transcript

Speaker 1:
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[01:14] That's avstarfuelsystems.com.

Speaker 3:
[01:20] It was just a couple of minutes after leveling off that the first indication that something was happening was a smell in the cockpit. It was that sweet, hot oil smell.

Speaker 4:
[01:32] Hello and welcome to another edition of There I Was, a podcast where we put you in the cockpit with pilots in demanding situations and we learn how they flew out of them. For AOPA and the Air Safety Institute, I'm David O'Leary. Today we'll meet Lennon Carlson. Lennon is a full-time flight instructor based in Kansas City. He's been flying for 11 years. He's here to share the story of an engine out that occurred at night, flying home after celebrating the 4th of July weekend. Lennon, welcome to There I Was.

Speaker 3:
[02:03] I appreciate it, sir. Thank you.

Speaker 4:
[02:04] I understand you've been at this for a little while. You took your first flight in high school. You got introduced to aviation at kind of a young age.

Speaker 3:
[02:11] Absolutely. So I was about 10 years old and my folks rounded up, myself and the rest of my siblings, took us to an aviation museum here locally. And there it was. I just fell in love with it and decided to do that for really the rest of my life. Just fell head over heels for aviation.

Speaker 4:
[02:29] Tell us about the flight instruction that you do. Is that new students? Are you doing instrument check rides? Are you kind of run the gamut? What's the airport like? What's the flight school like? And what's your week like?

Speaker 3:
[02:42] I do a lot of instruction. I'm not tied to the flight school, thankfully. So I fly with a lot of owners. I'll do rusty pilot stuff. I work, you know, Bonanzos, 182s, that sort of thing, high performance, that complex stuff, as well as a lot of primary instruction as well. I've got, I just finished up with a student here. We're sending her to her instrument check ride tomorrow. Actually very excited for Ms. Brooke.

Speaker 4:
[03:06] Exciting stuff.

Speaker 3:
[03:07] I just, I love sharing aviation. I love making good pilots. Folks that I know are going to do me and my instructor is before me proud as we continue to grow the community.

Speaker 4:
[03:18] That's good stuff. We're going to hear about an engine failure at night in a single engine aircraft. It's always the question for single engine pilots like me is, how much night flying do you actually do? And I'll tell you personally, I'll come back at night, maybe at dusk, maybe a little after, but I seldom get up into the plane in the dark of night to go up. And I know many pilots who won't go single engine at night. Some have sort of the idea that the engine isn't more likely to fail at night than it is during the day. So I'm curious, since we're going to talk about an engine failure at night, do you have personal minimums on going up at night in a single engine aircraft?

Speaker 3:
[03:55] Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking for a nice clear night. I'm not going to get into any clouds, anything like that, just because we do have so many more things working against us. So much easier to get disoriented and really lose that situational awareness, which, at least early on, instrument, even night flying, is so hard to gain that situational awareness and keep it throughout the flying. So I look at it as an instructor, especially primary instructor, as a bit of a necessary evil. I've never loved it, but it comes with the territory. In this case, it was just a matter of logistics. I had to get Anna-Marie home so she could work the next day.

Speaker 4:
[04:38] Well, let's get into it. We're going to talk about a flight that happened over the 4th of July weekend in 2025, a night flight. In a plane, I think you said you were pretty familiar with. So set us up, what happened?

Speaker 3:
[04:49] I had borrowed a buddy of mine's Cardinal. It was a Cardinal RG, fantastic flying little airplane. I had 15 or so hours in it. So it's not the bog standard Skyhawk that I'm used to or the Warrior, but it wasn't a brand new airplane to me by any means.

Speaker 4:
[05:06] Yeah, it's got retractable gear and I believe it has no wing struts. It just really makes it stand out when it's on the ramp. It's a great looking airplane.

Speaker 3:
[05:14] Oh yeah, they look great. I always think that it's a Skyhawk that somebody took the struts off of and sat on. It's just got that sleek little kind of slung look to it, very neat airplane. So it had just undergone pretty good maintenance. It hadn't flown consistently for several years. It got a panel upgrade. It went through an annual, an extensive annual in February of this year. I had worked with the owner some, making sure that he was comfortable with the new avionics. It was one of those deals where he told me to bring it back with gas in it. So have at it.

Speaker 4:
[05:54] Yeah, enjoy yourself. Just bring it back full of fuel.

Speaker 3:
[05:57] Every time I talk to him, hey, can I take your cardinal out?

Speaker 4:
[06:01] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[06:01] Bring it back with gas and put the gear down.

Speaker 4:
[06:03] Nice.

Speaker 3:
[06:05] So, it was really a great deal there, especially for time building to be able to do that cheap on my own rather than sitting with a student. I could go enjoy aviation myself.

Speaker 4:
[06:18] Was the nature of the flight, it doesn't sound like it was with a student, it wasn't business, it was pleasure. You were enjoying yourself over the 4th of July weekend?

Speaker 3:
[06:25] We had flown down the morning of the 4th of July, had our dogs and everything loaded into the airplane to go celebrate for the day, work on some airplanes, clean up the hangers. We had just finished eating our pizza, shooting off fireworks, watching everything. We decided that we needed to get home, needed to get Anna Marie home so she could work the next day, my girlfriend. We loaded up into the airplane down there at Allen County, took off, everything was nominal.

Speaker 4:
[06:55] Why don't you give us the identifiers of where you're taking off from and where you're headed to? Because it was a short 45-minute-hour flight, something like that.

Speaker 3:
[07:02] Oh, yeah, it wasn't a long one. The identifier for the departure was Kilo 88, Allen County, and I was headed to the aircraft's home base at Kilo Oscar Julia Charlie, Johnson County Executive. So, roughly 60 nautical miles just off the top of my head, 45 minutes, if that.

Speaker 4:
[07:24] So, you're packed up, got the dogs, got a few suitcases, two of you, fueled up and off you go.

Speaker 3:
[07:30] Yeah. We headed down that morning. We decided to leave the dogs there. I was planning to actually fly back the next morning. So, we left the dogs, Anna-Marie and I just hopped in. We took off, headed north. It was an interesting thing. I'm really glad I made some of the decisions that I did. I was walking out to the airplane, getting ready to pre-flight, thinking, well, I could file an IFR flight plan, but if I do that, they're going to expect me to fly a straight line from airport to airport. I didn't really want to do that. I wanted to follow the highway.

Speaker 4:
[08:06] Just to have a plan B.

Speaker 3:
[08:08] Exactly. What roads are around, what airports are in the vicinity of that line, what can I do to keep myself in a good position in case the worst happens.

Speaker 4:
[08:20] What were conditions like? Was it a cloudy night? Was it a clear night? Did you have... To be clear, you're taking off at 1130 at night. It's dark out. There's no dusk. There's no residual daylight or anything like that. It's the dark night.

Speaker 3:
[08:33] It was dark. The conditions, there was a high layer, roughly 10,000 feet or so of clouds up there. So we... And they were covering the moon. So it was dark as could be. I remember taking off and thinking, wow, it's really black out here. So, but we were perfectly in the clear. I guess with the high clouds, it wasn't clear in a million, but as close to that as you could get, it was perfectly fine for our flight, for the altitudes we were going to. So we took off from Allen County, headed north, started following the highway. I did decide to get VFR flight following. I wanted to talk to somebody.

Speaker 4:
[09:12] Have somebody handy, yep.

Speaker 3:
[09:13] Exactly. So leveled off at 5,500 and it was just a couple of minutes after leveling off that the first indication that something was happening was a smell in the cockpit. It was that sweet, hot oil smell.

Speaker 4:
[09:28] Interesting.

Speaker 3:
[09:30] And that's what led me to take a look at the engine instruments. Went, hmm, that's kind of strange. Eyeballs went right to the JPI. This had a fantastic engine monitor in the airplane, in which case I watched the oil pressure dropping. The airplane had always had 65 pounds of oil pressure, just every day climb, descent. It didn't matter what was going on. And I saw it in the 40s and dropping rapidly. Watched it go all the way to zero.

Speaker 4:
[09:58] So we have a problem here. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[09:59] Exactly. That was the first indication that, okay, this motor is not long for the world. There's something, it's happening. And it's one of those things where I'm constantly in those emergency procedures as a flight instructor.

Speaker 4:
[10:13] Sure.

Speaker 3:
[10:14] And I'm the one causing the emergencies.

Speaker 4:
[10:16] Pulling the throttle or whatever you're doing to... Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[10:19] And in my mind, and in the way that we hear about these engine failures happening typically is maybe a slight reduction in power, the engine starts making a whole bunch of noise, there's a vibration. That's how these things typically come on. So when I'm training someone, I'll pull the throttle about halfway out, start beating on the glare shield. Boom, what up? Okay, she's telling you she's upset, and then a couple of seconds later, I'll pull the throttle the rest of the way. And once they're done with their confusion and decide to be a pilot again, they get it figured out. And in my mind, that always leads to some really good instruction, really good training as far as something is happening. Don't dwell too much on what exactly is happening.

Speaker 4:
[11:05] Fly the airplane.

Speaker 3:
[11:05] Exactly. It's that aviate, navigate, communicate, that hierarchy that is just so important. Doesn't matter what your silly instructor's doing next to you. Fly the airplane, which I always expected if I was going to have engine trouble, it would be that typical start out with a vibration and noise or anything like that, which was not the case here. That oil pressure just went all the way to zero. And that's when I knew, that was the beginning of the emergency in my mind, is watching that oil pressure leave the airplane.

Speaker 4:
[11:39] I'll add to that the sensory, just being aware of how the airplane feels and sounds and smells in this case. I mean, you had 15 hours in a plane, so you were familiar with it, but everybody who's been in a small general aviation aircraft knows that sweet fuel, oily smell, whatever it was that you were smelling, that's not right. We shouldn't be smelling that here. Maybe that's what heightened your awareness about these, let's check the gauges. Look, we've got an oil pressure problem and on we go.

Speaker 3:
[12:08] Exactly. Well, I'm so thankful for the instruction and the mentorship that I've had throughout the years. Being around the Warbird guys and all of that is what led to, hey, oil pressure is the health of the engine. That is almost the most important gauge in the airplane, so pay close attention to that and to watch that gauge that I've heard so much about over the years, start falling to zero, oh, okay, it's actually happening.

Speaker 4:
[12:34] And are you getting power out of the engine at this point? Is the engine still running normally in quotes?

Speaker 3:
[12:40] It was still running normally. I hadn't heard or felt anything weird with it at that point, but I was anticipating it at this point.

Speaker 4:
[12:49] Sure. And did you know the clock is ticking? You don't have much time. You don't have a whole lot of time here.

Speaker 3:
[12:54] I didn't know what was going on. Maybe the oil pump inside the engine had broken apart or I blew a hole in the block or something was happening, which leads to maybe I'm on fire. There's a whole host of things that might be happening, but I certainly want to be on the ground.

Speaker 4:
[13:12] Sure. So what happened next? You got a passenger with you. Oil pressure is heading down to zero. Plane is still flying, but you know you've got a problem here.

Speaker 3:
[13:23] I told her, hey, this is a real emergency. So thankfully, she stayed calm, I stayed calm. I had my cell phone in the Yoke Mount. I looked ahead. Along that route, we have Garnet, Miami County, a couple of airports that are options. I looked up, first thing I saw was Miami County, realized I can't glide to that. Oh, if I'm south of that, Garnet must be nearby, looked at it and realized that it was just to my left. In which case, I started the left bank, put the gear down and declared an emergency. I've been joking with everybody, I got to say the May Day word. Which that, it was strange to actually say it while keying the mic for the first time. In which case, ATC hopped on, let me know, they even told me, hey, you've got Garnet to your nine o'clock, about three miles. Gave me all the information, 2,600 feet of asphalt, frequency is 122.8, all of that. This point I had already loaded in the frequency into my COM2, so I had both radios going. I clicked to COM2 to try to activate the lights, which is interesting, the lights are always on at that airport. I didn't know that at the time. And I didn't have time, I wasn't going to pull up the sectional and go, oh, there's the L with the little star next to it. I didn't have time for those sorts of things. So initially it was a little eerie, because I'm looking down at this nice square of lights, not knowing if that's the runway or maybe that's Main Street.

Speaker 4:
[15:01] Turns out it likely was the runway, but you're looking for them to come on and they're already on.

Speaker 3:
[15:06] Exactly, so that was one little thing in my mind to go, oh, I sure hope that's the runway. I was expecting something to pop to life and nothing changed out there. I looked closer, saw the different colors down the runway and realized, okay, that is the runway. I'm not seeing the town.

Speaker 4:
[15:25] Is ATC at this point imagining they're trying to vector you in or to make sure that this is where the airport is? Whether you see it or not, it's less than three miles on your left.

Speaker 3:
[15:33] Well, at this point, actually, he was reading me, I believe, every notum that's ever been published. It was just this whole list of notums and obstruction light is out and this and that. And I'm trying to fly the airplane. No fault to the controller, he was doing what he was likely trained to do. It was not helpful at the time though. That would have made sense maybe if I was at 15,000 feet, not 5,500 feet and I had some time to glide.

Speaker 4:
[16:00] Yeah. Were you able to convey that to the controller in a respectful way to say, you know what, I'm flying the airplane now, not now kind of thing?

Speaker 3:
[16:11] In a way, after he stopped with that and I was on final for the runway and I knew that I was in an energy state to make the runway, I told him, I've got Garnet made or we're going to make it to the runway. He asked me if I could copy a phone number, which at the time I didn't appreciate very much, but at that point told him, no, I cannot copy a phone number. I'm trying to land the airplane. I did have my hands full at this point.

Speaker 4:
[16:43] Yeah, understandable. And unable is kind of a magic word with ATC. You can't do it. So, flying the airplane is your primary directive. So good for you for keeping your focus on that.

Speaker 3:
[16:54] Absolutely.

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Speaker 4:
[18:35] So tell us about the approach such as it is at this point. You're closing in, I think, when we last left, you were on the airport with your left, so you were set up for a left downwind. How'd the landing go?

Speaker 3:
[18:45] The landing was actually nice. And talking to several people, they go, when you're under a lot of stress, you'll have your best landings.

Speaker 2:
[18:52] Always, every time.

Speaker 3:
[18:54] It was the best landing I had had in that airplane yet. Just the smoothest touchdown. And I was starting to pat myself on the back at this point when I realized, hey, we might still be on fire. I better stop. So moved my feet both all the way up to the tops of the pedals, pushed as hard as I could. We skirted to a stop, in which case I said, evacuate. We had popped our doors and I had secured the engine on short final. There was nothing really left for us to do inside the airplane except to get out of it. We hopped out of the airplane. Of course, exiting to the rear, it's a big thing I mentioned to all of my students especially, go away from where there might be flames or a spinning propeller. To the rear of the airplane, then a walk around it, realized that everything was intact. Nothing at this point that I had known had fallen off the airplane. There was not a scratch on it, no fire. I didn't leave the master switch on. So all of the lights were on. The radios were still going. All of that when we exited the airplane. That was a bit of a conscious decision.

Speaker 4:
[19:57] Was that about seeing where you were, seeing the runway, seeing what was going on outside the aircraft?

Speaker 3:
[20:02] Exactly. Here in Kansas, we have a lot of coyotes that hang out at our airports. They can always find a snack. I didn't want to be the next snack.

Speaker 4:
[20:10] You didn't want to be the snack.

Speaker 3:
[20:12] Exactly. I didn't want to come face to face with the critter out here.

Speaker 4:
[20:17] So, let's go back up into the airplane. When you sort of transition from, we're having a lovely evening, we're going to be home in a half an hour, to smell something, oil pressures down, within really a matter of minutes, a short period of time it went from, we're having a lovely flight, to we're going to have to get this thing on the ground. Did you reach for a checklist right away?

Speaker 3:
[20:39] No. I realized that I was low enough to the ground that I didn't really have time for that. As well as, there wasn't a checklist in my mind at the time for loss of oil pressure. It tells you engine failure, it tells you engine fire, all of those sorts of things, but there's no checklist for an eminent engine failure, in which case I did my best to not mess with the throttle much. It was happy and running at that point. Interesting enough, after beginning the left turn, we had lost enough oil pressure that the propeller governor did let go. It lost its ability to govern the propeller. RPMs went sky high.

Speaker 4:
[21:25] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[21:26] I was flying 23 squared and about 140 miles an hour indicated, and all of the sudden the propeller went flat and spun up, and the RPMs I saw were just shy of 3,000 RPMs, so 28, 2900 RPM, which is well over red line for that engine anyway. I worry that had I not noticed that I was losing oil pressure, that would have been the first indication that there was a problem. I would have been maybe miles further along in the flight, maybe not in a position to make garnet.

Speaker 4:
[22:03] I love that you declared an emergency right off the bat, that there was no hesitation about that. We've said it many times on this podcast, when you declare an emergency, doors open, things happen for you. ATC swings into action to give you resources, to help you. So I know there's a reluctance to declare an emergency. How do you talk about that with your students? It's a big deal. As you said, you heard yourself key the mic and say the words on May Day, I'm declaring an emergency. How do you coach your students on that?

Speaker 3:
[22:34] The biggest thing that I can tell anybody is, it's much easier to explain why you did declare an emergency than why you didn't declare an emergency.

Speaker 4:
[22:46] That's a great point.

Speaker 3:
[22:49] If it comes out and it was an indication failure in the airplane, okay, well, you know.

Speaker 4:
[22:54] You did the right thing and got it on the ground.

Speaker 3:
[22:56] Exactly. Okay, all's well that ends well. We'll go ahead and close the file out on this and everybody gets to hang out another day. But had I not said anything to anybody, Kansas City Center would have watched an airplane disappear from their radar scope and it would have been a much bigger deal as far as legitimate search and rescue and all of that. So it's important to absolutely let ATC into the cockpit. Granted, at a distance, they don't need to know necessarily everything going on. Telling him that I lost oil pressure would not have led to the situation at all. But telling him that I'm having an engine failure absolutely lets him know what I need.

Speaker 4:
[23:41] I also want to ask you, you spoke a little bit about a little bit of diagnosis that was going on while you were in this situation. You're trying to get the plane around, you're picking out an airport and you're thinking about, what happened here? What caused this? And from the way you described it, that was to help assess the risk that maybe there's a fire here, maybe not. But let's think that through. As opposed to spending a lot of time or using a bandwidth, well, what the hell happened back there? When you really need to be focusing on getting the plane safely to the ground. Can you talk about that a little bit? Why it's important to the impulse to diagnose what's going on, I guess, is there, but not particularly helpful in getting you and your passengers down safely?

Speaker 3:
[24:22] Yeah, absolutely. Initially, it was oil pressure was leaving the airplane. OK, this is going to lead to something. I'm not entirely sure why it's lost oil pressure, but something has happened. I'm not hearing a clunk, so the engine is still doing something. It was still spinning the propeller spun all the way until I closed the, pulled the mixture to idle cutoff, hit the mags and the fuel valve in the floor. But really, it was that, am I on fire? Am I not on fire? Was the big thing at the time. The engine is failing me. What is this going to lead to in the future? Because if I'm getting ready to have it come off of the engine mounts, okay, I don't care about the airport. I just need to get on the ground before it shakes off.

Speaker 4:
[25:09] That's a different problem.

Speaker 3:
[25:10] Yeah. Exactly. And it really, I was trying to assess the situation and how big of a problem do I have.

Speaker 4:
[25:19] So Lennon, it sounds like it was a pretty short period of time from when this all began to when the event concluded. How long would you say from when you started to smell that sweet oil smell to, I got to get this thing on the ground to actually getting the plane on the ground?

Speaker 3:
[25:35] My assumption is that it was less than a minute. Going back and looking at where the track, you see a very steep decline on the airspeed and the altitude. I know that I was in a pretty aggressive slip just to kill off the energy, that altitude without gaining all the airspeed, just to get on the ground. Thankfully, that airport was right there.

Speaker 4:
[25:59] I'm looking at your flight track from downtown, I mean, it was right under you. I mean, how fortunate was that, that suddenly there's a problem. Look, there's an airport right next to us.

Speaker 3:
[26:10] That was a miracle, it feels like still. I get a little bit of imposter syndrome over the whole deal. Maybe I'm not supposed to be here because it was right there. It truly does feel like a miracle to have that airport right there. Had I been a little bit further along or not quite as far along when the issue happened, it would be a very different story as far as not making it to a runway. The actual approach, it was a power off 180, a really easy one because I had all the altitude in the world to make it happen. So for the commercial students out there, practicing those does help.

Speaker 4:
[26:48] Well the one thing I'd add to the miracle, your quote about it being a miracle that the airport was there, the airport was there, but you were aware that it was there. You declined file because you wanted to have your eyes open on what was going on below you and you wanted to sort of fly up the highway and that situational awareness of highway, and I imagine the airports, two of them that were going to be right along your flight path, was part of that planning.

Speaker 3:
[27:11] Absolutely. That's something that anyone can take away from it. Situational awareness does not start in the airplane. It starts on the ground thinking about your mission and your mission planning. Keeping those things in your back pocket, I always like to tell folks, do favors for your future self.

Speaker 4:
[27:28] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[27:28] And in this case, that played out really, really nicely to end up close to an airport there.

Speaker 4:
[27:34] I want to ask you, the renting, you know, borrowing, I should say, of an airplane. When you borrow an airplane, I imagine there are best practices. People do it all the time, but there's not a lot of formal discussion about, you know, we check in the insurance here, and am I covered on your insurance? Am I covered on my insurance? And nobody wants an incident or an accident to happen, but they do happen, and that's important to kind of cover and talk about before you get into the aircraft, whether you're borrowing or renting. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 3:
[28:04] Yeah, absolutely. Thankfully, I had the conversation with the owner of the aircraft prior to really any of the flying that I was doing without him in the airplane. And he added me to the policy. I was good to go. So, things haven't played out exactly yet. We're still kind of tensely waiting, yeah, for what exactly is going to happen.

Speaker 4:
[28:25] But pretty recent, sure.

Speaker 3:
[28:27] Signs are indicating that it will be a happy ending for all those involved, except for the lack of an airplane for upwards to a year, however long it takes to get an engine.

Speaker 4:
[28:38] And what happened to the oil? What happened to the oil and the oil pressure in the aircraft?

Speaker 3:
[28:42] Well, after decaling the airplane, we discovered that the oil drain plug was missing. We were trying to figure out where it went and there was no smoking gun. We decided to put a little bit of oil into the engine to... I guess the dipstick was reading zero, there was nothing on the dipstick anymore. Decided to pour a quart in and it came out right out of a hole...

Speaker 4:
[29:08] Right out of the ground....

Speaker 3:
[29:09] where there should be a plug.

Speaker 4:
[29:10] Not complicated.

Speaker 3:
[29:12] Exactly. I've been joking with everyone. I got the first half of a quick turn oil change at 5,500 feet.

Speaker 4:
[29:20] So, they'll work on discovering where the plug ended up and why it ended up. And as you noted, the plane was in a pretty extensive annual. It was in service shortly before you took it up.

Speaker 3:
[29:30] A handful of months. We had put between all of us who had flown it, probably 35 or so hours on it since the annual. Okay, so it had been a while. Yeah, it didn't make it to an oil change or... It certainly hadn't been run hard, but it had a little bit of flying on it. Enough to where you'd trust it. You figure that it's going to happen in the first handful of hours out of maintenance is when you're going to find something. I certainly was at a point where I trusted the airplane.

Speaker 4:
[29:59] Lennon, you talked about the emotions that took over a little bit after you had landed. When it was time to get the airplane on the ground, it's all business, you went to work. This is something that we've heard before on this podcast and elsewhere in difficult situations, pilots fly to the landing, then get out of the plane and then what just happened kind of takes over a little bit. Can you speak about that just a little bit? What was your experience?

Speaker 3:
[30:25] None of... I never felt scared in the airplane. Training took over. All of my mentors, flight instructors in the past, they were right there with me. Made the landing, took a second to go, what's going on? Made the calls to ATC. The airport manager was on his way out, come help us out and I'd say maybe five minutes after being on the ground, it just hit me like a freight train. I broke down for maybe 30 seconds or so, realizing that Anna Marie, love of my life, was right there with me. What could have happened to her and everything. It hit me really hard for about 30 seconds and I realized it wasn't quite done. We still had an airplane sitting on the runway and it was time to go back to work. For a couple of days, it hung over me like a black cloud and I was uncomfortable with the idea of getting back into an airplane. But it being my full-time job, I don't really have an option. The day before I had my next flight lesson, I rented an airplane here at the flight school, went and flew around for about 20 minutes, realized, okay, I'm all right.

Speaker 4:
[31:37] I'm good to go.

Speaker 3:
[31:38] I'm good to go. It was personally, I had to get that out of my system, especially charging someone else to go up. And I didn't want to be an emotional wreck or to have any sort of adverse reaction to getting back into an airplane when I've got a student relying on me to be there.

Speaker 4:
[31:58] Yeah. Well, and on the contrary, I guess I'd submit that you're a better pilot, you're a better instructor, having this experience to be able to talk to your students about it going forward.

Speaker 3:
[32:10] Absolutely. And that's the things that I've been trying to preach to everyone. If I can break it down into just a handful of things, it's that situational awareness that started in the pre-flight planning, which for me at that point was not overly complicated. It doesn't have to be overly complicated. It was a matter of looking at my cell phone, the route, realizing I've got a couple of airports here, I've got a highway that runs the entire way up. Okay, cool. I've got those things in my back pocket, the back of my mind, which to do that takes less time than the time I just took to explain it, which is just a great thing for folks to realize and to know, as well as understanding that that oil pressure is likely the most important gauge in the airplane. That will absolutely tell you what's going on with the noisemaker.

Speaker 4:
[33:01] With the noisemaker, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[33:03] Absolutely. With my students, I never want to say engine failure. The noise just stopped. It got real quiet. But thankfully, it never did get all the way quiet in that instance.

Speaker 4:
[33:14] Well, congratulations on getting the plane and your passenger and the dogs down safely and for having an experience that again, you're able to share with your students going forward so they can learn from it as we have today. We appreciate you being on the podcast, Lennon.

Speaker 3:
[33:29] I appreciate it, sir. Thank you.

Speaker 4:
[33:32] An engine failure anytime we're in flight is a pretty serious situation, of course, but losing an engine at night can be particularly challenging. Lennon sent himself up for success beginning with his pre-flight planning. He decided not to file IFR so that he could overfly on route airports. He picked up flight following, so he was already talking with ATC when things started to go wrong. His quick and decisive reaction to first the oil fuel smell in the plane, then the rapidly dropping oil pressure also contributed to the outcome. He quickly declared an emergency with ATC and didn't spend a lot of time troubleshooting what may have caused the problem with the engine, a wise decision with so little time to get the plane down safely. Finally, renting or borrowing a plane comes with a fair amount of responsibility, both to your passengers for their safety and well-being, but also to the aircraft owner. Conversations about insurance coverage should all take place before you step into the plane. Congratulations to Lennon for handling the situation so well. We thank him for sharing his lessons learned. If you've got a story to share about a flight that you learned some lessons from, we'd love to hear about it. Email us at thereiwas at aopa.org. For AOPA and the Air Safety Institute, I'm David O'Leary. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 6:
[34:54] There I Was is produced by the AOPA Air Safety Institute. If you'd like to hear other episodes, submit comments, or submit your own story to potentially be featured on the show, please visit airsafetyinstitute.org/thereiwas. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 5:
[35:17] If you're enjoying this podcast, consider listening to Hangar Talk, where you can join me, Alicia Herron, and my co-host, Dave Tulis, for a bi-weekly podcast that enlightens and entertains with the top general aviation news and interviews with interesting people from the industry. Find us at aopa.org/podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.