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Breeze of Life
"Another beautiful day for flying" I
thought as I looked up the San Juan sky. There were few clouds
and the air was coming from the East at a comfortable twelve knots.
Wind gusts were indicated on the weather briefings but were not
noticeable from the tarmac. All the indications for good
flying were there. Even as a student pilot I felt confident
that all the conditions necessary for a safe sightseeing flight had
been met. I had written a ‘flight plan’ that would take me and
my flight instructor over the flight practice area over the town of
Dorado. Our plane had been fully inspected in a ritual we call
‘walk-around’ which is the pre-flight all systems check. All
checked fine; the fuel level, the moving surfaces, the tires and
every bolt and nut on the Cessna 172.
Angel, my trusty flight instructor, had
logged plenty of hours in this type of airplane in his first year as
an instructor. He had performed plenty of take-offs and
landings at this particular airport and had never had an
accident. So I had nothing to worry, it was just going to be
another great day of flying.
Just after noon all systems on board our
Cessna airplane were ready and set. The sun was straight up
and the twelve knots of airspeed indicated on the gauge in front of
me signaled a good take-off. The control tower briefing was
very usual with nothing to note except for some wind gusts of up to
eight knots (about ten miles an hour).
Before take-off another systems check
was performed. This one is called the ‘run-up’. All
systems, compass, radios and engine are double checked just before
entering the runway. All checked fine.
At an airport nearby, in the town of
Arecibo, another pilot was doing the same; checking all the systems
and weather like I did. He was an experienced pilot and head
of that airport’s safety team. His only passenger on his
two-seater cessna airplane was a church minister who had never flown
in an airplane. They checked the
plane on ‘run-up’ and all checked fine.
One plane in San Juan, another one in
Arecibo, both were ready for take-off. The wind was a steady
twelve knots as I veered the airplane into position for
take-off. The tower called ‘cleared for take-off five three
quebec’ (our call sign) as I noticed a wind gust which shook the
plane slightly. I pushed the throttle open and away we
went. As the airspeed rose to sixty five knots I pulled the
stick back and pitched the plane’s nose up. It floated above
the runway for some long seconds as it broke ‘ground effect’.
Then it finally soared up. We were doing eighty knots as we
climbed out. That was a good twenty five knots above the
minimum stalling speed. I felt comfortably knowing that with this
speed I could have overcame any wind change on climb-out, specially
with a wind gust warning on the weather briefings.
As we made it to a thousand feet I
trimmed the airplane controls for straight and leveled flight.
Some gusts were starting to be felt. The airspeed indicator
jumped up and down every fifteen seconds or so. I knew then
that my preparations for possible gusts on take-off had not been
uncalled for. We could have been jolted and possibly stalled
on take-off had we gotten a ‘good’ gust on the critical stage of the
climb-out. But things had gone fine for us that day. We
were up and enjoying the flight.
I quickly forgot all worries and circled
the plane around the practice area as all immortal pilots do.
Nothing to hit or fear high above in the sky. It is the
freedom and beauty above which makes one forget the vulnerability of
being suspended in the air by two thousand pounds of tin, for
reality sometimes lags behind enthusiasm.
Suddenly the wake up call arrived.
It was from the tower: "cessna five three quebec, we have a
plane down in Arecibo, please search the area and report, smoke was
seen." Five minutes later we made the fateful call:
"tower, this is five three quebec, airplane is on fire, a quarter
mile north of the Arecibo runway." The airplane had stalled
and crashed on take-off.
As all this sank in, the obvious came to
mind: this could have been me burning down there in that plane
wreckage. This plane stalled on take-off and killed both
occupants in a fierce fire. What happened? Didn’t he check the
weather briefings? Maybe he did and still that wasn’t enough.
Maybe he got into ‘the perfect gust.’ Maybe, maybe and more
maybes, just like life down here on the ground; you prepare
for a gust and maybe you get a breeze.
by: Emilio Vega
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