor do we know if he had to make any turns, but I imagine in either case the descent and landing were uneventful.

Anecdotally, I did some sky diving in AZ years ago. We had some different altitudes for our jump runs more or less over the landing field. In a few runs I went up with the plane and came down with it, and it was all a pretty tight flight path. Even to get to the elevations we had to bet to, the flight wasn’t scary or really noteworthy, and the turns themselves were fairly leisurely. So, in my opinion, if Nelson’s flight required some turns in order to do a lap around the Delta airport it’s unlikely it would’ve been harrowing in the least.

- Doc

[Lem]

The splitting of hairs by RFM and Bill over the difference between "precautionary" and "urgent" is... well... splitting hairs.

I didn’t listen to their podcast but I have read this thread, was the RFM argument that the documented precautionary landing shouldn’t have seemed like the emergency landing Nelson described it as?