My Longest Day

There is something which happenned to me which I think I need to put to rest, as it keeps replaying in my mind and causes me many sleepless nights. What I write here is a rather mishmashed collection of thoughts, ordered as best as I can remember over more than two years past and you can take it as it is because that is all I have on offer. It is not meant to reassign blame or shirk my responsibiliy in the long drawn out incident, but more as a penning down the event before it becomes too murky for recall.

I have not mentioned here, in my blog, the incident which led to my 5 month suspension from flying and being relegated to the left hand seat as a PIC U/S.

Perhaps it is time that I did, as I hope it will clear some headspace and help me see how the incident was the precusor to a chain of events which eventually led to my loss of license due to a haemorrhagic stroke and the end of the entire story.

I will not forget the day, as it was Rowena's 24th birthdsy, 28th February 2024. After wishing her on WhatsApp, I drove off at 0645H to Terminal 2 Kota Kinabalu International Airport, marched into the company to assess the en route weather and run an appreciation of what I would face on this day's sortie with my copilot to Maersk Viking, situated abeam Kota Belud, drilling for black gold in Sabahan waters.

SFO Neil turned up in a few minutes and we prepped for flight. As the prevailing wind seemed to favour his landing on the drilling vessel, after taxi and line up on the runway, I handed over control to him and let him do the take off and tracking for Maersk Viking.

Everything was uneventful so far, with a bit of haze, yet Maersk Viking came into view about 30 miles to go for the approach. We went through the pre landing checks and Neil settled in to a steady run in for the landing. We touched down at about one and a half hours after departure form KK

Since it was Neil who would be doing the take off, the helideck obstructions being on his side and all, I got down to oversee the disembarkation and embarkation of the passengers. Once they were all in the cabin, I was ready to hop in the cockpit and return to KKIA. However, I noticed that the Helideck Landing Officers were fiddling with the cabin door, and for all appearances, looked like they were having quite a bit of trouble trying to shut it. I allowed them to continue for a while, as sometimes newly trained HLOs took a while to familiarise themselves with the workings of the AW139 cabin doors. However, they looked at me after a while and I thought I should step forward to see what the problem was.

I discovered that something rather odd was going on with the cabin door. Once the door was slid forward, turning the door handle forward didn't seem to bring about that solid flush feel that it usually did. However, trying to slide open the cabin door didn'y work either. I climbed into the cockpit to chat with Neil, but we both saw that on the multi function display, the caption CABIN DOOR was illuminated in amber as a caution light. Normally this would mean that the cabin door was not shut, or not fully shut that the microswitches were fully contacted. Our first step was to refer to the EOP checklist. It stated that if CABIN DOOR caution light illuminates, it meant that the cabin door was not shut. Follow up action was "attempt to shut cabin door". Which we did. 

What if the caption was still illuminated? What we didn't realise at the time, was that the company-published checklist, which was supplied in the aircraft, the one which pilots were to refer to, read differently from the OEM checklist. We found out later that the OEM checklist read: "if caption still illuminated, maintenance action". Well, that would have changed everything, wouldn't it? I would be able to voice out that a shutdown was absolutely neccessary, whatever the pitch and roll of the helideck and I would be relieved of any further responsibility furher than that.

But back to the matter at hand, I thought that perhaps in my old age, I wasn't strong enought to open the cabin door, so I asked Neil to make an attempt, since he was about a sprightly 32 years of age. He got down and tried and tried but he could not make the cabin door budge. He returned into the cockpit and we looked at the situation. Fuel was running to critical levels, just sufficient to return to KK. I mentioned to him that perhaps a shutdown would be the best option and we would ask for recovery on board Maersk Viking. He seemed to agree. I had a fnal thought: the SATCOM was working. I thought, why not call someone at Heli Base to confirm that they could recover us from Maersk Viking?

And so I did. Much to our horror, we were told that there was no recovery from Maersk Viking 

There were many uncertainties running through my mind. I dreadfully wanted to shut down the aircraft and surrender to the wisdom of management to sort out the rest of the affair for me. Then again, night stop kit notwithstanding, brake line pressure and whatnot, would it hold against a pitching, heaving and rolling helideck? What if the limitations were excessive with changing sea state? Plus, the fuel state of the aircraft was dipping hazardously low.

We discussed the situation and agreed that we would fly to Labuan at 80 knots, the limitation speed for flying with the cabin doors in the open and locked position, should anything untoward over and above what had already occurred come to pass, the cruise speed would be within the limits of that flight regime. We did the fuel calculations and we were sure that we had enough fuel to land at Labuan just before the low fuel warning lights would illuminate. Neil was confident of flying under these conditions and so was I. We prepped for the lift off and made the lifting radio call.

All seemed to be going well during the vertical climb, till Neil eased the cyclic forward to accelerate into the climb and forward flight. There were loud exclamations from the cabin and as I craned my neck to see what was going on, I saw the two passengers closest to the cabin door handle leant forward holding it in place. Alright, that made me decide that it would be best to drop off all the passengers on the helideck and to fly to Labuan and hope for recovery there.

While the pax were disembarking with Neil on the controls, I checked the cabin door again. No, it hadn't budged. Right. We could proceed with this plan we had committed to.

And off we went. We got in touch with Labuan approach and relayed our ETA and relevant information. Throughout our flight we kept checking on the cabin door, which remained steadfastly shut amidst the caution advisory saying otherwise.

It was a painfully slow flight.

Painful because in my heart I knew how tits up this could go. I knew of cowlings coming detached in flight and striking the rotor disc and how that ended the lives of two captains assigned to fly the Deputy PM on the air force VIP helicopter, the Super Puma we had bought from Indonesia. I looked at Neil, flying dutifully at the controls. His trust in my judgement and our cohesiveness seemed stout, but I had the thought that it hung by a thread and how I could never forgive myself if this did indeed go tits up. I was eady to go down with the ship, and how I wish it didn't involve him.

But!!!!!.....

We had deliberated this. We conceded to the plan. We were in concurrence over flying to Labuan. We had checked the integrity of the cabin door against the other factors running against us. It may have been a poor decision, but it was the best we could do with the resources at hand, at the time.

In good time, after about 45 minutes of flying, Labuan turned up on our horizon. I took over control, being more familiar with Labuan airfield, having served in No 5 Squadron on the other side of the runway. We lined up on runway 32 for a run-on landing and taxiied to the general aviation parking bay. And true to point, as we turned off the runway onto the taxiway, the amber FUEL LOW captions illuminated. A heaved a sigh of relief and triumph, that we were vindicated at least academically, and that the investigative board couldn't penalise us for the conduct of the flight.

Shutdown was perfunctory with the age old checklist, as I had to draft an incident report and text it to the training captain. While waiting for news about the manner of recovery the home base would arrange, Neil and I caught a Grab car and set off to town hunting for my old Indian haunts for a much needed lunch. But in the many years past my squadron Exo days in Labuan, the only Indian eatery left in town was a mere shadow of where I used to savour a good meal, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. However, food was still welcome, relieving and sustanence for a long day still remaining in uncertainty and doubt.

Between mouthfuls of food, I handled calls from various superiors in the company pecking order. Fisr was the incident report, which I texted over to the training captain who accepted it without any need for amemndment. I was completely honest about the sequence of events except for my phone call to the boss before lift off, as I knew not only would there be denial, but also that the decisin was ours as a crew and not his. I did not pen a cover up nor in any way pass the weight of respnsibility to my copilot. After sending the report, I waited for the recovery decision from helibase KK.

There was a spot of time for me to inform Brenda about the whole matter. She was always my rock, the one person who stood by me in all my lonely decisions and by that made them less so. I didn't feel lonely because of the incident, but because of what awaited when the wolves would gather to determine how I was to be devoured. The ultimate answerability lies with the aircraft captain. I was ready to face the consequences.

A few other phone calls came in on the matter of recovery. An engineer would be flown in from KK, would give the aircraft the once over and sign off on a one-time-flight back to home base. HQ's engineering was a bit tardy in releasing a civil flight ticket for the chap, but at long last warrants were turned into a flight ticket and he would land at late evening local time. I conceded as the aircraft captain to extend my flying duty period to cover the flight time back to KK.

It was 1915H by the time we finally took off from Labuan to KK. The night circuit was active at KK airfield meaning that Layang Layang Academy would be flying and complicating matters for us with flying students at their aircraft controls. We finally landed at 2020H.

The HSE executive marched us in to a separate room, ran the urine sampling and dismissed us. That ended the longest day I ever experienced as an offshore pilot.

What followed were 5 months of silence from HQ. I was suspended from flying pending the investigation by the base Safety Action Group while the grandstanding by the BFSO had gotten ridiculous. He was literally having a party over being the lead investigator over my incident and did not, in my opinion, conduct himself the way a BFSO would have towards me, "the accused".

I have been a BFSO since I was a flying student in the air force. Suffice to say, the dearh of professional conduct on his part left much to be desired. Although today, all that happenned till I sustained a loss of license due to my haemorrhagic stroke is but water under the bridge, how murky were the waters he stirred.

I shall continue relating the rest till how I arrived at my current state another day.

So ends my tale of my longest day.