Your most boneheaded mistake as a CFI

[mattaxelrod]

I once shot an ILS inverted for practice....and landed that way

You mean, like a Back Course?

 

[BcPilot99]

I became an instructor

Werd......

 

[Captain X]

Out one night after a day of instructing. Bumped into, got a little inebriated with and ended up at one of my female students apartments.

Made for interesting and somewhat awkward lessons thereafter. Kinda felt whorish when she paid me the next day. :laugh:

 

[G2T]

Kinda makes ya wonder....


But I'd have to imagine at night, in IMC shooting an approach to minimums...I'm not sure I'd be too pissy if I saw three REALLY BRIGHT green lights.

Not to hijack the thread, but I have to disagree. When the weather is down to mins, undefined ceilings and rvr's at 1800, you do not need three blazing bright green lights. You might be straining to see outside just enough to keep going past the DA (with the appropriate lights in sight, of course) to get the plane on the ground.

 

[G2T]

I'll also put my mistake up as well. The worst mistake I had was falling into get-there-itis. After a long day instructing, on New Years day, I had to fly home from one of our other offices. Another instructor and I had plans when we got back (home office was in Vegas). We blasted off to get home into marginal weather, and to make a long story short we got stuck in a river valley with weather on both sides/above us. Even though we flew the route everyday and thought we knew the hills very well, we couldn't find a way over the other side with the clouds (the plane we were in was a VFR plane). We had to fly to an airport down the river, wait and replan our route, and ended up home later than if we had just driven. It made for tense flying navigating the mountains in the crappy weather.

 

[Lead Sled]

Twenty something years ago I was giving some instrument dual in a Cessna 172. Some severe unforecast "lake effect" weather (low ceilings, visibilities, and icing conditions) developed along the route of our combination night, instrument "round-robin" XC flight. The "out" part of the trip was uneventful - the weather was as forecast 4,000' ceilings with good visibility beneath, perfect conditions to allow an instrument student to get his first bit of actual.

The "back" part of the trip was another story. An unforecast winter squall developed and moved across our home airport and every possible alternate for about 200 miles. Ceilings and visibilities were running around 400' and 1/2 to 1 mile in blowing snow. Additionally, there was light to moderate icing.

Initially, I wasn't too concerned, it would be a good experience for the student to see just how quickly things can go "south" on you inspite of all the planning you do. (Sometimes Mother Nature just flat refuses to read the weather forecasts.) By the time we got to our home airport, the weather had dropped below the minimums for the VOR approach so we decided to go to our alternate which had an ILS. We were starting to pick up a bit of ice, but it was only about 15 minutes to the alternate so I wasn't too concerned. Again, I felt that this could turn out to be some very good experience for the student.

As we diverted to the alternate the vacuum failure light on the instrument panel illuminated. That was not a good thing! That was precisely not the time that I wanted to have deal with a vacuum failure. The student did a good job of partial panel flying, but after several minutes he started to get vertigo and he began to lose it. At that point, I took the airplane back and was flying "cross panel" partial panel. The winds started to pick up and the ride went from occasional light chop to light to moderate turbulence. The whiskey compass was all but unusable. At that point, I declared an emergency. What had started out a routine training flight with a couple of easily handled "issues" had turned into something altogether different.

As we weighed our options, it became apparent that the weather was going to get worse before it got better and we didn't have much more than the legally required fuel - waiting out the squall line in a holding pattern wasn't an option, besides we had started to pick up a bit more ice. I decided that it would be better to get on the ground as soon as possible - the weather was at minimums for the ILS. I tried flying the first approach, but with the turbulence and the whiskey compass dancing around I couldn't keep on a heading that allowed me to track the localizer. Basically all I had was the electric turn coordinator. I missed that approach and went around for another attempt. This time we had approach vector us to the inner marker and I descended on the glideslope. Just as I was getting ready to go around the runway lights came into view and we were able to land.

That was probably the closest that I ever came to dieing in an airplane. It was also the last time that I ever flew actual IFR in a single-engine airplane. There was a time when I would fly any well maintained, legally equipped single-engine airplane about anywhere and anytime (within reason). For me, those days are gone forever. As far as single-engine IFR goes, it never used to bother me at all. Now I would never even consider it unless I had a VFR ceiling underneath me the whole time.

LS

 

[VNugget]

Not to hijack the thread, but I have to disagree. When the weather is down to mins, undefined ceilings and rvr's at 1800, you do not need three blazing bright green lights. You might be straining to see outside just enough to keep going past the DA (with the appropriate lights in sight, of course) to get the plane on the ground.

I think it's hilarious that they set up the 3-green dimmer system to protect your night vision from these lights down by your knees (which is then this huge training issue for people) but there's the undimmed yellow transit light right in your face on the glareshield.

 

[unreal]

I don't know if this counts as a mistake or just plain lack of experience. Recently my student and I were doing touch-and-goes in fairly gusty conditions. She hadn't done much pattern work lately (she's an instrument student), but we were out getting her some practice anyway.

At one point during one of the landings she flared about 10 feet too high, which caused us to hit the ground and bounce right back up in the air during a wind gust. I called for a go-around, and she dutifully added power and started going through the go-around procedure. Well, I failed to remember for a quick second that the go-around procedure calls for flaps 20 once positive rate is acheived at Vx. Of course during this period, she reached over to my side, puts her hand on the flap lever, and announced that she was retracting the flaps.

Well, my students can be a bit thick headed at times, and what she didn't realize is that we were, in fact, not climbing. In fact, we were at about 45 KIAS in ground effect. To make matters worse, when she reached for the flap handle she looked away from the runway. Now we're at 45 KIAS, in ground effect, and drifting towards the side of the runway.

I immediately grabbed the flap handle to keep it down and called for my controls. I got the airplane back under control and we made a nice positive climb out of ground effect and retracted the flaps when safe.

While many of you might think it was the student's error (and it was), I also see myself in error. She caught me off guard when she reached for the flaps, which shouldn't have happened. Since then, I've learned the guard the controls much more aggressively to prevent something like this from happening again.

 

[acaTerry]

I made a mistake once... I thought that I had made a mistake. I was wrong.

'Sled

Crook. That's my line.

 

[PURPLEHAZE21]

Mattaxelrod,

It was a joke.........shot an ILS inverted to a landing...Oh yeah, I've also done the backcourse backwards....or was it right with the frontcourse ?