Luckily The Airstrip Was Right There!
During Victory In Europe Day in 2015, event organizers had a spectacular show lined up for the thousands of spectators. Taking place in the skies over Washington DC, you can only imagine this flyover was rehearsed over and over again with strict guidelines and itineraries.
With hours of training and flying about, the team was ready for the show. Before the incident, the Avenger has been in the air for an hour with no problems and they were coming up to the final flyover.This was the pinnacle of the entire show and the culmination of what these guys were working for. Then, the cabin filled with smoke.
“Are we on fire?”- Passenger of the ill fated TBM Avenger
In this video, you’ll see the moment when things went wrong and the passenger suspected a fire. In the heat of the moment, the pilot stayed cool and collected and declared an emergency, heading for the nearest airstrip which happened to be Reagan National Airport.
The whole operation went really smoothly and the cool thing about this video is that it’s broken down into two part. First, you’ll see the event happening as it did. Later, the pilot breaks the video down into the thoughts he was having while trying to stay calm and assess the situation. As it turns out, he took a lot of lessons home.
In the end, it was a pin sized hole in the hydraulic system that started smoking. It was not a big deal but precautions had to be taken. The plane was ready to fly again within an hour of the emergency landing.
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