This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
During a training event, my student was learning to judge height above the runway, and the landing went long due to our duration in ground effect. We were asked by Tower to expedite our taxi down the runway and clear the runway.
During the turn, my foot became entangled in my headset cord. In an effort to manage the aircraft, I pulled my headset plugs from the ports and dislodged my headset on my head. It is a very confined area in a Cessna 152 and the ports are under the center portion of the instrument panel.
I made every effort to stop the aircraft prior to the hold short intersection and crossed the hold short line that guards the runway.
Factors that affected my performance include a small cockpit environment leading to cord entanglement. It is a small area that does not favor any ability to clear a runway, and stop the aircraft if the pilot finds themself in any kind of predicament. Faded hold short markings on taxiway.
Plan of action is to review this scenario with local instructors. Incorporate this situation into “real world” training for my students. Renewed priority for “hot spot” training.
Primary Problem: Equipment
ACN: 1811655
In my 150, the connectors used to be on the right side of the trim console. That was OK as long as I was flying alone. Dear Bride complained about bumping into them, so I moved them to the center of the panel under the glare shield. That was almost OK, but when we got a set of ANR headsets with external battery boxes and volume controls AND added a yoke mount GPS, the area became a total rats nest of wires going here, there, and everywhere PLUS the new lap-belt-plus-double-shoulder harnesses, it took half an hour just to get strapped, buckled, plugged and wired in . . .
Final location is in the rear door posts, over our shoulders. All the boxes and plugs are out of our way, behind us, and the only wiring we have to be concerned with is the “last mile” to the headsets and mic. It makes for a much cleaner cockpit environment, and is far less cluttered and less distracting.
If the CFI in the article is a big guy, he probably had to squeeze himself into the right seat anyway, because the 150 was designed when a “standard FAA person” was 5’8′ and 160 lbs. Nowadays, we have pre-teens bigger than that. That doesn’t excuse what happened, but it does let me understand it better. De-clutter the cockpit to avoid distractions, think about ergonomics, which is nothing more than “can I easily reach this control?”
….or the ejection seat handles…
Hhhmmm: Could not duplicate. Can someone make a YouTube demonstration video? As mentioned already; must’ve have had a REALLY long comm cord &/or lifted their feet off the pedals prior to unplugging it.
This is clearly an instructor I would NOT want to fly with.
During training my girlfriend got her high heel stuck between the rudder pedal and toe brake on my -161. She was the first to admit….Stupid shoes.
If a person wants to find an excuse, he/she will. But this CFI’s excuse doesn’t pass the smell test. Organize the cockpit, and this sort of situation would never occur. Yeah, a 152’s cockpit is confining, but literally thousands of pilots have been trained by thousands of CFIs in 152s—let’s don’t blame the airplane for the CFI’s ineptitude.
CFIs, especially low time CFIs, get paid by Hobbs time. So a quick walk-around is followed by engine start. Followed by briefing the student.
Excess cord can and should be coiled and clipped securely.
Sounds like this was the Cfis home field. So even runway hold short and signage shouldn’t have been an issue.
Why does the author blame everything except the real cause? He was too easily distracted from his duty. He needs to make sure his headset cord is not dangling down around his feet causing him to forget his main mission: fly the airplane!
I agree. Each time I get in the aircraft, the first thing I do is make sure I’m strapped in, knee board fitted correctly on my leg, seat positioned all the way forward, headset pre-positioned on my head above my ears, and head set cord away from my feet and legs just to prevent the problem listed above.
It sounded to me as though he may be a pilot who does his checks while taxiing, but that statement is speculation on my part. Spend a tenth of an hour on the Hobbs to make sure you are ready to leave the chocks prior to leaving the chocks.
Ken T and Greg C have it exactly right.
Of course most checklists that I’ve used over the past 50 years had “cockpit environment” checked and secured before starting engines, so there should be no rush to avoid extra Hobbs time. If an instructor permits the “rolling cockpit check” in a single pilot operation then they aren’t doing their primary job of teaching safe operation of the aircraft.
I would hope that the other instructors mentioned in the post straighten out this apparently inexperienced CFI.
It is interesting to me that this pilot said their connection ports were under the center part of the panel. Ours were by the doors under the panel. So our cords would be away from the peddles.
This set up just screams to me to be a recipe for that very entanglement.