A captain shared a picture of her training days when her plane’s dome burst open mid-air, leading to a lot of pain, breathing difficulties, and poor visibility.
Narine Melkumjan said she shared the picture in the hopes that young pilots can take lessons from her errors and that her account serves as a warning story.
” On my second aerobatic training flight that moment, on a really hot summer evening, the dome of my Extra 330LX shattered and opened in trip.” As you can see from the film, it was a hard experience that could have been avoided if I had checked everything thoroughly before taking off,” Melkumjan wrote on X.
She claimed that the ceiling locking pin not reached the locking position after she had forgotten about it.
” I did n’t notice the canopy locking pin during my checks, and it had never entered the locked position.” I also made the error of attending the training camp straight after recovering from COVID without giving my body ample time to recover fully. Moreover, flying without any vision protection made the trip even more difficult than it already was”, the captain added.
After touching the ground, Melkumjan claimed it took her nearly 28 days to “fully return her perspective,” adding that the most challenging part was” trading her perspective and breathe for dynamic power.”
” The trip was a distressing knowledge, filled with sounds, breathing problems, and impaired visibility. I had to wait almost 28 days to completely recover my perspective. Aerodynamically, I’ve experienced some banquet and stability problems. The hardest part was probably keeping the strength in, allowing me to exchange my breathing and vision for kinetic energy, Melkumjan said.
The captain said the only factor she heard loud and clear was her coach’s” simply keep flying” training.
” Despite the noise, it was difficult to hear what my coach was saying on the radio,” I’ve always heard it loud and clear,” just keep flying.” If you are a captain watching this, I hope your experience serves as a cautionary tale and that you may take away from my errors, she said.
