Open Door In Flight training?

[Mooney in Oz]

6 hours ago, EricJ said:

There's been cases where a nose cargo door opened and contents came out into the prop on that side.   Those can be bad accidents.   

 

3 hours ago, Andy95W said:

Not every anomaly is as benign as a Cessna window opening when you gave instruction. A nose cargo door opening on some light twins will render the airplane unflyable.

Piper Aztec comes to mind.

[Andy95W]

1 hour ago, Mooney in Oz said:

 

Piper Aztec comes to mind.

Exactly (I used to own one.)

[Pinecone]

If the plane is not controllable, then nothing you can do will change the outcome.

My point is, to have pilots experience window or door opening to 1) show them it is not a big deal and 2) to teach them to ignore the distraction and FLY THE AIRPLANE.

[DavePage]

On 5/16/2024 at 12:48 PM, Shadrach said:

t's why I try to load and preflight the plane without passengers present.

No Truer Words ever spoken !  Preflight, even w/ someone standing around makes the hairs on the back of my neck curl.  I HATE it !!   Now I demand total silence, and go stand . . . Over There.

[jlunseth]

Two stories re this topic. One, when I picked up my plane at purchase it was in AZ and we  (my non-Mooney instructor and I) flew it all the way home to MN. An annual had be badly done in AZ, and on takeoff the door came open even though it was latched. Landing and closing the door did not help, same result. We tried the procedure in the POH and could not close the door. The good news is that the slipstream is strong enough that nothing is going to happen, no one is going to fall out, it is held very strongly in place. In the paper days you had to make sure one of your charts did not get sucked out, but that is the worst that can happen. The bad news is that the slipstream won't allow the door to close either. We flew over Raton at 16k, it was cold and somewhat noisy with the door in that condition, and all the way to Garden City where we convinced the door to latch and held it in place during takeoff. It was subsequently discovered that the latch was not adjusted properly and I have not had a problem with it since then (2009). 

So I completely agree with 201er, forget the door. If you get in a bad situation as a result of the door coming open that is because you panicked and failed to continue to fly the plane.

As for the baggage door, I had a friend and famous aviator decades ago who took off from a field in ABQ that is not there anymore (Coronado) to fly his family to Taos for some skiing. It was a twin with the baggage door forward in the nacelle. The door came open on takeoff and they did not survive. The pilot tried to return to Coronado to land, but was unable. There have been several "the baggage door came open in flight" incidents on this forum over the past 14 years since I joined it. I recall one in which the door departed the fuselage and made the rest of the trip lodged in the horizontal elevator. He made it all the way across the Atlantic in a the first ever balloon crossing only to perish about three or four years later in an avoidable fixed wing accident.

So here is my rule. I always, always include the door in my pre-flight, and no one except the pilot is allowed to close and latch that door. I always lock it, and check that I locked it, following advice from a couple of the instructors at Mooney PPPs. I had one girlfriend years ago who would get very offended that I would not allow her to close the door, and she would purposely try to open and close it herself. Not my girlfriend anymore (not the only issue).

Don't worry about the safety on the inside, that will work when you pull the pin even if the door is locked. The chances of getting back there and out the door in a forced landing situation are not that great anyway. As we all - I hope - learned in beginning pilot school, one of the very important items on the off field checklist is to open the main door while still in the air and shove something in it to keep it open so it can't jam shut on impact. Then you won't need the baggage door anyway.