Kenny Keller (EMS pilot) recounts an anecdote of flying into unexpectedly low clouds on a night flight, unintentionally descending toward IMC between weather reporting stations. He reflects on poor decision-making driven by pride/machismo, the correct response to land and wait for better weather, and the limits of simulator training to convey real fear and consequences. Emphases: safety-first (land if you get into IMC), honest decision-making, and improved training realism.
Chapters
EMS pilot and I hear all the horror stories when I'm you know, at the training and you know, we hear these things as pilots and I go out and we go land at a hospital and a storm comes through and I have a problem with an engine starting. So the patient goes by ground, the crew goes with them, mechanic comes out, takes care of the aircraft problem and I'm checking the weather and they're saying like you know, a thousand feet and I'm going ah, thousand feet, you know, okay, that's good two or three miles. Okay you it's at night and I'm thinking it sounds like it's going to be alright. Well between where I was at and to get home I can tell you the cloud level, I don't know what it got down to 4 or 500ft. So I take off with the right intentions thinking oh, I'm going to be okay. And the farther I got out in the middle of nowhere between where I was and getting back home, there's no weather reporting stations. About a 45 mile flight, I'm halfway in between the middle of nowhere, almost no ground reference lighting and I keep coming down and I keep coming down and I don't even remember how low I got and I don't even want to admit how low I got. But I know that I kept flying, I kept getting lower and what I should have done is just landed, I should have landed the helicopter and shut it down and called and said hey, I got in some bad weather and I'm on the ground and I'll, and I'll sit here until it clears or you know, in the morning we'll do whatever. But the problem is we don't want to admit that we're wrong. We don't want to go through the embarrassment of landing out in a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere and putting an EMS ship out of service because we made a stupid call influence and whether we shouldn't have the right thing is to do is to land and just shut down and wait for better weather but we don't want to do that. And that's why guys get themselves into trouble because we're macho. We don't want to say no. We get ourselves halfway involved into a flight and then it turns ugly and we're chicken to turn around or we're chicken to just land. And I know like an omni flight towards the end in the beginning they would say, you know, make a 180 turn and fly back out of it. And then they changed their tune at a certain point and said, you know what, guys? With everything that's going on, all these helicopters are crashing. If you get into nasty stuff, we want you to land, we don't want you to turn around. We want you on the ground. If you start getting into the soup, land, put it on the ground, have the gusta, shut it off, call your base and say, I just landed. I'm on the ground. We're safe. Here's where we're at. You know, we're going to wait for the weather to clear or whatever. But, yeah, you know, we make these decisions for all kinds of stupid reasons when we know better. And it's very easy to be thinking you're making the right decision and go, the weather, it's good enough. I can do this. Okay. And then you run into stuff that's not forecasted, or you're just in between weather reporting stations and the weather's lower than reported. You know, there's all kinds of reasons that people get themselves into trouble. And what I was getting at there. The other part of that is, you know, there's no way really to teach new students. I mean, you could put them in a simulator and go out and put them in a, you know, inadvertent imc, which, you know, that's good training. But I just feel like I wish there was a way we could take students and show them in the real world how scary it can be and how quick it can happen. But there's no real way for you to take an aircraft out, a VFR aircraft that put it in almost IMC conditions. You know what I mean? I've thought about how can we train, you know, what can we do to really train students? I think that's one thing other than using a simulator, which, again, it's a simulator. So, okay, there's no real fear of crashing because you're in a simulator. You can give somebody an idea of how scary it could be. But it's not the same as being out in the real world and getting scared half to death that you're going to wreck the aircraft. And here I'm coming back and just going, got it. I made it back okay, and everything was fine. But when I was in that soupy stuff and I started sifting through this low layer of clouds going, oh, my God, is this going to get worse before it gets better? And I'm thinking, here I am, I'm going to be the statistic that everybody talks about. New EMS pilot going out, being brave, flying when he probably shouldn't. Have been. I was almost that statistic, so, you know.
