In response to this guy’s post about a harrowing flight experience today, this is the story of the scariest landing of my life. I’ve been posting so much esoteric TLDNR crap lately, why stop now?

So I was going CMI-LUK (Champaign, IL to Cincinnati-Lunken) on a solo cross country. It was 2007 and I was a commercial student at the time, so I had my instrument rating. I had filed IFR, but school rules were I had to be in VMC. So weather looks good, I launch, it’s like a 2 hour flight. I get there and I’ve got a voicemail from my instructor. She’s saying you might have to sit it out there for a little bit because there’s a nasty squall line ripping through your return route right now. So I hang out, it’s March, the FBO has free cookies and the NCAA basketball tournament playing on the TV. I wait a few hours for the squall line to pass over and I check the weather. There’s another line of storms behind it, but possibly far enough behind it to let me squeeze in if I hustle. I refile to the south and try to sneak in between them. Mostly uneventful, though I fly through some rain on the way back.

I get back to CMI. That second squall line is like 10 miles away. Maybe 8. Winds are reporting 090@25g35. We’ve got a runway 14 and a runway 4. Fuck. I take my chances on 14 because it’s wider. No way. I get down in ground effect and I literally can’t even get the nose within 20 degrees of the runway heading. Go around. I was in a Piper Archer btw, max crosswind limit 17 knots. Now, I should have just diverted to this old Air Force base about 15 miles north that had a runway 9 but I was like no, I can get it on (first mistake). The problem was if I didn’t either divert or get down now I’d find myself in the middle of a thunderstorm so I really committed myself right there. One more approach and I don’t have time to divert anymore. So I get a wind check, and now they’re calling it from 070. Well great, no wonder I couldn’t get down. On the go around I ask to join a right base for 4. I was the only idiot out there so the controller’s like, yeah, sure, whatever you need, man. So I turn base to final, and I can literally see my drift over the ground and it’s unread. I’m going so slow because it’s a lot of headwind now. Wind check on a mile final: 110@28g41. You’ve gotta be shitting me. Okay, well, I’m here, lets see what happens (second mistake). I get one main on the ground, and I literally start going over so hard that I have full aileron deflection and I’m about 10 feet from the grass with no signs of stopping. I go around again (barely). So at this point I’m freaked out, it’s starting to rain, and the dark clouds are really close. I only had one more shot at this point or I knew I’d just have to head east and hope I could outrun the storm. I blacked out most of that last approach in hindsight but I somehow managed to get it on the ground, WAY too close to the grass again. It’s a huge training airport and I had solo in my flight plan remarks, so the controller was like, you alright? Anyway, that was pretty much the scariest landing of my life. I had no good reason to put myself in that situation other than wanting to get home. Looking back on it I was extremely fortunate because this is exactly the kind of chain of events where accidents happen. I was an outmatched pilot with 100 hours trying to beat the weather, which is a bad place to be. I learned a good lesson about boxing yourself into a shitty situation with no outs, which is one I keep in my pocket to this day.