I almost crashed my airplane!
I've been meaning to type up a few notes from the flying trip since it ended over a week ago, so I thought I'd start by talking about the near-crash I experienced. Unlike anything else I've been involved with, in aviation there is a culture of talking about how you almost crashed or got yourself into a scary situation. Every aviation magazine has a column which analyzes a crash report and talks about what the pilot could have done to handle the situation better.

The centerpiece of the flying trip was a visit to Monument Valley, UT. It's on the AZ border a million miles from nowhere - really hard to get to by car. A ton of westerns were filmed there, the scenery is incredible. It's on the Navajo Reservation, and they have an airstrip that you can fly into if you want to visit. Sweet. The airport is really challenging since its at around 5000' elevation and has a 1.25 degree slope to it. Not much in general, but a decent amount for an airport. Oh yeah, it's also a 1-way strip since there is a 600' tall butte at the high end of the runway. So, you land toward the butte and take off away from it. The runway was just paved this year, which makes things easier.

So, we're coming in from the noth, I've got the coordinates programmed into my GPS, we find the runway OK, I get in the traffic pattern. First attempt I'm looking high. I'm expecting some sink because of the altitude, but it's not enough, and I know this is going to be a challenging approach, so I decide to bail early and go around for another attempt.

Second attempt. I get back into the pattern and get lined up again. Again, I'm a bit high, but this time not too bad. I get things set up, and they're looking really good with about 200 ft to go. I notice a few additional bumps as we descend since there is a bit of wind coming off that giant butte at the end of the runway. No problem. Then, with about 10-20 ft vertical to go, as we cross over the threshold of the runway, there is TONS of sink and the plane basically drops out of the sky. This is not good. I instinctively lower the nose a bit and start pushing in the throttle to keep the airspeed up and compensate for the sink. It's nowhere near enough, and the main wheels hit the ground pretty hard and the plane bounces back up into the air and starts banking slightly left. This is a really narrow runway, so there's no way we're going to land this one safely, so I go to full throttle and look at the airspeed indicator to make sure it's OK to take out some of the flaps causing drag on us. I probably should have looked at the vertical speed indicator, but I didn't. I get the flaps to 10 degrees and take a look outside since I know that butte is coming up and I need to watch out for it. Survival instinct is kicking in and I feel myself pulling back on the yoke. Bad idea - that's how to have a really bad crash in these conditions. I look at the airspeed indicator, which is now hovering around 40-45 knots - too slow. I actually say out loud "we're going to stall-mush." A stall mush is what people usually do when they crash into the trees at backcountry airstrips. I summon the will to disobey the survival instinct and I lower the nose to get the airspeed back up to Vx, which is the airspeed which gives the maximum distance away from the ground per distance traveled forward. As I'm doing this, I'm starting to bank left away from the butte. Out of the corner of my eye I see a hangar at the end of the runway that we're flying over. There's no way it's more than 30 feet below us. Remember that 1.25 degree upslope? That's working against us now and we're climbing into rising terrain. We clear the hangar and I keep a slight bank in to keep us away from the butte. Now I'm just flying the plane at maximum performance to get away from the ground. I'm freaking out that some wind gust will come off that butte and slam us into the ground, causing a real crash. About 30 more seconds pass where I'm just holding the plane in max climb configuration and thinking to myself that "we're going to be OK." My Dad actually says, totally calmly "You're doing fine Chris, just keep going."

Once we're out of the woods, I get the plane level and sort of take inventory. Holy crap, that was really scary! My legs are shaking like mad on the rudder pedals. Now I have to decide what to do. I know I have about 1.5-2 hours of fuel left, plenty to fly to the nearest airport with fuel. We could ditch this part of the trip and I continue on. I consider it, but decide to make another attempt. There's a weird thing with aviation where you're always learning. At some point you have to take some risks or you'll never get anywhere. On the other hand, you can't be reckless and take risks which are obviously really bad. Flying over mountains at night in bad weather is a perfect example. I thought about it and realized that only that part over the runway threshold is what got me into trouble, and small planes land on this strip all the time with no problem. It also wasn't very windy out, so the gusts over the butte were not a big factor close to the ground. I decide to go for it.

This time, I fly WAY out and make a really long, slow approach so that everything is totally dialed prior to reach the end of the runway. As we're coming in, we get the same bumps about 400' above the ground, and as we reach the end of the threshold, I'm already adding a little bit of power in anticipation of the sink, and in case I need to go around again. Sure enough, we a bunch of sink and the plane starts to drop. However, I'm already bringing in power, so I give it a bit more and the plane stops sinking. I find a spot which keeps the plane at a stable altitude over the runway, then reduce slightly to start the plane dropping again. We descend slightly, and gently land as if I were back at my home airport. No problem. SWEET!!! I got it down in one piece. Once we parked, I don't think I could have gotten out of the airplane any faster. That was scary!

So, things I did wrong:
- I should have expected to land with more power than I did - it was high and hot, so the plane does not have good performance. It takes maybe half a second to get the engine spun up and adding more power, and I could have avoided the near disaster if I had power already in.
- I should probably have taken a longer, more stabilized approach on the 2nd attempt. I have noticed that when landing at unfamiliar airports, I have a tendency to come in high. You want to minimize the number of things that you have to think about when you're right above the ground.

Things I did right:
- Brought just enough fuel. Less fuel= less weight. I wanted to have enough to keep my options open, but not so much that I further hurt the performance of the airplane.
- Studied up. I knew what to expect when landing there (slope, butte) and was ready for it.
- Practiced. We started the flight at Moab/Canyonlands airport. The density altitude there was 7500 ft when we left, so I did a few practice landings since it's not often that you fly a 172SP in conditions like that.
- Did the right thing when things got dicey. I could have tried to get back to the runway and crashed trying to get it on the ground. I could have pulled back to hard on the yoke and stalled the plane and crashed, or I could have stall-mushed into the hangar.
- Stayed calm and rational.