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 flying in a complex plane for the first time after earning my complex endorsement. I did a complete pre-flight and didn’t notice anything amiss. However, when I did the idle check during run-up, it did act a little unusual. I attributed it at the time to the cold weather, but in hindsight, it was probably related to the problem I experienced.
Specifically, when I pulled the throttle for the idle check, the power did not drop smoothly — audibly, it cut smoothly to maybe 25% and then sputtered a bit, then it dropped all the way down to idle. It did smooth out at idle though. I was still able to successfully increase power back to 1,000 rpm, and while taxiing to the runway, I successfully increased and decreased throttle with no issue.
I departed southeast, headed around south of the city to reach a lake, with the goal of flying into ZZZ1 along the river. I configured the Piper PA-28’s engine to 25 squared successfully en route.
After getting to the lake, which is the southern end of a noise abatement corridor into ZZZ1, I turned north and decreased throttle to descend below the Bravo shelf.
However, I began to pick up speed. I noticed that the engine was now running at 24 inches with 2,500 rpm. I pulled the throttle back to what should have been idle, but engine power did not change.
At this point, I turned east to avoid running into ZZZ1 or ZZZ2 airspace while I diagnosed the problem.
I pushed the prop back up to full forward so as to play with the throttle a bit. I was able to push the throttle up to max successfully, but I could not bring it below 23-24 inches. Each time I went to max throttle and back down again, it felt like it settled at slightly different pressures between 22 and 24 inches, but I am not sure if I imagined that. I tried cycling the throttle up and down a few times, but the bottom remained stubbornly high.
At this point, I turned westbound to head back to ZZZ. At the lowest settings I could manage, the lowest speed I could get to in cruise, I was maintaining about 133 KIAS. So as to get below max gear extension speed (130 KIAS), I entered a brief climb, and dropped the gear when I hit 130. Gear down and a slight climb then brought the speed just low enough to barely get into the white arc, so I progressively put in full flaps.
With gear down, zero throttle, and full flaps, I was maintaining altitude at around 90 KIAS, which is 20 KIAS over best approach speed on descent, so I knew this was going to be a fast and floaty landing at best.
At this point, I was 15 nm southeast of ZZZ, so I called and requested priority handling from ZZZ Tower. They cleared me to land XXL, so I did a very long shallow approach so as to avoid picking up speed. About 50 feet from the threshold, I was at 95 KIAS, at which point I pulled the mixture and did a power-off glide to the runway, floated a long way but landed successfully, and then rolled onto a taxiway before stopping.
To be honest, I only feel like I was able to deal with this situation because of my training on the fundamentals of flight. We never practiced anything like it, but I knew I had to slow that plane down by any means necessary, and that picking up speed on approach could be fatal.
I am honestly still a bit worried as to what I would have needed to have done if the throttle had been stuck full instead of 75%. I suppose I would have tried putting the gear down during a much more aggressive climb. But a faster landing would have been even more harrowing.
My adrenaline was through the roof after landing — it took several hours to come down off of it.
Primary Problem: Aircraft
ACN: 1952061
Now why would a pilot take off after a anomaly presented its self during preflight run up which could of been deadly to alot of people this pilot should lose their license and have to be re certified before trying out for the next Darwin award which could be catastrophic and kill people dumbass
The pilot managed to land safely, with little incident. He kept his cool. Climbing to reduce airspeed enough to drop gear then slowly add flaps in….good thinking. Why would you jump straight to ‘lose their license and recertify’? Clearly you just had a bad morning when youvread this. Also, the actions said pilot toom to get back safely show the pilot is clearly not a “dumbass”. Check yourself.
Bravo to you for not wanting to immediately send the involved pilot into the bowels of hell, he kept his cool and got the plane down in one piece. As a former CFI (and a bunch of other add-on initials) I applaud pilots who think under stress and come through with a solution when other lesser pilots would freeze… and in this case the pilot in question came through with flying colors… no pun intended.
The Pilot took the time to write down and share his/her story. Most Aviators of varying degrees of experience would take this story and learn from it as most of us have made mistakes at some point in our flying careers. The goal is to learn from them.
Take the lesson for what it is as you could end up in a similar situation one day regardless of your level of judgmental perfection in all of your preflight skills.
Your attempt at insulting the Pilot further displays your bravery behind a keyboard.
Hello, does anyone know what the mechanical cause of this issue was/is? Thank You. Perry
This happened to me in a 182 that hadn’t been flown for a while. The throttle cable slipped out of the clamp that was supposed to be holding it in place, and it wouldn’t go below about 60 – 70% power.
I am a little confused. A PA 28 is a Cherokee with a fixed pitch prop and fixed gear. Perhaps we can get a clarification as to the aircraft type?
He said a PA 28, which covers a few different Piper models, and also that it was a complex so most likely an Arrow.
Sure is an inconvenience when someone lands gear up, or over shoots and slides off the end of the runway, or has a flat tire when landing. In this situation the pilot had power to safely return to the airport and land power off. If he missed a taxi way it wouldn’t have taken 10 minutes to have him towed off the runway. So what did the pilot do when he landed with all that power? Did he brake heavily or shut the engine down on the runway? Regardless, he did it safely, which is all the matters.
He/she said he pulled the mixture when they were 50 ft above the runway and glided to the landing. In other word, they shut the engine down shortly before landing.
Great job brainstorming a work around under stress and landing successfully! Just curious, since the throttle was acting up during runup, shouldn’t that have been a good time to taxi back and get it checked out?
Absolutely, without a doubt, no reason for a well-trained pilot to panic in this situation. Shut it down, do a power off approach (which we always practice…) and plunk it on the runway at spot that’s in convenient coasting distance to the nearest taxiway. No need to say the “E-word” on the radio and get everyone excited…
OK.
We had a similar episode at our towered “ZZZ” airport: Guy‘s O-320 started barking loudly @ 5 miles out; he didn’t tell the tower he had issues. He was told to enter a “2-mile right base”, which he did.
Fortunately, he stayed a bit high, so when he flamed out on a 1/2 mile final, he still made it to the runway.
Unfortunately, he stopped well short of the nearest taxiway. Because he hadn’t declared an Emergency (he thought it was no big deal), there he sat, with no one to help push him off the runway.
The bad news: There were @ 6 other planes in the VFR pattern that were all hoping to land there in the near future.
At this airport, there‘s a good chance that half of them were students.
That’s in addition to the other 4 or 5 (including me) that were hanging around outside the periphery of our Class D airspace, waiting for a break in the radio chatter to make our request. I have no doubt there was at least one plane somewhere on one of the IAPs about to be handed off to tower as well.
Now the tower, approach control, and pilots, have to deal with a closed runway and saturated traffic pattern.
Since no one had heard any clues from the pilot that he may have issues…it got pretty “busy”.
So, absolutely fly your plane, but maybe instead of worrying about whether you are really “technically“ an emergency or not, think about the rest of us that now might have to adjust our plans because we’ve just been ambushed.
Had a similar situation, after arriving over my landing airfield I used the mag switch to blip the engine to slow the rpm as the WWI pilots had to do all the time in their rotary engines, worked like a charm.
It sounds like the pilot managed the situation under the circumstances leading to a successful outcome. Would have been nice to know what failed. Don’t see it was necessary to declare an emergency. The engine was running at cruise power setting. One should be well trained and comfortable making power off approaches. If not, then I would strongly suggest they get with an instructor and get comfortable making power off approaches. Yes, one con use the mixture, go to one mag, and pull the carb heat to reduce rpms but one can also enter the pattern at cruise power then shut the engine down on downwind – slow down, lower the gear, and make a normal approach and landing. This scenario can easily be practiced. No real need to get too excited.
I used to practice power off landings with my Piper Tripacer in the 70’s and considered my approaches a failure if I couldn’t land on the numbers. I became totally comfortable with engine out situations should they arise.
Of course, this practice was at a small midwestern airport with no traffic to speak of.
I think I would have tried shutting off one or both magnetos intermittently to temporarily reduce power. Quickly turning on the key would have restored power for as long as needed and I think would be preferable to closing the mixture. I would be interested to hear what others think of this tactic.
Either way, he handled the emergency well and I am not trying to be critical of the pilot.
Well done! Excellent job keeping a cool head and sorting stuff out….
I think I may have broken the code (?) on this “requested priority handling” issue in these ASRS narratives.
I went back and looked at a few reports where common sense would have clearly dictated declaring an “Emergency” instead…and in each case…the ASRS forms showed “[requested priority handling]”, in brackets.
Why would “it” replace the word “emergency” with “[requested priority handling]”? I have no idea…
Operation on a single magneto would also serve to (slightly) reduce engine power output.
Sounds like a problem with the throttle linkage. What was described sounded to me to be a problem with the idle stop. But once in the air and not being able to reduce “map”, this sounds more like a throttle linkage problem.
Good diagnostics and good thinking about how to get the gear down and flaps so as to not to exceed the “extended” speed of either.
Lastly, I would have used the “E” word or at least PAN PAN, and tell Tower that you have to pull mixture to kill the engine. You will be committed to that landing.
As my main instructor said to me years ago, a PPL is a license to learn.
He handled it well.
One thing to keep in mind is that the mixture control can be used for power control much like the throttle. He used it to shut the engine down (appropriately) but it can also be used to reduce power in a controlled manner by leaning. It is touchier than the throttle but is a powerful tool in this situation.
I guess the moral to these stories is to stay away from zzz1&2🤷🏼♂️
I would certainly like to have read what the issue turned out to be.
As would I.