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CFI doesn’t listen when student says engine doesn’t sound right

By NASA · July 14, 2022 ·

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.

I was on an IFR flight with my student to ZZZ. Upon departing ZZZ1 my student mentioned that the aircraft engine didn’t sound right. I was unable to detect a distinctive difference to be of any concern, so I decided to continue the flight.

At 5,000 feet and roughly 10 nm away from ZZZ airport, there was an audible bang from the engine and a loss of 300 rpm from the engine.

I tried exercising the throttle with only 2,300 rpm at full throttle. I reduced the throttle and ran through the engine roughness checklist. None of the items on the checklist remedied the loss of power or engine roughness.

The mag check resulted in roughly 1,000 rpm drops for both, but the engine continued to operate, just at reduced power. It is important to note that the mag check on the run-up was within limits.

I made the decision to divert to ZZZ airport. I called ZZZ2 Center to cancel IFR and go into ZZZ under VFR. I was able to land the aircraft without further incident.

This event could have been caused by a maintenance issue.

I think that it is important to heed the alerts from all of those on board. I could have paid more attention to my student mentioning the noise from the engine. I might have been able to detect an issue before we were en route.

Primary Problem: Aircraft

ACN: 1868888

About NASA

NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) captures confidential reports, analyzes the resulting aviation safety data, and disseminates vital information to the aviation community.

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Comments

  1. Jay says

    July 18, 2022 at 12:54 am

    In my flight school i was constantly correcting misdeeds by my cfis. From them teaching outside of SOP standards to outright safety issues such as telling me to hold short on runway at class C airport. The notion more hours means better is counterintuitive considering that would be punishing the guys who achieve milestones in fewer hours due to mastery and skill.

  2. Jim Denike says

    July 17, 2022 at 1:06 pm

    Made me think of the KLM first officer at Tenerife and the PIC too proud to listen.

  3. Robert Jones says

    July 17, 2022 at 9:21 am

    I once rented a Citabria at a local FBO and of course had to fly with the Cheif pilot for insurance purposes. I had not flown a taildragger in a decade, so the Chief pilot was concerned about proficiency, understandably. As I taxied out I commented that the aircraft did not handle properly and that something was amiss. He scoffed and said I was just rusty, Ok, He should know his plane. Take-off was a little squirrely but we had a good crosswind. The first landing was all over the place, it took all my past Pitts (500+ hrs) skill to keep the plane on the runway. The Chief pilot laughed at me when I said something was wrong with the gear (My first solo was in a Citabria). His comment was “let me show you how it’s done”. So I promptly placed my hands in my lap and let the Chief Pilot make the next landing, he took a tour across the back forty narrowly missing a barbed wired fence and a wing tip strike. A large diameter ground loop from the looks of it. After getting back to the ramp and inspecting the tailwheel, a missing spring on one side was causing a cocked tailwheel. Easy to fix, and luckily only an instructor’s pride was scratched. The missing spring was found part way out to the taxiway so it came off at the initial part of the taxi out! Sometimes logbook credentials and ratings don’t fully explain one’s experience. As I tell doctors all the time, you experts need to listen to your flock, they may “know” more than you! I learned to be more aggressive in my sentence structure and realize I could have called the flight off!

  4. scott k patterson says

    July 16, 2022 at 5:37 am

    Hours and ratings are often rote performance, they do not mean mastery.

  5. George says

    July 15, 2022 at 1:27 pm

    I agree with Marc – we need to hear “the rest of the story”

  6. Terk+Williams says

    July 15, 2022 at 8:55 am

    I’ll “come out” here and maybe start a bit of chatter. I much prefer my old David Clarks to noise canceling headsets. I NEED to HEAR the airplane. I’ve flown helos in Viet Nam, USCG helos in icing, Aeronca C2’s and a bit of DC3s in sunshine. I do not WANT the noise cancelled…. And yeah, I read and occasionally re read Bach and Baxter. (And Ms Janice says our Scrabble game is gonna be in next weeks GAN 🌈🌴😎😎). See ya’ in the funny papers.

  7. WK Taylor says

    July 15, 2022 at 8:12 am

    In the Late 1960s I read ‘Stranger to the Ground’, Richard Bach. In one ‘scene’ he describes the peculiar ‘sounds and feels’ the the F-84 makes, in various stages of the flight… that he recognizes as ‘normal’ things happening.. He is aware-of hi jet’s peculiar events by listening/feeling and processing in his subconscious. He said his jet was often a clown.. startling and funny-odd but not cause for alarm. But then he warned that sometimes… rarely [than God]… airplanes SCREAM.

    As a young pilot I took that passage from ‘Stranger’ to heart. One cold wintery afternoon… flying a C150 over SoCal mountains… I ‘realized’ the engine sounded and felt like the RPM had decreased from cruise RPM ever-so-slightly. Yep… slightly more than 50-RPM… and then I heard/felt/saw the RPM decrease by another needle’s-width. NOW, down +150-RPM. I’m in a light misty ‘cloud’ at.. 39F. Full carb heat. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait… then relief when the RPM ‘roared-back’ to 2350. Naw, lets go the 2400.

    Pay attention to the aircraft with ALL of Your various senses… and there will be a deeper awareness overall in Your subconscious not just thru instrumentation. The ‘sensation experiences’ from ever flight will accumulate, making You a sharper pilot… for a long-lifetime.

    Personal Note. Sadly, the older I get, the poorer my hearing gets. However, I can take a nap in our car when the wife is driving… and I can subconsciously feel when we are waaaaay over-the speed limit… because she’s ‘keeping-up’ with that little red sports car. Time to wake-up… and talk-her-down from +95-MPH. DANG.

  8. Warren Webb Jr says

    July 15, 2022 at 6:18 am

    The article includes the entire narrative from the ASRS report and since they de-identify those reports, we’ll never know. But it is an interesting lesson on what cockpit resource management should mean – i.e. feedback from a student pilot can be just as valuable as feedback from a 10,000hr co-pilot.

  9. Marc Rodstein says

    July 15, 2022 at 5:54 am

    It would have been nice to have been told what was wrong with the engine so we could learn from it.

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