Reflecting on the event, the lesson is to always fly the plane – especially during critical phases of flight.
I’m tracking the ILS inbound for runway 14 at Alexandria International Airport (KAEX) in heavy rain and moderate turbulence. My Mooney copilot in N700CW is sitting low in his seat, looking a little peaked and uncomfortable on the bumpy ride inbound from New Orleans Lakefront Airport (KNEW). Over the weekend, we celebrated his birthday early with dinner in the French Quarter at Galatoire’s on Friday night and the Lumineers concert at the Smoothie King Center Saturday night. He had apparently taken in all the excesses New Orleans has to offer, and it was now coming back to bite him. Soon, I feared, my plane was going to smell like the gumbo of Bourbon Street at four in the morning.
My logbook tells me the flight in the Mooney from New Orleans to Alexandria took just shy of an hour and a half, including shooting the ILS 14 with the entire procedure. It was rough descending through rain and windy conditions. The automated weather broadcast reported rain in the vicinity and a ceiling of 1800 feet overcast. Three miles out, I had the runway in sight, but the rain was coming down so hard that the little Mooney was being tossed in the wind. It was during this critical phase of flight – glideslope captured, autopilot off, and hand flying down to the runway threshold- that my then 8-year-old copilot and son blurted out, “Dad, I’m going to be sick.”
My response was quick and short: “No!” followed by “We are almost there; do not throw up in the front seat of my plane.” As eight-year-old boys do, he completely ignored my protest and said there was nothing he could do. It was coming. He looked at me ashen, pale and sweating, clutched his blue “pillow-pet” for comfort, and tried to hold it in. For the unindoctrinated readers with young children, a pillow pet was a hugely popular soft plush pillow that, when folded and strapped together with Velcro, transforms into the child’s favorite animated character. In my son’s case, his blue pillow converted into “Stitch” from the Lilo and Stitch cartoon movie popular with eight-year-olds in 2017. Ironically, Stitch’s character in the film is a genetically engineered Koala-like alien creature predisposed to causing chaos and destruction. Well done, son, your Pillow Pet has come to life and is wreaking havoc inside the cockpit just as we are in the most crucial moment of flight.
As eight-year-old boys do, he completely ignored my protest and said there was nothing he could do. It was coming. He looked at me ashen, pale and sweating, clutched his blue “pillow-pet” for comfort, and tried to hold it in.
Resigned to the fact that his lunch was coming up whether I wanted it to or not, I reached into the backseat passenger pocket compartment and grabbed a “barf bag” I had stolen from my last commercial flight and handed it to him. I looked at the GPS and the time to the airport said just under 3 minutes. Surely, he could make it in 3 minutes to allow me to land, roll out, and open the door so he could vomit outside on the wing. If only Al and Arthur Mooney had designed for comfort instead of speed, I probably could have reached over, unlatched the window, and told him to lean out the best he could. But alas, the Mooney’s windows are sealed in place, so it was just me, my son, and Stitch waiting for the chaos to ensue.
I instructed him to use the bag as best he could under the circumstances. He looked at me, questioning whether any reasonable amount of his stomach contents would fit in this tiny white bag. It didn’t matter. He opened the bag, leaned forward, and lost his lunch. In the violence, he missed the bag opening entirely, rendering it a totally useless accessory. Stitch received the brunt of the mess as he used the Pillow Pet as a catch basin in his lap. A Well-deserved consequence for a character hell-bent on causing chaos. My son recovered after a few bouts and said simply, “Sorry.” I consoled him, acknowledged his pain and embarrassment, and told him we would be on the ground soon.
Meanwhile, I continued down the ILS, hand flying, watching the instruments and trying not to mimic his behavior with the unbearable odor in the plane that was now circulating throughout the closed cabin. The rain continued, the turbulence continued, and we were now almost to the threshold. My son apologized several more times and then looked at me and said, “I feel fine now. Can we get something to eat on the way home from the airport?” Really? Not three minutes ago he was convulsing uncontrollably. But sometimes I guess you just need to get it all out and the world is better.
We landed safely, rolled out, and began to taxi to the FBO. I told him to open the door to let fresh air in, and I positioned my hand in the pilot side air scoop to direct as much air into my nasal cavity as possible. I looked over and, amazingly, only Stitch and my son were soiled. He had managed to miss the barf bag completely, but he managed to avoid spilling any vomit on the interior of the plane. I worried that Stitch might have to go to the garbage, but that was for my wife to figure out once we got home. Unfortunately, I had to crawl over him to get out of the plane. My task was then to figure out how to extricate him without spilling any of the mess off himself or Stitch and into the seats and floorboard of the Mooney.
I climbed out, told him to sit still, and grabbed my bag from the baggage compartment. It was still raining, and the line guys came out with an umbrella. I asked them to get me a plastic bag from inside. When they returned, I hid him behind an open umbrella and the fuselage of the plane. I stripped him naked, dumped Stitch and his clothes into the plastic bag, and gave him my souvenir Lumineers concert T-shirt to wear home. The T-shirt came all the way down to his eight-year-old shins, providing enough cover for him to walk almost naked through the FBO and to the car. I deposited him in the car, went back for our bags, and closed up the plane. Returning to the car, he said: “How about Chick-fil-A?” As any good father would do, I agreed, and we made our way towards the chicken nuggets and milkshakes.
Reflecting on the event, the lesson is to always fly the plane – especially during critical phases of flight. In this case, I’m flying the ILS inbound with a ceiling of 1800 feet overcast. Not terrible, and not to minimums. We would break out of the clouds with plenty of time to see the runway, but the landing was still tricky with a sick passenger in the co-pilot seat of a Mooney M20J. Additionally, the hard rain limited the forward visibility, making the landing challenging despite being able to see the runway threshold in plenty of time. For those that have not piloted a Mooney, it’s like sitting in a small roadster car – think BMW M3 or Mazda Miata. Shoulders touch, there is almost no room for real comfort, and very little air circulates in the cabin even with the vents open. Mooney’s allow you to really get to know your front seat passenger. So, when the co-pilot gets ill, both people in the front seat participate whether you like it or not. Of course, the first instinct of the non-sick person is to also dry heave, plug your nose, and reel back in horror. But on final approach, in rain and wind, that’s impossible. The plane must be put on the ground safely.
We are all taught to fly the plane first – aviate, navigate, and communicate. These fundamentals are drilled into our heads constantly: by our instructors in recurrent training, in nearly every accident video we watch, and in the articles we read in the AOPA “Never Again” testimonials. In reality, there is a certain amount of forced discipline needed to accomplish those three tasks. That is where the recurrent training muscle memory sets in, and, knowing you have practiced certain scenarios, the mind allows for the body’s reflexes to take over and do what needs to be done.
I could have pulled off the approach, asked to go around, reengaged the autopilot, and sorted out the illness higher and out of the landing sequence. However, that choice required that we be in the plane longer and that I initiate another approach while still dealing with a sick child. The rain and the wind would remain, and I still would have to deal with those conditions all over again. Others may have made a different decision, but for me the coolest course of action was to get the plane on the ground, tend to the sick passenger, and terminate the flight as soon as practicable.
My son had Chick-fil-A nuggets on the way home, Stitch was washed and cleaned, and the clothes came out smelling like new. I quit stealing barf bags from the airlines, and I now rely on wide-mouth “potty” bags, giving passengers a better chance of hitting the target. There is an old saying in New Orleans that “once infected with the Spirit of New Orleans, there is no cure.” On that day, my eight-year-old certainly got infected by the city, but most likely not in the same way he would today as an adult. Unfortunately, regardless of age, the NOLA infection often ends the same way. He just got a little taste of it early in life. Now that he is older and on his way to college, my advice to him is “laissez le bon temps rouler” – the cure for the NOLA spirit is not more spirits.
