CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 2 BRITTNEY BOGART
B Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Aviation Regiment
Fort Stewart, Georgia

In aviation, there is always the potential for certain risks to occur. As professional pilots, we do everything in our power to mitigate those risks. Sometimes, however, unforeseen events can occur.

In May 2015, I deployed for my second time to Afghanistan. This was my first fixed-wing deployment as well as my first time flying out of Bagram Airfield. I was assigned to the GRCS detachment in Task Force Odin and our mission was aerial reconnaissance. There were only eight full-time aviators within the detachment, so we were able to get to know each other’s habits — both good and bad.

On a morning like any other, my co-pilot and I completed the mission brief, got our weather and headed out to the aircraft for our preflight. At the time, I was working on becoming a pilot in command, so I was running the show. After our preflight, we continued with the checklist items for the engine run-up. We performed our communication checks with IEW and, once cleared with all green communications, were ready to taxi. I made the call to Bagram ground and, while my co-pilot was taxiing, completed the before-takeoff checklist items. There were no issues, so I transferred to tower and made the request for takeoff. Bagram tower cleared us for takeoff.

With my co-pilot on the controls, I did the standard callouts, “Normal,” “V1, rotate.” As he began applying backpressure to the yoke, the nose began to pitch up and we started our climb. The other callouts were made and, as we were passing through 500 feet, there were no apparent issues.

Right as I began to read off the climb checklist, I heard him yell, “Oh, $@#%!” I immediately put down the checklist and looked at the master warning panel while simultaneously asking, “What’s wrong?” The only light illuminated was the cabin door light in the caution/advisory annunciator panel.

As we continued our climb, I told approach to keep us below 10,000 feet and requested to hold at our present position due to mechanical issues. Approach quickly responded and asked if we needed to declare an emergency. I let them know we didn’t need to declare an emergency; we just needed some time to make a decision.

After I finished my conversation with approach, I told my co-pilot to never scare me like that again. When someone yells, “Oh, $@#%!” right after takeoff, you immediately think something serious has occurred. A cabin door light right after takeoff is not a situation that warrants any type of panic.

The cabin door light flickered on and off for a few a minutes, so we returned to the airfield to have maintenance look at it. We were in air for a total of 20 minutes from the time we took off until we landed. After we taxied back to parking, we had a maintainer come on board and take a look at the micro switch by the cabin door. We decided not to shut down so we could save time and get on track.

Once we were established on track, we discussed the situation. A few seconds into our conversation, the commander came over the radio on our internal frequency. He asked us how much fuel we had when we landed. The sinking feeling hit and we immediately started calculating. The numbers came close to our max landing weight. We told our commander and, even though he was disappointed, he told us just tell maintenance when we landed. Maintenance had to perform a hard landing check. Fortunately, there was nothing wrong with the aircraft.

Even though the maintenance procedure was simple, it could have been avoided. From that point forward, it became a part of our company’s before-takeoff brief to burn off fuel for non-critical situations that required immediate return to the airfield after takeoff.