A Fishy Tail from Intra

Tales of a club instructor

I arrived early that morning and joined Pick who was pulling the fleet out of the hangar. In those days the club hangar housed club aircraft. We both checked the oils and then taxied all five club aircraft up on to the grass beside the club taxiway.

My aircraft G-BCPE was brand new with only a few hrs flown, it sounds grand but we had a system where each of the five full-time instructors had “their own aircraft” it was our responsibility to keep it clean, fly it and keep the logbooks completed and the aircraft booked in for maintenance, PE was a Cessna 150M that was built by Fenwick Aviation in Reims France.

The booking sheets for the day were full, one-hour slots starting at 0900 and on to the airport closing time, my first four slots that day were local residents at various stages of their PPL training, but all on circuits so no problem keeping to time, at least up to lunchtime.

The afternoon had a change as all six slots were for RAF cadets, not local, but residential in various guest houses and sponsored by the RAF. The club was accredited to the RAF sponsored cadet scheme where 30 hours of the PPL course was paid by the RAF. 

The weather on that day was perfect, a beautiful Jersey summer day what could be better. All went well until cadet number four, the cadet Peter was nearly finished his training, all had been going well and records showed he needed revision on exercise 10 and 11 stalling and spinning.

Before spinning was removed as part of the mandatory CAA syllabus, recovery from a developed spin was required to be trained during the PPL course. It was later removed when it became clear more accidents were occurring during the training than after. Later during this flight, I almost became one of the statistics.

We departed runway 27 and started operating in the south-east training area, after a period of slow flight and then stalling we moved on to the spin. Peter had done these before so I was not expecting anything other than normal and the slow flight and stalling had been good. How wrong I was to be.

The entry was normal and PE rolled into the spin, after about 2 turns I called recover now and Peter applied full opposite rudder and moved the control column forward, all good so far. The 150 recovers from a spin almost as soon as the correct control movements are applied and today was no exception, however, I noticed Peter applied full forward control movement.

At this point as the aircraft had stopped spinning Peter should have started the recovery to level flight, however, nothing happened and as the full forward elevator was applied PE very quickly accelerated and entered a vertical dive. I called, I have control and started to move the elevators back, nothing happened they would not move. The dive continued and by the amount of air noise, we must have been at VNE or even more, not that I had time to look at the ASI.

Immediately I noticed Peter was still holding the controls full forward, I called again I have control, adding, Peter let go, nothing he would not let go. I had read about this, a student who freezes on the controls, he was staring straight ahead and rigid on the control column one hand on the controls and one on the throttle, there was now no time for anything other than urgent and decisive action.

With my right hand I reached across and hit him on his left arm, no reaction, I hit him again this time really hard, and it was so hard it pushed his arm away and his hand moved off the control column, at last, I was able to move the controls back and ease out of the dive. We levelled at 600ft. As the airspeed came back I applied power to hold normal cruise speed.

Something was wrong, the airspeed continued to fall only stabilising at 65kts, something on the airframe must have been damaged or torn off, a quick visual look revealed nothing and then I noticed the problem, it was an engine fault the RPM only going up to 1900rpm, just enough to hold 65kts airspeed. We crept back to land on runway 27 holding 600ft and 65kts until short finals.

When back at the club I left PE outside the hangar and reported the fault to the chief engineer Ted Dan, both I and Peter debriefed and Peter left to recover in the clubhouse. As I sat talking the events over with Pick, Ted came up the stares from the hangar, in his hand he held the throttle plunger from PE, this is why you couldn’t get full power, Mike, he said, it was bent looking curved not straight.

Then it became clear, with Peter freezing on the controls and his obvious tension he had bent the throttle plunger making it impossible to get full power from the engine.

What started as a normal day turned into a very unusual day, life as a club instructor is always interesting but luckily events such as this are rare.

That was the end of my flying that day, as PE was U/S until a spare throttle was obtained.