Life Stories—

Engine Trouble Tests Pilots’ Training During Charity Flight

By Kendra Bobowick

What had started out as an ordinary plane trip from Connecticut to Vermont last September 16 was cut short by engine trouble, forcing the pilots, two Class of 2000 Newtown High School graduates, to put the craft down in Massachusetts.

Fouled spark plugs from lead fuel build-up — a problem a mechanic later located — prompted some quick decisions that left pilot Ben Kugielsky shaky after landing his single-engine Grumman Tiger, but both he and fellow pilot Christopher Cain had relied on one another and their training during tense minutes in the air.

As they started their flight for Vermont with food and supplies for flood victims following Hurricane Irene’s destructive path through the state on August 28, their third such mission, Mr Cain noticed that the engine was rough.

“I asked Ben, ‘Is that normal?’ And he said, ‘No,’” Mr Cain recalled. Mr Kugielsky remembers his friend’s question. “That was about when Christopher said, ‘We’re losing power, what’s going on?’ And, the RPMs were dropping.” The two quickly realized they could be in trouble. After a few moments he remembers Mr Cain saying, “Let’s get it done.”

Mr Kugielsky said, “I checked the fuel mixture, went through the checklist… it was a blur, we worked pretty quickly.” He said, “There is standard procedure if you’re losing power and we went through that list, but we had lost RPMs.”

He got on the radio. “I was saying that we were having engine trouble and were going to divert to Pittsfield [Mass.] and I climbed,” Mr Kugielsky said, explaining, “Altitude is money in the bank if you think may lose the engine.” He had never encountered engine trouble before that day.

Months later on a warm January day, Mr Cain laughed, “I could be a ghost sitting here.” Talking again about the flight, he said, “Ben tried adding fuel, and it got worse.” Mr Cain remembers the climb to gain distance if they needed to glide. The two had looked at a map to “see what we’ve got, and we saw a grass field,” Mr Cain said. “Then I thought, that’s the middle of nowhere. Things could have gone wrong in a grass field.” He didn’t like that option. He wanted to try for the nearest airport in Pittsfield Massachusetts — 16 nautical miles away.

“The questions was, could we glide there?” An airport would have help, and “someone to pull us out,” if they landed badly, Mr Cain said. Grass fields offered nothing, he noted. His pilot’s training said: “Find a spot to land and put the plane down.”

“It gets it in your head to follow procedure; training is for a survival outcome,” said Mr Kugielsky. He had asked about one particular field, but Mr Cain had said, “There isn’t enough runway.” But, could they reach the airport? Mr Cain said, “I doubted if we would make it the distance, but Ben thought we should.”

Mr Cain remembers thinking about the engine’s RPMs with doubts. “There wasn’t enough power,” he worried. Mr Kugielsky knew there was a grass field somewhere below. “We were right in vicinity of a private airfield, but we couldn’t see that even; we thought about it for a minute.” He said that although there were fields, “From 5,500 feet you can’t tell if there is corn or hay, but you can see a field.” Mr Cain had been quickly checking charts because Mr Kugielsky had asked about a private field. But because the field was restricted, Mr Kugielsky said, “There was no way I was going to risk it. The engine was still running so we chose to go to Pittsfield where they would have fuel, they would have a mechanic, and we could probably glide. We were really high at 5,500 feet, and climbed to 6,500.”

Despite the engine’s diminished power, it had stabilized. Mr Kugielsky said, “With more experience I would have known about lead building up on spark plugs, but at no point were we in real danger, there was just nervousness of not knowing what’s going on with the engine.”

Having shared the controls at various times in the flight, Mr Cain had said at one point, “Ben, it’s your plane. I’ll hand you the controls.” He said, “The last three miles were [Ben’s] — we came in really fast — it was his plane and I didn’t want to crash it.”

Mr Kugielsky remembered, “I think he did say that. I was talking to Pittsfield [airport] and he was working with our chart…he flew halfway to Pittsfield and when it was in sight, I took over.”

When Mr Cain joked about crashing, Mr Kugielsky thought, “No crashing, and I think he asked if my heart was going yet. I said yes.” He was nervous, and concerned about his plane.

Mr Cain said, “It was scary. Anyone who says it’s not is lying, not when it’s happening to you.” An air traffic controller asked as they sought to land in Pittsfield: “Are you declaring an emergency?” “Not at this time,” Mr Kugielsky had replied. Remembering how he felt, Mr Cain said, “It’s like, this isn’t happening, then you have to focus.”

Mr Kugielsky said, “When I radioed to Pittsfield I said we were making a straight-in landing [standard landings require a traffic-pattern approach], but I came straight in. They asked if they should roll out the equipment like fire trucks, etc. But we made a precautionary landing and I was not planning on mishaps.” Flying since he was about 12,  Mr Kugielsky said, “There is always the element of nerves, but this is the first time I had an unsure feeling and it’s an entirely unique experience.”

Appreciating his friend and pilot’s company at the time, Mr Cain said, “Having two of us was great; we know each other in the air.”

“It was like clockwork,” Mr Kugielsky said. “I was really happy to have him along. We instantly went into the serious, get-things-done [mode], and fell back on training. It was really nice to have another pilot there.” He said Mr Cain was “calm,” adding, “It was nice to have someone to hold the controls while I made communications. Having Chris there was very nice.”

Mr Cain recalled himself grinning during the difficult moments. “Was it excitement? I don’t know. Or was it terror?” he asked. Although the training is embedded, he said, “Something like that? It’s crazy.”

“I do remember some of [Chris’s] expletives when we landed,” Mr Kugielsky said. “I was happy we were down, I did some S-turns to burn off altitude and landed. I landed long.”

“When I got out of the plane I was shaky…an airport crew member came over to say, ‘Nice job,’ that was cool, and as soon as I touched down, someone said over the radio, ‘Well done sir’; that was pretty cool,” Mr Kugielsky said. He described a rush, nerves, relief, but, “Mostly I wanted to know, what the hell is wrong with the plane.”

Following Hurricane Irene, which knocked out power to Newtown homes for as long as a week in some neighborhoods, the two friends began flying supplies to Vermont where Mr Cain spends weekends in the winter as a ski and snowboard instructor. He and Mr Kugielsky collected and delivered goods for relief organizations beginning in early September.

Their third trip “was supposed to be a normal flight.” The approximate 15 minutes of engine trouble and hurried landing “felt a lot longer,” Mr Cain admitted. But he finally found himself back on the ground, heart pumping, he said. He can think of nothing he would have done differently that day.

“We did preflight [checks], followed every step we knew and could do, it should have been a one-an-a-half hour flight, but it didn’t work out the way we wanted it to,” Mr Cain said.

Thinking back, Mr Kugielsky said, “Everyone does train for that exact scenario…you do it all the time, but in terms of feeling, you don’t get the butterflies as much when the instructor pulls throttle back and you know you still have an engine….you know you’re not going down in a field somewhere.” Overall, he said, “It wasn’t dangerous; the plane did what is was supposed to. This was just an interesting experience.”