Mid Air

The stories I have told up to now have been my personal experiences. This one is slightly different; it is an experience I witnessed. I did have to react so I guess I did experience some of it but I was certainly not the central figure. I have witnessed two mid-air collisions, one of which I will recount here because no one was seriously hurt. The other story did not turn out as well and I will not post, or at least not now. Please stop now if you think this will adversely affect you. It is a sobering story but it does end with no one seriously hurt.

I would take any opportunity to fly my Cessna 120 to an air show or event. Two of the included pictures were taken when I flew from Burns Flatt, OK (west side of the state) to an air show at Tahlequah, OK (east side of the state). The Tahlequah airport is uncontrolled (no formal FAA air traffic control) and was on top of a ridge surrounded by hilly terrain. Both of these points are important. I’ve included a couple of map pictures of the airport to help explain this event. I’ve also included two airplane pictures I downloaded off the internet. These are not the actual aircraft involved but are of the type of aircraft this story is about.

The silver, high wing aircraft is a 1940’s Luscombe. This airplane was manufactured in the same time frame as my C-120 and very similar in design and performance. It is a two seat side by side metal aircraft with fabric and wood wings. One difference from the C-120 was that the Luscombe was blind in turns because the pilot’s eyes were level with the wing root so you did not have a lot of visibility when the wing was down in a turn. This was pretty common in airplanes prior to the modern training aircraft which now have large windows and lots of visibility. I did not know the young pilot and his girlfriend in the Luscombe.

The second aircraft picture is of a 1930’s Cabin Waco bi-plane. This is a massive airplane of steel tube fuselage, wood wings with fabric covering and had a big radial engine up front. It carries up to 4 people (maybe more) but you had to enter from a door in the rear, even the pilots. This airplane also was extremely blind in turns due to having two wings and small cockpit windows; another important fact. I knew the pilot of this airplane (also had his son with him) because the Waco had recently been completely rebuilt in the same hangar where I rebuilt my C-120. It had taken almost a year to rebuild this Waco and it was like a new airplane.

I had flown over in my C-120 with a friend as a passenger plus a couple of other flying friends had flown their airplanes to the air show. As a result, there were six of us enjoying the show. In the afternoon the air show organizers encouraged folks with unique or old aircraft to go into the pattern and make touch & Go’s or low passes for the crowd. As an air traffic controller I was not going to go mix it up with a lot of other airplanes in an uncontrolled airport like this. I just never felt this was a good idea. Instead my friends and I were setting on the grass at the runway to the right of the touchdown point (bottom right of runway in the airport picture). 

The pattern was a race-track going counter clockwise, landing to the North (up in the picture). The idea was to take-off and just follow the airplane in front of you in the pattern. The problem was there was a big mix of slow and fast airplanes in the pattern. This caused some planes to stay in close to the runway and others going much further out in the pattern. Remember no one on the ground is talking to these airplanes. I’ve flown many times into uncontrolled airports and this in itself is not dangerous, this situation was.

I watched my friend in the Waco make several low passes and the crowd loved it; a big, radial powered and loud bi-plane zooming down the runway is really an exciting thing to see if you love airplanes like everyone there did. For those non-flyers I must explain a few points. In a pattern like this you fly opposite of the runway heading (downwind leg) then turn towards the runway (base leg) then turn final (in line with the runway). The Waco was turning downwind to base, high and fast. I then saw the Luscombe turning downwind to base, slower, lower and inside of the Waco. I could tell that both airplanes were in the blind spot of the other airplane. I jumped up and yelled “Run” to my friends. They asked why. I said “those two airplanes are going to hit and they will crash right here”. That got my friends moving and we were all running away from the runway while I kept looking over my shoulder as the two planes continued on their collision course.

They hit! Everything went into slow motion in my memory. The Waco’s upper left outboard wing hit the Luscombe’s right outboard wing. I distinctly remember a puff of what looked like wood splinters filling the air at the impact. That was exactly what it was; the wings of both airplanes were primarily wood and fabric and it just disintegrated these sections of the wings. This is when the miracle happen (my opinion only).  At the time I was an air traffic controller and had years of watching airplanes in flight and even been involved in a number of accident investigations so my observations are pretty accurate.

Luscombe – If you look at the Luscombe picture you will see the wing is held up by struts going down to the bottom of the fuselage. The Waco hit just outboard of the wing strut attachment. It totally eliminated the outboard section of the wing including the aileron control surface on that wing (ailerons raise/lower the wing in flight). The important fact is the inboard section of the wing stayed intact thus providing some lift on that side. The Luscombe dived straight for the ground just to the left of the runway touchdown point. Just before impact the pilot was able to pull up the nose and it ripped off the landing gear but then slid into brush and stopped. No fire and only minor injuries to the two occupants. If that inside wing had not stayed attached it would not have turned out so well. These guys were extremely lucky that day.

Waco – If you look at the Waco picture you will see that the two wings have a strut between the wings about halfway out (called an N-strut due to its shape on this airplane). The impact point was just outside the N-strut attachment on the top left wing. It totally disintegrated the out-board section but the inboard section and the whole lower wing was still intact. The Waco leveled off after impact and was flying down the runway at about 100 ft. All of a sudden it dived and tried to land on the taxiway running parallel to the runway. He would have made it except that the airport used car tires buried halfway in the ground (vertically) as markers for the taxiway. The Waco hit one of these tires and flipped over on its back. On these big old radial airplanes this was never good. The engine is so big and heavy it caused the front of the aircraft to fold back into the cockpit area. Luckily no fire but I expected the pilot and his son to be hurt. We ran up to the Waco and it appeared that they were both ok but hanging upside down by their seat belts, not moving (in shock not due to injuries). Remember the access door was at the back of the fuselage so we couldn’t get in to get them out easily. The pilot finally started moving and undid his seat belt. He immediately fell on his head thus getting the most serious injury of the entire accident (wore a neck brace for a while after this). I must add that the pilot was a big boy; 300 lb category. The Waco was totally destroyed.

That evening at the air show banquet (yes they still had one) the Waco pilot stated that after they hit he was able to level off and he felt he still had aircraft control but after looking at the unforgiving terrain around the airport he felt he would rather take his chances trying for an immediate landing.

We all flew home the next morning (except for the Luscombe and Waco) looking a little harder for traffic than normal.