CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 2 SCOTT MUNROE
B Company, 4th Battalion,
160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne)
Joint Base Lewis-McChord
As an Army pilot with 750 flight hours, I’m still fairly new to the world of aviation. Everyone knows what it’s like to be the new guy — you want to prove yourself and never want to be the person who throws in the towel when training runs late or you’re not feeling well. But sometimes it is necessary to take a step back and reevaluate what you’re doing to avoid making a mistake that could lead to catastrophe.
In this story, our company had deployed three Chinooks to Southern California to provide training support for external ground units and also get our own internal training. It had been a busy week between the flight to get there, setup of the planning area and movement immediately into our own internal training, so we had been pushing into the backend of our duty day every day.
I woke up one morning with a headache and sore throat, but didn’t think much of it. I was concerned about the rest of the day — an 1.5-flight out to the New Mexico desert, followed by a link-up with a C-130 refueling tanker, multiple training iterations of fighting radar threats and aerial gunnery involving countless dust landings, and fast rope approaches in one of the dustiest environments I’ve experienced. All of these are complex maneuvers and demand the highest level of crew coordination and situational awareness. Add to that zero illumination and the low contrast of the desert and I knew it was going to be a long day with almost eight hours of flying as planned. But I was looking forward to the flight nonetheless.
Fast forward nine hours and our flight of two CH-47s had been out flying for six hours. We’ve been doing dust landings to the point of our eyes bleeding and we were running drastically late on using up all the ammo we’d brought to the gunnery range. With still a 1.5-flight home, I realized I had progressively been feeling worse all day. I hadn’t had strep throat since sixth grade, but it felt just like I remember it — headache, dizziness, fever and, of course, a throat so dry I couldn’t swallow. I realized I was exhausted, much more so than a six-hour flight should have made me. It was taking every bit of my focus to fly the aircraft.
The next thing I knew, it was time to refuel. It was not part of the plan, but because gunnery was running late, we had to refuel and head back to the range to expend our remaining ammo. The airport where gas was located was unfamiliar to me. It was one of those airports with three different runways, each in a different direction. This was where I made a mistake that luckily did not turn into a bigger problem.
The airport cleared us to land to one specific runway, but I left the GPS guidance up to a point that was slewed to the center of the airport, which happened to be 1.5 miles from the runway where we were cleared to land. As we came upon the airport, the combination of multiple runways and improper guidance confused both myself and the other pilot and we aimed well short of the runway where we were cleared to land. We realized our mistake as we flew directly over the center of the airport. Luckily, this mistake only resulted with us doing a go-around. But had the airport been busy with other aircraft in the pattern or landing on other runways, this minor error may have resulted in a much bigger problem.
Multiple lessons were learned with what could be viewed as a minor mistake. But taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, it is important to note how much fatigue played a role. Knowing I was sick and we still had multiple hours to fly, I should have brought it up with the other pilot and discussed the possibility of calling the night off early, even if it meant cutting training short. Fatigue can cause a minor mistake to turn into a fatal error, whether it’s flying a multimillion dollar aircraft, shooting at the M4 range or even driving home after a long day at work. It’s important to know your own limits and take ego out of the equation when making decisions.