By Ross Millichamp
Glider pilots describe landings made away from known airfields or strips as ‘outlandings’. A lack of rising air or poor visibility means that they land wherever they can and worry about retrieving the aircraft later. Outlandings are less common in the powered aircraft world but, if you fly long enough, sooner or later it will probably happen to you.
My outlanding experience happened when I would have least expected it, on a beautiful day in the South Island backcountry with clear skies and calm conditions right up to the main divide. A friend and I had taken off from my home strip near Darfield on a mission to check out some hunting spots in South Canterbury and Central Otago. It was the type of flight I really enjoy, snooping around the backcountry with no pressure to be anywhere at any particular time.
I was in no rush to get home and when I suggested an early lunch at Omarama my passenger leapt at it. The Pink Glider Café is located on the Omarama Airfield with a taxi-way leading right up to it. Sitting in the shade on a hot January day enjoying coffee and a hot scone, we had no indication of the drama that was about to unfold.
The forecast that morning indicated that low cloud would probably push inland from the Canterbury coast towards the end of the day, but I was confident we would be safely back home before then. However, as we taxied out from the Glider, I could see cloud building behind Mackenzie Pass, which was the most direct route into the Fairlie Basin and home. Mackenzie Pass runs slightly west to east and you do not get a great view through it until you are quite close. I was reasonably confident that I would be able to sneak under the cloud and through the Pass, so I headed in that direction.
In the time it took to fly across the Tekapo Plain, the weather deteriorated and cloud started pushing through the Pass and moving into the Mackenzie Basin. Knowing that the cloud was coming from the east, we diverted west and tracked towards Burke Pass, which is generally a very reliable route home from the Mackenzie country.
Burke Pass looked better, with a clear view of the paddocks on the far side, so I descended and tracked through 700800ft above the ground. Once through, however, the weather ahead looked pretty average. In the past I’d got through here in cloudy conditions by flying down the Opihi River past Pleasant Point and out onto the plains. As we approached Albury the cloud ahead lowered, forcing me to turn around and head back west.
I arrived back overhead Fairlie and found that the weather had got quite a bit worse in the short time we’d been away. I had a quick look to the west where the weather did look better, but after a short time came to the view that I would not be able to get over the higher terrain in that direction.
“Go back to where you know the weather is good,” I told myself, and so I turned towards Burke Pass and the sunny Mackenzie Basin.
As we approached, I saw that the cloud had lowered further and that route was now blocked.
On previous trips through this area I’d heard radio calls from a pilot landing near Fairlie but had no idea where the strip was. My headset has Bluetooth connectivity to my phone so I called local AOPA NZ Executive Committee Member Ian Sinclair and asked for advice.
“Don’t come east,” he said, “it’s absolute rubbish here.”
“What about the private strip near Fairlie?” I asked. Ian also had vague recollections of a short strip near Fairlie but was uncertain about where it was and whether it was suited to a Cessna 182. “You might be best landing in a paddock,” he said. “Give me a call when you are down and I will come and get you.” By now the tension was starting to build. Fairlie is located in a reasonably big basin but it is littered with high tension power lines that move electricity from the Waitaki River hydro schemes to consumers in the north. For the time being I was at a safe altitude but at some point would have to descend to assess the ground conditions and approaches to a potential landing spot.
I briefed my passenger about what was going on and gave him a job. “Keep your eye on the iPad and tell me if I get anywhere near any of the squiggly lines that depict transmission towers.”
Of course, I was furiously looking for the towers as well, but things can get busy during a precautionary landing and I figured one set of eyes on the iPad and one out the windscreen made sense.
There were plenty of suitable paddocks in the vicinity but in January most of the big, flat ones were full of waist-high wheat. Others were under centre pivot irrigators which are generally accompanied by a multitude of curving fences that are really hard to see from the air. Finally I spotted a long ‘into the wind’ paddock next to a meandering creek on the northern outskirts of Fairlie.
I did an inspection run and it looked reasonable but was covered in tall, scruffy clover with lots of thistles poking through. It looked a little un-loved compared to the immaculate wheat fields nearby and I was worried that there could be a dry creek channel or other obstacle hiding under he clover. Looking back at the wider basin I saw that the weather was continuing to deteriorate so I decided to go for the clover paddock.
They say that all your training comes back to mind in situations like this and … “keep flying the plane all the way to the ground” stood me in good stead.
At the back of mind was a post made to a back-country pilot’s forum where people were discussing what to do in the event of an engine failure. After reading lots of advice from people who had yet to experience such an emergency, I came to a post by an Alaskan pilot which was the real deal. He had had two engine failures during his long career and his opinion was “In an emergency, the plane belongs to the insurance company; your primary responsibility is to get you and your passengers safely onto the ground.”
I was also aware that if I kept flying around the Fairlie Basin in worsening weather looking for the perfect paddock, I would eventually fly into cloud or make another serious mistake. Once I’d come to a decision, the approach and touchdown were straightforward. All of those non-standard circuits conducted during AOPA NZ fly-ins made it seem comfortable and familiar.
The time between the main wheels touching down and getting the aircraft stopped seemed to take an eternity as I waited for the bogey man hidden in the clover to bite. That is when thoughts about the brand new engine being ruined by a prop strike came flooding into my mind. Luckily we came to a rest quite quickly with no obvious damage but there was a fair bit of undergrowth tangled up in the landing gear. I later discovered a cracked hydraulic line leading to one of the brakes but that was all.
They say that all your training comes back to mind in situations like this and I guess that was true for me. I was never great with the emergency drill checklists during flight training and don’t recall doing one in the Fairlie basin, but the basics of “keep flying the plane all the way to the ground” stood me in good stead.
I shut the engine down and called Ian to tell him that we were safely down and to give directions to the pickup point. It is well and good to give a GPS position but how do you get there by road?
Another difficulty was finding the landowner where the Cessna was now parked and to ask him to keep any stock or harvesters out of the paddock until the weather cleared. In the end we left a note on the nearest house and that evening the landowner called. He was relaxed about the intrusion on his operation and kindly agreed to us “flattening” a strip of his clover with the truck to reduce drag when I attempted to get the plane out. Driving up and down the vector was also a good way to check for any hidden obstacles lurking in the undergrowth.
We came back a few days later under sunny skies and flew the plane home. With hindsight I probably could have chosen a paddock with less growth but it was very long, which made the retrieval flight straightforward. The problem with most light aircraft in these situations is not in finding a paddock adequate to land in but also in finding one long enough to takeoff from.
This article first appeared in the Autumn 2023 edition of Approach Magazine, the dedicated magazine of AOPA NZ, which is published quarterly.