Learning from Mistakes

submitted by Jack Lenehan

At one time in my flying career, I was in the printing business and owned a 250 Comanche. A printing competitor asked me to do him a favor so he could keep his delivery date with one of his customers and if it involved flying, I could never say no.

It required loading the plane with several boxes of printed matter on coated stock which is extremely heavy, and having just put in new seat upholstery, I made the foolish decision to load it all in the luggage compartment rather then the rear seat. It wasn't until I took off that I realized my mistake.

When we arrived at the destination, it was a 2000 foot runway adjacent to a parkway that ran across the threshold. In making a normal landing, all I heard was the terrible sound of the stall warning and I was going about 90 miles an hour at the time. Much too fast to execute a safe landing on a strip this short.

I circled around and watched for a break in the traffic so I could come in very low and as slow as I could maintain flight. I dumped it down on the numbers and stood on the breaks. We came to a stop within inches of the chain link fence. Honest... we had to get out and push the plane back so I could turn it around to taxi to the ramp.

His load was delivered successfully and I decided to go into the lunch counter to have a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and would you believe that this passenger of mine didn't even pick up the bill for the coffee. I refueled and also paid for the fuel without any offer from this clown.

On the way home, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to bust his bubble so at about 5000 feet, I faked a heart attack and it was worth all the grief just to see the pale look on his face when he thought he was going to crash and die. He never ever asked me again to fly him anywhere.

I wonder why!