AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2021 - 100

P&E 

NEVER AGAIN

Smoke in the cockpit
Don't let it cloud your ability to respond
BY ALEX JONES

100 | AOPA PILOT January 2021

Fort Wayne; pulled the throttles back;
and started down.
Going back to the memory items on the
checklist, I shut the avionics master off.
The smell of smoke was starting to fade. I
cycled the avionics back on and tried calling Approach again. They still couldn't
hear me. Engine gauges were fine. On the
PFD, the flight director was commanding a
turn to the right. There must be a problem
with the automatic flight control system
(AFCS) that caused the smoke. I tried to
shut the FD off: autopilot disconnect button, FD button on the panel, cycle the
avionics master again. No success. The FD
bar was still there, commanding a climbing
turn to the right. I scrambled around the
breaker panels for a few moments-where
the hell was that AFCS breaker?-but could
only find the servo breakers. I didn't bother
cycling those, since I had manual control
of the airplane.
I tried calling Approach again, and
still got no reply, although I heard every

ANNA MILL

AFTER A WEEK in Cleveland, I was cruising home to Chicago in my Beechcraft
Baron G58. I was on an IFR flight plan,
but the day was smooth and clear at
6,000 feet agl. As I approached the corner where Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan
meet, my thoughts drifted in tangents to
the straight flight path. Engine gauges
look fine. Should I get my car washed on
the way home from the airport? Weather
is still clear in Aurora. Stop at Chipotle for
lunch or eat at home?
Kalamazoo Approach acknowledged
my check-in, and told me they had a
revised clearance, advise ready to copy. I
keyed the mic and, literally in a flash, the
peaceful flight ended. I heard an audible pop through the headset and, within
a few seconds, caught the acrid smell of
electrical smoke. I tried calling Approach
several times. I could hear them, but
they couldn't hear me. My priority was
to get on the ground as fast as possible.
I turned left, in the general direction of

word from them. They called a passing
airliner, who tried to raise me on 121.5.
That's when the reality of this hit me. I
fly a lot of IFR cross-country, and monitor
guard. Once, over the rocky hills outside
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, I picked up
an ELT. When I relayed it to ATC, a Civil
Air Patrol Skylane flying a drill turned it
into a real SAR.
Now I was that guy. Images flashed
through my head. The airline pilots making a couple comments about the little guy
and an unconscious moment of silence
before the usual cockpit banter. A controller in a dimly lit room, watching a green
dot with dwindling numbers next to it,
hoping for a call from the pilot rather than
relief from station with a drug test and an
NTSB interview.
I didn't want to deal with a towered
field with no radio; I have a reference
sheet for the light signals, somewhere
in the airplane, but now wasn't the time
to start looking for it. Auburn, Indiana,
looked good. No tower. A single runway
of 5,000 feet. I pulled up AWOS on com
2 and found a right quartering headwind
landing Runway 28. No problem.
After a 360-degree turn to wait for a
departing aircraft, the landing was an anticlimax, if not the smoothest given my raw
nerves and undeniable desire to be outside the airplane. I called flight service and
Kalamazoo Approach, told them what happened, and gave them my contact info. One
of the line guys was waiting for me outside the airplane; the FAA had called after
I dropped off radar.
I grabbed a bottle of water inside while
the line crew towed the airplane to the
shop on the field.
The mechanic and I couldn't reproduce the smoke. Com 1 still wasn't
transmitting, but Com 2 was. With
the task saturation of smoke, finding a
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2021

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