Crew, we're going around

Mobility Forum, May/Jun 2000 by Juscius, Mark

AMC Excellence in Airmanship

Fifteen minutes from landing, now what's wrong?

On April 1st, 1999, a C-130E from the 2'd Airlift Squadron, Pope AFB, North Carolina departed on an Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron trainer for Warner-Robins AFB with 5 aircrew, 1 crew chief, 14 areomeds, and 37 passengers attending a PME graduation ceremony. The itinerary was Pope to Warner-Robins, download the passengers, fly a proficiency sortie, then quick a turn back to Pope with all the passengers after the graduation.

The initial leg of the flight was ops normal until the crew detected a problem with the pilot's ADI gyro. Everything else was working so the crew landed at Robins without incident. Ten minutes into the local pro sortie the Self Contained Navigation System (SCNS), which includes the INS and radio control, shut itself down. The crew was NORDO until the system came back online several minutes later. Radio contact was re-established with Air Traffic Control and they again landed at Warner-- Robins.

Once on the ground, the crew rebooted the system, Capt Mayheu, the aircraft commander, called Pope maintenance for advice. Their recommendation was to disconnect and reconnect cannon plugs, then depower and start the system several times in order to try and repeat the malfunction. Despite the trouble-shooting, all systems functioned properly. The weatherman back at Pope forecasted a 1500 foot ceiling and 3 miles visibility, so with coordination from Pope maintenance and the squadron operations officer, the crew decided to return the aircraft directly back to home station as soon as the passengers returned from the graduation.

Capt Mayheu briefed the crew on the weather and requested standard routing from ATC for their return leg to Pope. Takeoff from Robins was 2240 local.

Enroute to Pope another problem arose, the copilot, 1l Lt Jones, noticed the suction boost pump light illuminate on the utility hydraulic system. He immediately shut the pump off. Capt Mayheu sent SrA Gaston, the flight engineer, back to the cargo compartment to check out the system.

SrA Gaston, comes screaming back up to the flight deck, "turn off all the utility pumps, all the hydralic fluid is gone!" Fifteen minutes from Landing, now what's wrong? It wasn't misting inside the cargo compartment or on the engines. This total loss of system pressure would force the crew to manually extend the gear and fly a no-flap approach.

SrA Lucas, the loadmaster, called up to the flight deck, "Passengers are starting to get a bit nervous, they want to know what's going on." Lt Jones quickly briefed the situation to the load and then added, "tell them we should be landing soon."

A local training formation that had just landed, heard the crew check in with command post. They called up on Pope's interplane frequency giving the crew a "heads-up." The information they relayed wasn't good. They said the weather was low on their last approach and they had to made a full-stop landing. Apparently the temperature had dropped unexpectedly, causing fog and mist to form rapidly throughout the region.

The crew declared an emergency and entered holding at Pope while they ran checklists and manually lowered the gear. The crew was facing a no-flap approach, a wet runway, emergency brakes, no anti-skid, and no nose wheel steering, all at night with deteriorating weather. The crew elected to dump 40001bs of fuel to decrease their landing distance.

Capt Mayheu realizing the situation was starting to deteriorate and directed the crew, "Let's get this thing going." While still in holding the SCNS shut it self down and the crew was again NORDO.

After multiple attempts to re-initialize the SCNS, radio communication was finally reestabilished. Air Traffic Control informed the crew that the Pope weather was coming down and close to minimums for the ILS approach. The crew requested immediate vectors to the ILS final.

During the approach the weather went below visibility minimums. But we're established on approach, so we're going to continue. Capt Mayheu recalled, "All of us were looking outside to try and find something, I've never experienced a quieter cockpit. Nobody said a word, then I announced, `Crew, we're going around.'"

According to Pope weather Norfolk NAS was the only suitable airfield with acceptable weather-600 overcast and 1 mile visibility. "We're gonna have to fly there gear down."

Flight time was 1 hour and 20 minutes due to gear limiting airspeed. Passing through 13,000 feet MSL on climbout to Norfolk, the number one compass began to drift. The crew elected to use the PAR approach at Norfolk with published minimums of a 250 foot ceiling and .5 miles visibility

Rainshowers and turbo-lence encircling the entire field, and the autopilot wasn't working so we had to hand fly.

The aircraft broke out 50 feet above minimums to transition to landing, and taxied clear using the high speed taxiway. 5-6 more seconds and we would have had to go missed approach. The engines were shutdown with 5200 pounds of fuel remaining which equates to 20 minutes of fuel above the minimum recommended landing fuel.