Shock! Horror! Door pops open!

Kyler Laird wrote:
My experience is that holding it (close to) closed makes the ride
*much* nicer. I've not had the door pop open when I've been flying
alone. It'd be interesting.


It's pretty much a non-event. It's annoying, noisy, and sometimes wet. I flew
an Arrow in hard IFR from Key West to Rock Hill, SC once with the damned door
popped open. No biggie except in the rain showers. Then a real PITA. I hate
getting rained on.... particularly at 130 knots.




--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE

On 14 Apr 2005 08:50:10 -0700, "Robert M. Gary"
wrote:

When I was a student pilot, during the long hot summer days of
Sacramento, we always kept the doors open in the Cessna 140. Every once
in a while I'd give the door a shove with my elbow and refresh the hot
cabin air. On my private checkride, the examiner spent the entire ride
trying to get the door to close, saying he was going to fall out. After
the ride he chewed the FBO out up and down for having a door that
wouldn't stay closed. I never thought to try to close the door, it was
hot!
A year later, with a fresh IFR ticket in my pocket I flew the family
down to Monterey. At about 11pm over the Salinas mountains IFR the door
on the Bonanza popped open. Charts flew everywhere, including out the
window. I tried slipping, etc but couldn't get it closed. Since it was
dark I didn't want to try some small airport I'd never been to before
so I diverted to Modesto (a larger airport). I just remember thinking
to myself that if there was ever a time I was going to forget the gear,
this was it. On landing, it is important to grab and hold the door
though. About 1/2 through the roll out the door sprung full open and
then back again. It almost came off the hinges. I think the roundedness
of the Bonanza door made it different than the flat Cessna door. The
Bonanza door trailed about 4". You could pull really hard to hold it to
only 3" but the last bit wasn't going to happen.

The Bonanza door, like the Cherokees and newer models serves are part
of the structure.

The Bo door is the most spectacular when it pops open as it sounds
like a shotgun being fired.

I'm surprised the Bo door opened on the roll out unless you had all
the vents open. Normally it won't open unless there is a tail wind.

In flight there is no sense pulling on it as it should stay about 2 or
3 inches out. You are pushing against a lot of air pressure to open
it farther and it's unlikely it would even match the opening as the
structure "springs" out of shape slightly with the door open. So the
darn door doesn't even fit the opening.

OTOH it's a good way to get the carpets clean.


My wife and kids probably have a good 600 hours sitting in the plane
now and are all very execellent door closers. The Bonanza just had a
strange door closing mechanism. You turned the handle past two clicks

All the ones I've seen only have one click, but you close the latch to
where you think the thing is latched, then push it another inch and
you hear a click. If you don't get that click the chances are about
10:1 the door will pop open just after rotation.

The door popping open is no big deal, unless you don't have any more
charts:-)), but enough Bo pilots were dumb enough to kill themselves
trying to close the door, that was added to the AirSafety Foundation's
training. That and when doing stalls they'd block the yoke so the
pilot couldn't use the ailerons.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com
to grab both latches, something that was missed that night. I now drive
a Mooney and the door is much more obvious. The door handle doesn't
like up with the arm rest unless it is fully closed.

-Robert, CFI

Wallace Berry wrote:
In article 3oc7e.19394$1p4.12250@trndny06,
George Patterson wrote:


Mike Granby wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4439341.stm

And the headline from the Daily Mail link on that site is "New Zealand PM
cheats
death in air drama - 4 hrs ago" -- all because the door on an Aztec popped
open
in flight? Give me a break!

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the
mashed potatoes.



There are GA aircraft whose doors will latch closed? Not sure I've ever
seen one...

Never seen a Cessna 150?

In any case, what of it? Flying around with an open door in a light plane is a
non-event. Certainly not "cheating death" as was reported.

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the
mashed potatoes.

George Patterson wrote:
Wallace Berry wrote:
In article 3oc7e.19394$1p4.12250@trndny06,
George Patterson wrote:


Mike Granby wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4439341.stm

And the headline from the Daily Mail link on that site is "New
Zealand PM
cheats
death in air drama - 4 hrs ago" -- all because the door on an Aztec
popped
open
in flight? Give me a break!

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next
to the
mashed potatoes.



There are GA aircraft whose doors will latch closed? Not sure I've
ever
seen one...

Never seen a Cessna 150?

In any case, what of it? Flying around with an open door in a light
plane is a
non-event. Certainly not "cheating death" as was reported.

It's election year here George. Politicians will do anything to attract
attention. Especially ones who are having problems :-)

On 13 Apr 2005 11:03:27 -0700, "Denny" wrote:

Bob Gardner Apr 13, 8:52 am show options

Newsgroups: rec.aviation.piloting
From: "Bob Gardner" - Find messages by this author

Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 08:52:22 -0700
Local: Wed,Apr 13 2005 8:52 am
Subject: Shock! Horror! Door pops open!
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If the door of an Aztec pops open, it will only open about 4-6 inches
and
will kind of oscillate back and forth between those extremes
************************************************* *****************************8

Same on the Apache when the CFI in the right seat apparently couldn't
close a door reliably... Non event - and I was in no hurry to land as
he was the one getting his butt frozen (that's called 'behavior
modification')...
Since then however, I let no one close the cabin door but me...

As the person in the right seat sits down I emphatically state, "I'll
get the door", unless he or she is already reaching and then it's a
fast "I'LL GET THE DOOR!"


Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com
Actually ticked off one high time, ace pilot (in his own mind) when he
slammed and locked the door against my clear instruction that I would
close the door, I reached over and opened the door then re-closed it
myself... He never asked to fly again... ah well....

Denny

In article mQF7e.8258$ff4.7120@trndny08, George Patterson wrote:
Never seen a Cessna 150?

I've steered Cessna 150s with the doors :-)

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article .com, Ben Hallert wrote:
happened. He starts laughing, and it turns out that the wind in cabin
grabbed the new instrument training hood that he had purchased the day
earlier (to replace a cracked on) and sucked it out the door.

Oh, I can beat that. I opened the window on our old Cessna 140. Instead
of opening normally, it opened an inch or two, fluttered a bit then
departed the airframe and went off to meet its destiny in Galveston
Bay...

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Dylan Smith wrote:
Oh, I can beat that. I opened the window on our old Cessna 140. Instead
of opening normally, it opened an inch or two, fluttered a bit then
departed the airframe and went off to meet its destiny in Galveston
Bay...


Expensive climate control....




--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE

Dylan Smith wrote:
In article mQF7e.8258$ff4.7120@trndny08, George Patterson wrote:

Never seen a Cessna 150?


I've steered Cessna 150s with the doors :-)

I was once flying the club 172 with my buddy MadDog. We'd recently
heard Captain Al Haynes speak about United 232 - the DC-10 that suffered
a total hydraulic failure - and how they controlled the plane with only
power.

So we decided to try it ourselves. While trimmed for cruise we
pretended that we had a total control failure. It was simple to control
altitude with power. We unlatched both doors and pushed one or the
other open for directional control. Turns were very slow but control
was good enough that we flew back to the airport and established a
straight-in approach with an appropriate rate of descent. At about 200
AGL common sense prevailed and I took the controls and went around. I'm
sure we'd have landed OK (on a wide runway) but I wouldn't have wanted
to deal with a crosswind gust on short final.

The only problem with opening the doors was the turbulence inside.
After we secured all the loose charts and checklists that was no problem.

- John Ousterhout -

"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" writes:

Kyler Laird wrote:
My experience is that holding it (close to) closed makes the ride
*much* nicer. I've not had the door pop open when I've been flying
alone. It'd be interesting.

It's pretty much a non-event.

Do you have any relevant experience to support that? The times it's
happened to me I have certainly not enjoyed the instant (external)
shaking of the controls which got worse as the door was allowed to
move freely.

It's annoying, noisy, and sometimes wet. I flew
an Arrow in hard IFR from Key West to Rock Hill, SC once with the damned door
popped open.

Perhaps you're thinking that the Aztec and Arrow have similar airframes.
They don't. (The Seneca is close though.)

--kyler