How many times have you had to make that quick decision?

[Rich]

It's been said that flying is 99% boredom and 1% terror. I got to thinking of those times that a situation arose where I had to do something "right damn now" or a bent airplane and/or me was absolutely going to happen in the next few seconds. I'm not talking about when you have time to mull over a decision for even 3 seconds.

Without details, over a flying career dating back to 1965 the number of times I can recall having to do this is 7, the last time being something like 10 years ago. Each of these has its own cautionary tale with regards to the circumstances. Sometimes my own fault, sometimes others.

[Don]

Flying around L.A. airspace I can think of 4 or 5 times I had to take immediate action to avoid traffic. Probably the closes
I have come to being involved in a death occuring event was taking off on runway 29 at KTOA, Torrance, CA. A confused Cessna 172 pilot, who had his bearings 180 degrees reversed, was cleared to land by the tower on runway 29 but was lined up on short final for runway 11 instead. Shortly after take off, we almost had a head on mid-air at about 200 feet AGL. I quickly pushed the stick forward and he passed over me by maybe 30 or 40 feet. The G1000 was giving me, "Pull Up" audio commands during my dive. I had few choice words for the controller which I aired over the frequency and then heard myself later on the FAA tapes. Turns out the controller was a fresh trainee and had lost situational awareness. I filed a near miss report with the local FAA district office in Long Beach. The offending pilot was required by the FAA to go through remedial training.

[Rich]

Perhaps oddly, only one of my events was aircraft-traffic related. A taildragger ahead of me at an uncontrolled field announced a "stop-and-go" and seemingly forgot the "go" part

[Colin]

Eleven years of two hundred hours a year and I have been extremely lucky. Or very conservative.

I've lost the electrical system on short final, which killed the radios. I lost the alternator as I was arriving at Albany. And AHRS failed on a long cross country flight. Once when I started picking up ice in the DA40 I was spring-loaded to do something very quickly. I did reject a takeoff when an engine misbehaved and it is possible that if I hadn't something less fun might have happened after takeoff. I am unsure. Recently I had a fuel leak on the left engine on an hour long flight and flew on while I considered the range of possibilities.

I didn't declare an emergency on any of those flights. I don't recall taking any abrupt actions, even on short final. That "fly the plane" thing was drilled in pretty well. The closest I remember coming to bending a plane during training was at Torrance, landing runway 11 right when the wind was shifting (the next landings were all runway 29). A gust picked up the tail when I was two feet over the thousand foot markers and tried to stick the plane on its nosewheel. My CFI grabbed his yoke and put us down.

There have been a few times when I've deviated for traffic, but I doubt any were as close as Don's event. Maybe within a hundred feet, I doubt within fifty feet.

I have gone around on landing half a dozen times. Once was pretty early on with my wife in the plane and it was *really* gusty and bumpy at KSMO, our home base. We got almost into ground effect and I didn't like it, climbed up, flew the pattern and then landed by chance in slightly calmer winds. She was a little surprised I went around and said it looked as good as most of my landings. Not to me. And last summer returning from the east coast I rejected a landing at Flagstaff, AZ because it was 27 gusting 43 right down the runway and I didn't like the number of full-travel deflections I had to make with the controls as I was coming down final. I know it all changes when you get into ground effect and if I had gone around and added a little more of a gust factor to our approach speed I could have done it, but we were 2.5hrs from home and had some more podcasts to listen to, so my son and I continued on without the stop (I do love the range on the new plane).

[pietromarx]

A few here and there. In the DA-40 the most exciting times were when the muffler (the old style, now replaced across the fleet because of these two incidents) broke. Once while IMC on an approach into Santa Monica, the other time on climbing out of Nevada City (or Carson City) in turbulence on the eastern side of the Sierras. Both were quite exciting and required immediate landings.

Had a wrong-way pilot in the pattern at Van Nuys that required a quick zig. Had a wing vortex encounter with a 757 going overhead while I was at Hayward and him going into Oakland that flipped the decathlon (a taildragger) over 90°; exciting because it was 800 AGL, but it was an aerobatic airplane. Had an alternator go out IFR heading up to the Bay Area, but it wasn't much more than a diversion.

Luckily for me, each was an single failure or an isolated incident. Were they to happen within a string of events then it could be far more serious.

[Rich]

I intentionally left off the half-dozen or so times when some kind situation came up and I had significant time to evaluate and deal with it.

Most (not all) of the events not included in the count in the original post were some kind of equipment failure but they all amounted to some combination of no change of plan, correct in flight, or go land somewhere and deal with it.

[Rich]

Not included in my original post was the time I failed to zig or zag in time and hit a seagull (I think - only got a glimpse) out on the left wing at 133 knots. Produced this really impressive BOOM sound and cracked the leading edge. These things can weigh like 3-4 pounds. No noticeable effect on the plane's flying characteristics (other than the big-time left yaw at the moment of impact), so I just flew the plane back to Boeing Field and thus began another several-week downtime

[blsewardjr]

One night at a dark country airport I was landing when a deer ran out from the right side of the runway ahead of me just as I touched down. In a split second I had to decide whether to hit it or try to go around. Elected to hit it. Turned out very bad for the deer, amazingly little damage to the DA40 (the pilot step did a good job of protecting the airframe.) Per the insurance, we did have to tear down the very newly overhauled engine, however, even though the (aluminum) prop was undamaged from the strike. Only damage was minor composite issues with the lower cowl and a lost glideslope antenna. That same week a private jet faced the same thing and ended up wrecked.

[Joey]

I've had the go around for deer a couple of time that has me spring loaded for go arounds now. We had a guy at our airport that hit one last year just as he touched down. Bad for the deer and some skin damage not to mention the engine tear down. In the 40 my biggest "thrill" was checking out a friend on a blustery x-wind day. We were headed for the trees and I said I was going to give him 3 seconds to correct it before I jumped in. I ended up taking control got out of the jam and gave control back. Back in military days we got down to 800 lbs of gas or enough for one pass, after 5 attempts where we could not see the boat because we were in a thunderstorm, the airborne tankers were down and it was bluewater ops with no divert. All the "stick juice" had been squeezed out. Fortunately it cleared up enough to land. That was about the time you realize you aren't 24 and immortal anymore.

[Keith M]

I had all sorts of teething troubles when my DA 40 was new, but the notoriously unreliable 1.7 litre Thielert engine was completely reliable for its first 10 years. Then, while flying some circuits on runway 28, after its last annual, there was what I thought must have been an impact with a bird at about 350 ft, so intended to look for damage on downwind. However, soon after starting the crosswind turn, at 550 ft, the engine cut out, so I pushed the nose forward and looked for somewhere to land on the beach to my left. As almost an afterthought, I looked over my right shoulder and runway 13 looked inviting, so without hesitation I continued my turn and lined up for it. I made a quick mayday call, but just concentrated on flying the plane and landed it without incident - which was a relief as I'd not practised PFLs for a long time.

The failure was due to a short circuit in the wire which powers the fuel injectors. A P-clip which holds it in place had been reversed during the maintenance and slowly sliced through the insulation as the engine vibrated. The primary ECU must have blown at 350 ft, the backup was automatically selected and it too blew a few seconds later. It took 3 months to get airborne again ...

Hopefully, that will be the first and last time I have to make an instant decision in an aircraft.