Aileron failed - almost died

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simnettpratt
Airman
Posts: 12
Joined: 20 Mar 2018, 20:50

Aileron failed - almost died

Post by simnettpratt »

So I'm getting close to my destination, Halliburton Field in Duncan OK, and turn off the autopilot to hand fly in. Immediately, the plane banks hard to the right and dives. I couldn't turn the yoke to the left at all, and could only turn to the right a little bit.

I manage to keep it off the ground and find with judicious rudder and throttle I can regain a semblance of directional control, though I'm flying sideways. I wiggle my way to the runway and only miss by a few feet right.

As soon as I'm on the ground, I can steer as normal. Checking the maintenance hangar, the left aileron had failed. The mechanic chided me for not doing the pre-flight, which was annoying, because I always do the pre-flight. Here's the flight record:

Image

You can see the moment in my descent I flipped off the autopilot. Altogether pretty exciting, though my imaginary girlfriend was not happy.

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