Everyone has at least one crazy plane story. But if you work with planes for nearly 30 years, you’ll have a lot of crazy stories. Brendan Preisman has the story of his dad’s wildest Air Force memories.
This story originally aired as part of our A.I. Special Broadcast.
MOST PEOPLE THINK OF AIRPLANE INCIDENTS AS SOMETHING SIMPLE. TURBULENCE, LOST LUGGAGE, MAYBE EVEN A BATHROOM MISHAP. HOWEVER, WHEN YOUR LIFE’S WORK IS ON PLANES, THINGS CAN BE A LITTLE DIFFERENT. DAVID PREISMAN, MY FATHER, IS AN AIR FORCE COLONEL WITH OVER 27 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE. IN HIS 4000 HOURS OF FLYING TIME, HE HAS SEEN SOME INTERESTING THINGS. PERHAPS THE MOST MEMORABLE WAS A MICROBURST ON THE ISLAND OF OKINAWA, JAPAN.
“This weather phenomenon called a microburst had…had formed on…around the runway, and in fact, it formed near the control tower and what a microburst is, is…it’s basically a super concentrated set of moisture and rain that is barely being held. Up by the updraft in a storm system. And then eventually everything gets so saturated, that it’s almost like a water balloon or anything and the largest completely falls out and creates this massive down rush of water and wind and once that hits the ground, it pushes out at great speed as well. So if you can picture that just a water balloon breaking and then the water hitting the ground. That’s kind of what a microburst is on a giant scale.”
THE MICROBURST ENDED UP NEARLY FLIPPING THE PLANE ONTO ITS SIDE.
“Essentially, it lifted the right wing up at a massive bank angle while we had no power, and we’re just about to touchdown on the runway. So the aircraft commander, he went to full rate deflection on the…on the control column, which is pretty unusual to put that again, controlling for when you’re close to the runway like that. So what ended up happening is we scraped the number three and number four engines, which are the two engines on the right wing of the airplane. I flew by…I was on the runway as an overcorrection. And we had already been pushed almost off the left side of the runway by the additional microburst and eventually got settled. down onto the runway and came to a stopping taxi back to parking.”
AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT, THE LANDING WAS FAR FROM ROUTINE. EVEN INSIDE THE PLANE, THE CHAOS WAS EASILY NOTICEABLE.
“Usually, a landing flare is a very smooth, powerful, gentle rise with the nose that had happened and then when we got hit, it was a violent shutter to the left of the airplane and then an immediate correction back to the right to try to save the aircraft. So it was…it felt a little bit violent, but again, not so much that…that anything horrible happened. But the amazing part was the aircraft itself was structurally strong enough to where that bounce off of the number three and four engines didn’t catastrophically damage the engines or when that happens.”
HOWEVER, THERE ARE SOME MORE PLEASANT THINGS CAN THAT HAPPEN TO AIRCRAFT. PREISMAN NOTES THAT BIRD STRIKES ARE EASILY NOTICEABLE FROM INSIDE THE CABIN. BUT IT’S NOT BECAUSE OF SIGHT OR SOUND. IT’S BECAUSE OF SMELL.
“A smaller type of bird generally gets ingested into an aircraft engine. Our pressurization system air conditioning system is all based on lead air, which comes off of the engines. It’s pressurized air that comes off of the engines to help keep the aircraft cabin pressurized. Well, it turns out that when you pass a small bird through a high bypass turbofan engine it smells like fried chicken in the cabin for a bit after that, so I thought that was always a good fascinating whenever we had that but we would always know that we’d hit a bird before before there would be indications on the side of the airplane that we’ve actually had a bird or a stop. We would actually smell it before we would…we would hear the other birds bouncing off the airplane.”
HE ALSO NOTED THAT NOT ALL BIRD STRIKES ARE AS PLEASANT TO DEAL WITH. CANADIAN GEESE ARE QUITE LARGE AND CAN BE DEVASTATING TO AIRCRAFT ENGINES. HOWEVER, HIS WILDEST STORY IS EVEN CRAZIER THAN A BIRD STRIKE.
“During that flight though, I had to put on a harness strap to strap myself to an anchor point on the floor. That was only for the length to wear it if I fell, I wouldn’t fall out of the door if that may make sense like I had I had to adjust the strap to length to make sure I wouldn’t go out of the airplane and get beaten against the side of the airplane”
DURING THIS PARTICULAR FLIGHT, THE CARGO DOOR, A 10 FOOT WIDE CLAMSHELL DOOR, WAS IMPROPERLY LOCKED. WHILE NORMALLY FOUR HANDLES SHOULD BE USED TO ENSURE SAFETY, ON THIS PARTICULAR FLIGHT, ONLY TWO WERE LATCHED. THE PRESSURIZATION CHANGE PROVED TO BE NEARLY DISASTROUS.
“So as we were passing through 5000 feet in the closeout, and aircraft’s fully pressurized at that point the pressure from the pressurization push the front end of the cargo door open while we were flying at 207 knots, so as the only examiner on board, I got the privilege of actually going back to check the corridor to see what was going on and to try to re close it. And it turned out and it actually structurally bent the target or to a point to the point where they had to replace the whole thing.”
HOWEVER, AVIATION HAS OVERALL BEEN A FULFILLING AND SAFE CAREER FOR PREISMAN. HE SAYS THAT OF ALL THE HOURS HE’S FLOWN, ONLY 5 OF THEM HAVE BEEN GENUINELY STRESSFUL. HE ALSO SAYS THERE’S ANOTHER PERK TO TAKING A JOB IN AVIATION.
“Because no matter how bad the weather is on the ground. When you’re in the aviation profession, again, no matter how bad the weather is on the ground, you will always need your sunglasses.”
NOT EVERYONE CAN BE TOM CRUISE. BUT EVERY AVIATOR JUST MIGHT BE ABLE TO LOOK LIKE HIM.
ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE ABLE TO AVOID ANY BIRDS OR WEATHER ISSUES.
FOR WNUR NEWS, I’M BRENDAN PREISMAN.
