Bang. Bang-bang-bang.

 

  I liked Wednesday's. Wednesdays were crew-change days. We had a contract to move oil field workers from our Small Northern Alberta town over to another small northern town, that was rife with oil field projects.  There was so much demand for workers in Fort Macmurray that most of the major, and even some not so major, companies, had to entice workers into working there by flying them in and out. In addition to the demand for workers there simply wasn’t the infrastructure to house and feed this influx of workers. Most of the projects had a construction timeline where they would bring in hundreds or thousands of workers for a couple years and then once operational, they only needed a fraction of those workers. It’s one thing when it’s one company doing this, but there were dozens. 

  The Northern Alberta Oil Sands had been around as a developing resource for decades. Several major extraction facilities had been in place since the 60s. Technology advancement in the area of extracting oil from sand, the continued rise in the price of oil, and some geopolitical forces had made Fort Macmurray a bustling hive of oil field boom activity. Again. And again.  One thing I always found interesting was reading that the Alberta Oil Sands deposit is/was and are, one of the last major, publicly available oil deposits in the world. Most other deposits of anything close in size have long since been nationalized by the host country or otherwise made inaccessible to foreign investment. Not so in Fort MacMoney. The Canadian Government has been trying to find players willing to make the massive dollar investments in extraction projects that they’ve pretty much dangled ownership of a Canadian resource to anyone with the funds to buy in. I can see why, too, without foreign investors, Canada has had a tough time convincing the tax paying public to invest in something like these deposits, particularly in recent years with concerns over the environmental implications of putting all our tax eggs in as large and unsteady basket as fossil fuels.

  I’m rambling a bit, so I’ll try and get back to course here. On Wednesday's, the charter airline that I worked for had a contract to move the workers that lived in our little town, over to Fort Macmurray to work their two-week shift, and fly the guys home who were getting off shift. The Oil Field company housed, fed and transported the guys to and from the job site from all over Alberta and other parts of Canada as well. There were guys who lived out East and flew into Calgary, to be flown up on a charter flight every week from Calgary. Other flights came in from Edmonton, and our, much smaller flight, for the guys who chose to live in our little town.

  The Wednesday charter was well liked by most of the pilots, for a couple reasons. It was an early start, but it was an early finish too as a result. It was predictable, unlike most of our ad-hoc and on-call business, the charter and Medevac side. You showed up at 5AM to get the plane ready for the outbound flight and you were back and done by 3 PM if memory serves. The day before you were pulled off the Medevac schedule fairly early, as they couldn’t risk you getting called out on a medevac trip that ran late and cut into your pre-duty rest period for the Wednesday scheduled charter.  

  I enjoyed it as well as it was easy and predictable. There wasn’t any pressure to get it flight planned, fueled and ready in the rushed, but not rushed, timeline of a Medevac call-out. The trip was the same, the only thing changed was the passenger count, anywhere from 2 to 9 guys. It departed from the terminal, so you would have a ramper or two to help you load dudes and bags. The office and maintenance staff were around as well. Unlike the Medevac calls where you were opening a cold and empty hangar, by yourself in the middle of the night, this one felt like you had all kinds of help.

  The run was helpful for the company as well, apart from the revenue. Because it was a private charter and not being pad for by the Government Health Authority, the rules were a little different as well. The Government as part of the contract process for awarding Medevac contracts, had long since mandated minimum experience levels or the flight crews. In years gone by, this was a non-issue, competition for pilots heavily favored the employer and they could simply limit their hiring to more experienced crews, because, frankly, they could. The resumes piles were tall, stacked with guys with tons of hours and experience. The Low Time Pilot could simply keep looking, a Medevac job was not going to be an option till they had several thousand hours of flight time. Times had changed though, the hiring pools were a lot skinnier and we’d hire guys with fresh licenses and few hours of experience in their log books. This was a problem however, as the Government would not allow a First Officer with less than 500 hours to partake in their revenue trips, it was a contractual requirement. Charter trips like this one were perfect for throwing the new-hire FO’s on, to help them build towards their 500 hours they needed to get included on the Medevac roster and be of more utility to the company.

  I was a fairly junior Captain on this particular trip, I’d only had the left seat upgrade for a couple months. I was paired up with Michael, formerly our dispatcher, who had a bare commercial pilots license and had taken the dispatch job as a way to work up to a flying position, which he had only gotten the nod for a couple weeks ago. He’s been with the company for over a year though and had done a stellar job in dispatch, so was rewarded with the upgrade to First Officer and a flying position. I was actually worried for him, that he did TOO good a job in dispatch and risked being un-promoteable with the difficulty they were going to have in replacing him with someone who worked as hard or as diligently as he did.

  I showed up at 5, with coffees for Michael and myself. I was tasked with stopping at the Tim Hortons on the way in and picking up the “ catering “ for the trip, a half dozen donuts and a half dozen muffins, for the passengers to munch on for the one hour flight to Ft Macmurray.  The charter trip was actually for a broker, who worked for the oil field company in arranging all of the flights, we happened to win the contract for this little piece of a much bigger pie. The donuts and muffins were their requirement.

  Michael had the plane out, tidied up and was manning the check in counter. We would get a manifest the night before as to how many guys were expected on the flight. As such, my flight planning had actually been done the night before, required fuel load calculated based on how much weight I had left to play with after the passenger count and baggage estimate. Therefore the plane had also been fueled the night before. Along with my flight planning having been done already, there really was little to do other than get updated weather, winds and check the NOTAMS, plug the numbers into the computer to spit out an Operational Flight Plan. Hang out at the check in counter while Michael welcomed our passengers, checked their name off the list, help stack their bags on the cart and await our departure time at 6. 

  Around 540, we’d call it closed. If anyone hadn’t showed up, it was technically too late. Although, if they came huffing into the terminal at any time prior to us actually taxiing away, we’d likely take them. Even then, more than once we’d been radioed to taxi back, shut one engine down and board a late arriving passenger.

  Michael was great, as a newly minted FO in his first flying job, he was eager, enthusiastic and on the ball. He hadn’t seen enough of commercial aviation to have as much perspective on things. From his point of view, this was the big leagues. I know when I was in his shoes, and frankly, it hadn’t been that long ago at that point, everything was amazing. The captains never failed to impress me with their knowledge and competence, making me look forward to that day myself. Looking back though, I really didn’t have all that much more experience than he did. On top of the normal enthusiasm and diligence though, he was, and is, just a switched on guy.

  The guys in the back were oilfield technical workers. A variety of trades, plumbers, electricians, pipefitters, engineers of varying skill level. To us though, they were all “ Rig Pigs “, maybe not to their face, but most definitely to anyone else. They came by the moniker honestly though. The oilfield trades attracted a certain type and the things that they had to endure as part of that job, tended to weed out a few demographics. A fairly rough crowd was all that was left that would put up with living in trailer camps for two weeks, away from family and friends, and working outside in some pretty miserable Northern Alberta conditions. Some of the Rig Pigs that lived down south in the bigger cities were a lot worse though. Our guys were actually pretty decent dudes.

  It was a point of pride to estimate the time it would take to load the last of the bags, get the guys in and settled, safety brief done, pre-start checklist and cockpit setup completed, engines started and brakes released at exactly 6:00 AM, our scheduled departure time. Working for a charter broker as well, they were, in my opinion, unnecessarily anal about the times. If we routinely released brakes at 603, there would be a phone call from the broker to the chief pilot, questioning our ability to satisfy their needs as a vendor. When we could routinely have winds in our favor, or working against us, that changed our arrival times by plus or minus ten minutes, those three minutes were irrelevant in my opinion, but what I do I know, I’m only the pilot.

  At 605 we lift off the runway. Positive rate, gear up. Four hundred feet it was flaps up, climb power, after takeoff checks. By 0615 we were cruising along at our cruising altitude of somewhere between 19 and 25 thousand feet, depending on where my flight planning juju had determined the most favourable winds and wether would be found for the one hour flight. It was roughly 200nm from our town over to Fort Macmurray.

  I find it interesting that if you took a map of Northern Alberta and drew our flight planned route onto it, almost exactly at the halfway point you would find yourself in a semi significant point. At that point, you were likely going to be in the most remote area of the province. In terms of distance between towns of any size and highways or roads, there is a spot that we were very near, that is farther from any of that than any other place in the province.

  So, naturally, that’s when the engine on the left side of the airplane decided to fail, catastrophically and with great fanfare.

 BANG. bang-bang-bang.

  You could feel the noise, the first bang very loud, and a series of smaller bangs followed. I looked over my left shoulder at the engine that sits just outside my window. There was a 5 foot long blue torch of flame coming out of the exhaust stack. It was just like the torch you would see off the end of a household propane torch, or the afterburner of Tom Cruise’s F14. Blue, precise and steady. No ragged orange bonfire or black smoke, just a nice neat blue blowtorch coming from the exhaust stack. For those unaware, the King Air 200 does not possess afterburners, and the torch was not supposed to be there. Neither were the little red/orange specks, or “ meteorites “ that randomly came out as well, disturbing the perfect blue torch and randomly shooting off over the back of the wing.

  I turned to Michael and said, “ Let’s shut that down, engine shutdown drill please “. I think that’s what I said, it’s been a few years. Michael, having just finished his initial type training and very first PPC several days before this flight, executed the calls and actions perfectly. Likely better than most would, the experience of having trained for this so fresh. Left side power lever, confirm? Confirmed. IDLE. Left side Prop lever, confirm? Confirmed. FEATHER. Left side condition lever confirm? Confirmed. CUTOFF.

  Next up I called for the checklist. I must have not called for it properly, which would be by the title it appears in the QRH, or Quick Reference Handbook. Michael queried me as to which checklist, suggesting Engine Fire in Flight. I chuckled and said no, the fire is in the exhaust, that’s where its supposed to be, lets do the engine failure in flight checklist. I must have said “ alright, checklist “ or something, for him to ask which one.  The flames had gone out with us taking away the fuel and the propeller had stopper spinning, with us moving the prop lever to the feathered position. Michael grabbed the QRH and read out the remaining engine clean-up items, turning the generator off, turning off the bleed air switch, and confirming we’d done all the necessary steps from the Engine Shutdown Drill, or memory item, portion of the checklist. I’d actually missed the step of shutting off the fuel firewall shut-off valve, so we caught it in the checklist.

  I can’t remember if I had left the autofeather system running at the time. The system is designed to detect  an engine failure and automatically, with no input from the pilot, move the offending engines propeller to the feathered position. Feathered simply means that the prop blades are turned/rotated so that they face edge-on to the wind, instead of paddle-on to the wind, if you will. This stops the wind from turning the propeller and showing an edge-on profile to the wind. This cuts down o the drag the propeller creates as it is no longer providing power. In some cases, Like right after takeoff, or at high weight, low airspeed conditions, the drag created by a windmilling propeller might be the difference between limping a steady climb or being unable to climb and being forced down…or worse. It’s one of the key differences between flying a propeller driven aircraft and a jet, and is one of the few things that might need to be done expeditiously…or else….

    Back to the autofeather, a lot of people and a lot of companies, mandated that the system be turned off at some point after takeoff. Usually when you’ve got enough altitude or airspeeed, like in cruise, that the feathering of the prop isn’t so time critical anymore.  You let the auto system help you on takeoff when seconds count, you do it manually yourself later on in flight, when you have lots of time. Knowing the system, I actually liked to just leave it on. There are no moving parts being worn by leaving it on and I felt like turning it off and on every flight, you were only increasing wear on the switch. At the time too, that company didn’t mandate it being turned off, so I rebelled in my ability to show off my knowledge of the system and my ability to make “ command decisions “ and usually opted to leave it on…and tell anyone my reasons when they invariably asked why I was leaving it on.. I had since fallen in line with turning it off, as it was mandated to be done so in a later update of the SOP’s. The reasoning for the change, I think, was that it gave you a “ clean board “. The annunciator panel would have two green lights that indicated the Autofeather system was armed. If you turned it off, the board would be clean. The thinking being that if you were accustomed to seeing lights there, you might grow accustomed to ignoring them or be subject to confirmation bias as you expected to see lights on. But they might be different lights, on a panel that was your first clue that something might be amiss.

  I was a new captain ok, leave me alone. Anyways, because our engine failure happened in cruise, in the only airplane on the fleet that had autopilot, I suspect that I don’t remember if it was left on or not as there was little noticeable effect when we “ feathered “ the prop and shut the engine down. Either I didn’t notice the adverse yaw from the failed engine due to the autopilot compensating for it, or wether it feathered automatically due to my leaving autofeather on, or wether I simply gave it the corresponding amount of rudder input to compensate and don’t remember doing it, I’m not sure. Some parts of flying are automatic, like turning off your headlights in a car, or closing door when you leave the house. You think back later and can’t remember doing it or not doing it, because it’s such a rote action.

  Checklist complete, it was time to tell ATC. I was Pilot Flying, so Michael was Pilot Not-Flying the guy on the Radios. Most companies use Pilot Flying and Pilot Monitoring now, PF and PM, but at that time and that company it was PF and PNF.  I looked at the GPS and it said 98 miles to go to get to Destination, 102 Miles to go to get back to where we started, and the closest airport with any decent services was Slave Lake, 79 Miles away. I figured we weren’t really in any dire need of getting it on the ground in a hurry, and landing anywhere other than back at home base, caused a lot of new problems for everyone else. One thing was certain, when we landed that plane, it wouldn’t be going flying again anytime soon. Anywhere other than home base and the maintenance guys would be loading replacement tools and engine in a truck(s) and doing an engine change on a cold winter ramp somewhere and we’d be stuck driving for hours to get home, our passengers facing similar logistical issues to get home or to work. I decided we could go back home, it was a choice I felt I could defend, other than simply wanting to avoid a bunch of work. 

  “ Mayday, mayday, mayday”,  He keyed up his mic and said, “ this is Northflight102, declaring an emegency, engine failure, wed like to return to HomeTown.”. The controller cleared us for a 180 turn back to whence we came, and got a few more details from Michael, souls on board, fuel remaining, whether we needed any additional assistance. “ Seven Souls, 1500 pounds of fuel, no additional assistance required. “. I had turned off the autopilot when we had ran the shutdown checklist, so I made a gentle turn back, to the right, to avoid turning into the dead engine, and get us established on a GPS direct track back home. 

  “ Northflight102, would you like a lower altitude? “ they queried next. Naw, I thought, we’re doing fine here, as I glanced down a the cabin pressurization instruments. Doh. We weren’t doing fine, the bleed air coming off the sole remaining engine was now responsible for providing all of the pressurization air to keep our cabin air breatheable up here at 22,000 feet, and it wasn’t keeping up. In theory, one engine should be able to provide all the pressurization you need. This plane however, had come off the factory line several decades ago and it now had all kinds of things ham stringing that ability. Little holes and leaky seals that allowed that air to escape, enough that our one plant couldn’t pump enough air into the cabin and keep it there, to keep it to a “ cabin altitude “ of less than ten thousand feet. I could see on the cabin rate of climb ( or rate of leak ) gauges that we were climbing around 800 feet a minute, it should have reads zero.” Oh, uh, yeah, tell him we’ll take a descent down to 14,000 feet and we will seee if we can hold the cabin there “. I think if he hadn’t said anything, I likely would not have noticed till the Airplane warned us with a “ Cabin Alt High “ warning once the cabin had climbed up over 10,000 feet. 

  Down we went in a slow descent towards 14,000 feet and it was time to talk to the passengers. Since I was flying the plane, I elected to delegate Michael to jump in the back and tell the guys what had happened, that everything was fine and that we’d be back home in Northtown in a little under 45 minutes. For my part I turned and nodded to the guys in the back, hoping to convey that this was no big deal and we were all safe, calm and casual up front. Michael came back in a minute or two and said he’d let them know, that they seemed fine. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, other than I had fulfilled my responsibility to keep them informed, I could check that box and move on to the next item in the list of things we needed to do.

  Up next was talking to the company to let them know what had happened and that we were coming back. I seem to remember talking to the dispatcher on the company frequency myself, although it technically would have been Andrew’s role on the radio as PNF. The chief pilot came on after I had relayed in broad terms to the dispatcher what had happened and what our plan was. He seemed overly calm, almost disinterested, and to his credit, I’m fairly certain that was intentional and he was just trying to help keep everyone calm. He let us know he’s meet us on landing with the tug, so that we could shut down and he’d pull us on to the ramp. The Kingair is not easy to steer on the ground with a bunch of power on one side and nothing on the other. The nose gear turns, but it was usually a combination of differential power and differential braking that you’d use to taxi around. Attempting a turn against a running engine with a dead one, wasn’t easy and you could risk an embarrassing end to a great single engine landing but running off the side of the runway or taxiway at low speed.

  The slog back home was slow on one engine, but eventually we got in range of the control tower at our home field and called them up on the radio.

  They said something about fire trucks and emergency equipment would be standing by, to which I casually told him that I didn’t think we’d need them. In hindsight, that was a dumb idea, to try and call them off but he told me it wasn’t my choice anyways, that once we declared the emergency we were getting the trucks wether we requested them or not. Cooler heads had prevailed.

  Michael and I went over the single engine approach checklist in advance and rehearsed what we would do if we had to go around, and that I would plan on a long landing, with no reverse thrust off our now-uneven reverse thrust capability with one engine. It was a perfectly clear day, with light winds and we planned on a long, straight in final to our landing runway, with little maneuvering required. It really didn’t get much better than this. Even the fact that the engine had failed at altitude, in cruise, was about the best case you could hope for.

  I could see the fire trucks, police cars and ambulances, all lined up just outside the airport gates as we approached. Lights flashing away. It must have caused a bit of a spectacle in town, seeing all that equipment racing to the airport at the same time. It’s a small town, I’m sure tongues were wagging.

  The approach itself was a non event really. Honestly, everything after the first 3 or 4 seconds of startle when it calved on us, were pretty calm and uneventful. You train this scenario over and over again, so the actions are well rehearsed and other than the airplane being a bit slower than normal, there wasnt much for drama. No flaming wing, no trailing smoke, no violent bucking or shaking.

  We landed and rolled long, using the brakes to slow us down and then coasting once stopping was assured. I rolled it to the end of the runway where the turnaround bay was, to give the maximum amount of room to turn around and taxi back down the runway to the taxiway exit that leads off to the apron. I had seen the company tug sitting on the taxiway while we landed, so intended on meeting him there and shutting down for the tow-in. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had actually intended on coming out onto the runway and towing us in from where landed and shut down. I figured I could make the first two turns on one engine. The turnaround at the end would be “ towards “ the dead engine, so the good one could help pull us around and the turnoff onto the taxiway was also a left hand turn, so I rightfully assumed that those two turns would be no problem and we could be towed from there, to avoid any right hand turns. In any event, he saw us turn around and start the taxi back towards him, so they stayed put and we turned off the runway and shut down on the taxiway, facing the tug, so he could hook up and pull us in.

  Once we got pulled up to the terminal, I turned around to talk to the guys before they got off. That’s when I realized that they were a lot more shook up than I realized. I had heard them clapping after we landed, but didn’t put too much thought into it, and honestly, I had other things on my mind. However, one of my biggest takeaways from the whole experience was that I had kind of failed to account for what it felt like to the passengers.. While we were plodding back, slowly, to base, they were composing texts to loved ones and were a lot more anxious about things than I realized. 

  In hindsight, I would have delegated the flying to Michael and gone back there to talk to them myself next time. Not that Michael did anything wrong, but I feel like having the “ captain “ come back and reassure them would have been appropriate, and maybe made them feel a bit better.

  While Michael got the passengers deplaned, I got the cockpit in order and started on the logbook. We were still hooked up to the tug and they motioned that they’d tow us back to the hangar and I might as well sit tight. 

  Pulling onto our ramp and into the waiting hangar, the maintenance guys came out to look at the plane. I remember one of them giving the prop a tug on the now-defunct left engine, and it was frozen tight. Whether mechanically, or due to sitting motionless in the -40 degree air for 45 minutes while we droned back home, I don’t know. Seeing the pictures of the internal damage to the engine later on, I could easily imagine that it was mechanically seized in place. I can only speculate wether or not we would have retained the ability to feather the prop for much longer if the damage had continued, with debris and metal in the oil from the engoine tearing itself apart from the inside out. A prop that wont feather is not a death sentence, neccasssarily, but it would have definitely escalated the seriousness of our situation. Most definitely it would have made our ability to “ go around “ had anything unexpected happen during the landing, very much in doubt.

  After the plane was handed off to the mechanics, Michael and I headed inside to start work on the paperwork. The operations manager was in the flight planning room already and she had most of the incident report filled out already. We both had to provide a brief narrative while it was still fresh in our heads and this was likely a good idea, even now I find myself questioning the sequence of events or details. Even after telling this story a million times. My current job has me flying with a new person all the time, so the rehashing and retelling of favourite stories gets them polished and embellishments or exaggerations get told so many times they slide into the truths place without even realizing it.

  At one point, while we were working on the incident report, I was asked, “ what engine indications did you see before you decided to shut the engine down “. I’m pretty sure I actually laughed when they asked me that. I had small explosions off my shoulder, a giant blow torch coming out of the engine that shouldn’t be there and little red hot pieces of metal blowing out into the slipstream. I admitted that I had no idea, that was the last thing on my mind as to what the Interstage Turbine Temperature was or the Power Turbine’s RPM.

  The whole experience was actually pretty calm, as really, it wasn’t ever really a dangerous or exhilarating event. There was a moment though, after the paperwork was all done, and I was sitting in the flight planning room with the ops manager, that stuck out to me. At one point she reached over and shut the door, “ how are you doing? “ she asked, “ fine, yeah, all good “ I replied, almost automatically. “ No. “ she said, giving me a serious look, “ really, how are you doing? “ . It caught me off guard and there was a brief moment that I felt a lump in my throat and was a little taken aback at my reaction. There was an element of stress that you bury away and make sure the passengers don’t see, that your copilot doesn’t see, and it kind of hit me all at once when she said that. 

  A few months later, I was informed that Pratt and Whitney had concluded their investigation into the engine. I was told that the had determined that since we initiated the engine shutdown procedure while the turbine was still spinning, that they were classifying it as a “ Precautionary Shutdown “ instead of an Engine Failure. A precautionary shutdown is when you decide to turn off an otherwise functional engine, in order to keep it from progressing into a failure, or because you see an engine indication, like oil temperature or pressure, that you suspect might lead to engine damage if you let it keep running. It was impressive with the level of internal damage that the engine had sustained, that we never really did feel any vibration or anything, other than the initial bangs. Its most definitely a testament to Pratt engineering that even after that level of damage, that it was still producing some amount of power and still spinning, at the moment we turned off the fuel and shut it town. That being said…When I hear them advertising these very impressive Mean Time Between Failure statistics in order to sell engines, I keep it in the back of my head that they classified an engine spitting out pieces of its internal structure in an unplanned fashion, a “ Precautionary Shutdown “. Mentally, I divide their number in half. Its still a very respectable number, but….

  Anyhow, I’ve only ever met a small handful of people that have experienced an engine failure in a Pratt and Whitney Turbine engine. Maybe I’m not hanging out with enough old guys, but the truth is, its a very small club.

  I have cell phone video, that one of the passengers actually filmed from the back of the view up the aisle and through thee cockpit window, showing our landing. It’s of potato-quality and honestly, there’s not much to see in the video, it looks like pretty much every landing shot from the back of a King Air. The only clue is he briefly pans past the left wing and you can see the stopped propeller. You can also see the lights of the fire trucks and ambulances briefly as we whizz by. I tried to post it, but it wont take.

  We ended up making the news, in a couple of online articles of the local CBC affiliate. With what you can imagine is the right mix of drama and media embellishment of the hero pilots and their stricken plane.

  Anyways, I’m going through my camera roll and will be working on a couple more posts. I’m finding that if I work on the blog regularly, in small chunks, it feels sustainable. I chuckle when I see on my sidebar the list of blogs that I used to follow when I kept this up regularly. Almost all of them show a last-post date of 8 to 10 years ago. So I don’t feel so bad. I don’t presume to have any regular readers, but I know I have a couple family members that used to follow and this might pop up in their notifications as to a New Post being available.  I’m considering alernating betweeen time-travelling stories of previous adventures now that I can freely post, with former employers and maybe doing a series of Trip Reports for my current employers, that have more to do with travelling the world than with anything related to the plane I am flying now, as its even more off-limits than previous companies were.

  If you’re still along for the ride, I welcome the feedback and hope you have been amused!