It has often been said about the load carrying capacity of the Cessna 182, that if you can get it through the door, it will get it off the ground. We put it to the test as we stuffed it with 2 sets of gear, tents, sleeping bags, camping gear, lawn chairs, a couple bags of clothes, coolers, a case of water, a full load of fuel, and more maps than I thought it would take to navigate around the world. Matt assured me they were all necessary and I knew I was in for a little bit different type of flying than I was used to doing on my own. For instance, if I wanted to navigate from Ottawa to Kingston, I'd head kinda southwest, turn right when I hit a big river, the river would lead to a big lake, next to the lake would be a city, just past the city there would be an airport. Land there. Simple, low tech, and utterly reliable. The plane was heavily loaded when we left Rockliffe at 5 in the morning, we had just enough useful load left to pick up Caroline and her gear in Mascouche. I'm glad Matt was doing the weight and balance for this flight instead of me, I wouldn't have known where to start.
We left just before dawn, heading east. It was a gorgeous morning with almost no wind, and the sun creeping slowly above the horizon in front of us. The Gatineau hills were off to the left, the valleys shrouded in mist that was slowly burning off as the sun warmed the ground. I wished I had kept one of my cameras nearby to be able to record the incredible view as we cruised along above the Ottawa river. I can distinctly remember thinking to myself what a perfect day it was, how much I was looking forward to spending the day skydiving, and then flying on to Oshkosh, and how happy I was to be alive. This would be the adventure of a lifetime.
It was only a few minutes later that it all went to Hell in a Handcart, and the courses of our lives would be changed forever.
The Crash.
Matt and I will be pondering and dissecting the 5 minutes immediately before the accident for the rest of our lives. As we approached Mascouche just after dawn, I was Pilot Flying, and Matt was Pilot In Command. I could write several thousand words on how it came about, but the only way to sum it up would be to say that on a perfect VFR day, two competent pilots managed to fly a perfectly good airplane into the ground. I feel I'm responsible, Matt feels he's responsible, and we're both right. Aviation accidents don't usually result from a single bad decision, but from a series of choices that are like forks in the road. If we had made a different choice at any one of those forks, we probably would have had a completely different outcome. In hindsight, there are so many things either one of us could have done differently, so many things either one of us could have said to the other, but we didn't.
The plan was to do a straight in approach rather than fly a standard landing pattern because of noise abatement concerns. I had a lot of trouble identifying the airport, and by the time Matt had directed me to it we were almost on top of it. I put the plane into a vicious side slip to bleed off altitude, Matt got the gear and flaps down, but when we were still a couple of hundred feet up I knew that I had let the situation get ahead of me. The more high performance the airplane, the further ahead of it the pilot has to be. When the plane gets ahead of you, you wind up having to react to the situation instead of dictating how the situation will unfold. By the time I realized I couldn't make the landing and Matt took over, I had set him up for failure. He got the plane down on the runway a little more than half way along, but with all that luggage and fuel on board we had so much mass that the thing just wouldn't slow down. At the end of the runway was a grass over-run, beyond that there was a tall stand of pine trees. There was no way we would have gotten it stopped before we hit the trees, so our best option was to power up, take off again, and do a go around for another attempt.
It was not to be. We were into the over-run when we lifted off again, and we weren't able to clear the trees with enough speed to keep flying. Matt and I have micro-analyzed those brief seconds between takeoff and going into the trees hundreds of times, and there were many things that could have been done differently, but it wouldn't have affected the outcome. We actually rose just high enough to clear the tops of the trees, but by then the stall warning was getting louder and louder. If it had been me flying, I would have kept the yoke back, trying to keep the thing in the air, it would have stalled, dropped a wing, and spun in, killing us both. Matt took the only choice that was left to us, and let it settle into the trees.
The trees were all tall pines, all the same height, planted closely together. Since we were in a stall we went in at a relatively slow speed, with the wings level. The top part of a stand of trees like that is actually very soft, and as we sank in further and further, encountering thicker branches, the speed was quickly reducing. The plane was getting torn apart piece by piece but the solidly mounted engine out in front of us kept any branches or tree trunks from coming into the cockpit. As plane crashes go, it was actually going quite well.
Until we ran out of trees.
In the middle of that little forest was a clearing. When we reached it, the wreck stopped decelerating so nicely and dove almost vertically into the ground, then slid across the clearing, coming to a stop against the trees on the far side. I've been in several car and motorcycle accidents, and know what it's like to collide with another vehicle or stationary object. Those other accidents were nothing like this. There's nothing that can prepare a person for the violent impact of doing a nose dive into the ground from 40 feet up in the air. The shock of colliding with the ground was severe enough to break bones and tear muscles. It was that initial impact that caused all our injuries.
As suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch, there was near total silence, except for the sound of water, as if we were next to a small waterfall. An instant later the smell hit me: it wasn't water, it was all that fuel pouring out of the ruptured fuel tanks. I couldn't turn my head to look but Mathieu could, and he could see the fuel gushing out of the wings. Even injured as we were, we couldn't stay there.
It was only a second or two before I said "Time to go." The windshield had popped out when we hit the ground, and since the landing gear had torn off, the fuselage was sitting on the ground. As if we'd rehearsed the movements, we both released our seat belts, stood up in the opening left by the windshield, and Matt stepped out to the ground. I went to do the same on my side of the plane but the trees blocked my way. As I shuffled across to the other side Matt held out his hand to help me.
But I knew I was forgetting something. Something that was very important.
The "Post Crash Checklist". It's short and very simple. Shut off the fuel, which was pointless in this case, and turn off the Master Electrical Switch. No point surviving the crash and then dying in a fireball. I paused, reached back in, flipped the switch to off, and Matt helped me from the plane.
As the two of us shuffled away the pain was quickly burning through the adrenaline, and by the time we collapsed about 40 feet away we both knew that we had been very badly hurt.
Suddenly Matt dragged himself to his feet and hobbled back towards the wreck. He came back carrying his cellphone, and as he fell back down to the floor of the clearing he had already dialed 911. He quickly and succinctly told them what had happened, exactly where we were, that we had gotten ourselves out, and how many people were on board. Then he said "Hang on a minute, I'm going to put you on hold."
That's right. He put 911 on hold. He quickly called Caroline, the girl we were stopping to pick up and told her, in a classic example of understatement, "We won't be going skydiving today, we had a problem with the plane." So she headed to work.
My head was bent sharply forward with my chin touching my chest, and the pain in my neck was agonizing. I could feel my left arm quickly going numb as if all the circulation had been cut off, and realized that my shorts were soaked with blood. I knew I should stay still, but the pain in my neck was so excrutiating that every minute or so I would roll from one side to the other in a fruitless attempt to find a position that might ease the pain even slightly.
Most importantly, we both passed the wriggle test. That's when you wriggle everything and it all works: both hands, both feet, all fingers and toes.
We've all heard sirens before, usually in the distance, and most people usually regard them as more of an annoyance than anything else. But believe me when I tell you that no sound ever sounded as sweet as hearing them and knowing that they were coming for us. There was nothing more we could do for ourselves, from here on we had to count on the professionals.
Which is when a guy dressed in mechanics coveralls ran into the clearing. he stopped next to Matt, and looking down with a look of astonishment on his face, asked: "Mathieu?" His name was Mathieu as well, and 14 years earlier the two of them had done their primary flight training together. He had seen us crash, and had called 911 before running over to help. They spoke briefly, before Matt sent him to me. He convinced me to stay still, cradling and supporting my head until the firemen came crashing through the woods.
Stupid place to plant a bunch of trees.
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