Last Second Decision
- Jun 25
- 2 min read
During this outreach in southern Cameroon I was once again travelling in dense jungle with another team. I constantly kept my eye open for places with low palm trees that snake through the dark forest like pale veins. These light green clearings were potential places for an emergency landing in case of engine failure. You really never know!
And indeed it happened, that as we were flying over the endless canopy of giant trees of all shapes and shades, the “engine failure” warning light suddenly started to flash. Normally, an acoustic signal should have also sounded at the same time. Although I was profoundly shocked by the flashing light, for some inexplicable reason, against all the rules and all experience, I hesitated. The needle on the engine RPM gauge sank rapidly to zero. I stared at the needle and the bright flashing light and fought against my common sense that was screaming at me to go into autorotation. In that last second of hesitation my ears caught the sound of the engine, which was still droning. I hesitated another second with bated breath and ascertained that – in spite of the persistently flashing light – the engine was still running. A battle raged inside me: should I obey the signal of the lamp as I had always been drilled to do, or pay greater attention to the fact that the engine was still running? With each second that passed, I felt more and more sure that I should continue flying.
Had I obeyed the signal I would have switched off the engine myself by triggering autorotation, and would have crashed among the giant trees with a perfectly sound engine. Survival would have been unthinkable.
It was incredibly hard to continue flying with instruments showing the engine was dead. Yet the longer I flew, the more certain I was that the malfunctioning engine RPM gauge would have killed me. How comforting was the drone of the engine as I tried to imagine what would have happened if we had gone missing in this endless jungle. We reached our destination unharmed. I couldn’t tell the passengers what had happened, because I was due to fly them back after the event and I didn’t know myself whether I would be able to take off again without a functioning engine RPM gauge. The question wouldn’t have arisen for a mechanic. But I was ignorant of the risk.
When my passengers came back, I had taken courage, placed them as usual in the helicopter, started the engine without indication and flew back to the base with still mixed feelings. Only then I informed them about the incident and together we said thank you for this preservation.
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