AIRLINE OPS MIKE GOUGH
LETTING THE
CAT OUT
For those who have been in the sharp end of anything that flies, you would be aware of those moments when things didn’t exactly go according to plan, whether it be by act, omission or just plain bad luck.
I
THINK I KICKED THINGS off in this regard at the very beginning of my flight training, on my first solo in 1989 in Pietermaritzburg. My extremely seasoned instructor and I had done around four circuits in the Cessna C150, when he abruptly announced ‘Stop! - I’m getting out’. I claim I never heard the exact instruction, however as I was meant to do one circuit as sole occupant, I caused the instructor to grumpily climb the stairs to the (then) unmanned control tower to tell me on the radio to make it a full stop, as I had cheerfully done a touch and go and was intending to make it a whole session of solo circuits.
The VOR approach consisted of a procedure turn which usually resulted in us breaking cloud over the town of White River, and then turning inbound towards the airport. We would sometimes cancel our FlightCom: October 2021
Our escape plan, if required, was an immediate left turn, over the town and back down the valley. I only had to do this once, with a subsequent visual routing down the Crocodile Gorge to Malelane. I did however, have to spend half an hour explaining to the passengers why they could see their destination, but then ended up following the Crocodile River below the cloud and ending up somewhere else.
I was having immense fun flying the fantastic Boeing 737200
Fast forward to my first airline job, which was flying Let 410s out of Nelspruit airport – a place that is legend in terms of high terrain and significant weather. As the airport is somewhat elevated from the valley where the town is situated, it frequently would be shrouded in cloud while the valley would be clear.
10
instrument flight rules (IFR) flight plan and fly up the escarpment to squeeze in under the cloud and land visually.
My first ‘real’ airliner was the Queen of the Skies, the majestic Boeing 747 Classic. What a shock to the system that type rating turned out to be – even as a third pilot. An epic three years on this aircraft literally flew past, with much fun and adventure involved. A routine flight from Johannesburg to Bangkok turned not-so-routine as all three autopilots refused to engage after take-off. In true Cockpit Resource Management (CRM or trying to be nice to each other on the flight deck), as I was the most junior, I was immediately nominated to be the autopilot, and as this was prior to that oceanic airspace being nominated as
