By Steve the Pilot

July 8^th, 2026

In the comments section of my last column, Michael asked about difficult flights and close calls.  Then there are old friends… the ones who’ve known you, know your past and keep you in check.  Things happen and you tell them, years go by and you say something and all of sudden they bring it up just to give you a hard time.  And so, it is with my college roommate we’ll call “Billy Bar”. Billy Bar has been around for most of them, so he reads my last column and he was off to races telling me I should write about this time and that time, all about using up my luck bucket.

So, here we go.

If you reference BtG#1 published March 18th 2026 you will read about the luck bag.  Well, I’ve used some up over time.  The first one I can remember was in USAF UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training).  I was flying the T-38 a supersonic trainer and was given “the keys” to go out to the training area for my first solo away from the airport.

I have found out that this stunt (watch this) which I am about to tell you, is performed by many more pilot students than I thought, it’s just no one talks about it until much later.  So, there you are, walking out to the flightline where there is row after row of these beautifully white, pointy nosed jets. You are all pumped up strutting your stuff in your flight suit, G-suit and jumping in and strapping on this supersonic jet to go out and punch holes in the sky.

There is no real plan for this flight, it’s a confidence builder.  The idea is to go out and practice maneuvers (loops, split S’s, immelmann’s, etc.) as well as touch and go landings.  What many of us did though was to go out, get the plane up to 500kts (in full afterburner) and pull straight up, with the nose pointed to the moon doing aileron rolls.  It’s an unbelievable kick but you need to stop the maneuver well before you run out of airspeed…, oops.

Needless to say, I did not in time and as moved the stick and tried to pull the nose over to get out of the maneuver, there was not enough airspeed and the controls did not respond.  Now, I’ve gone from 10,000’ to 22,000’ in a matter of seconds.  I’m going out of the top of the practice area; I’m in full afterburner and running out of airspeed with no control.  With no airflow, the engines can flameout, in afterburner the engines have a great possibility of flaming out but I had enough presence of mind to take them out of afterburner.   Though now, I’m really slowing down.

One second I’m looking at the sky, the next after an incredibly violent backslide and flip, I’m now staring straight at the ground maybe 4 miles below.  My engines were thankfully still running but I had to keep staring straight at the ground, going “Holy S~~~!!!”.  If you try to pull out without enough airspeed you’ll get into a stall which can get you from the bad situation you put yourself in and into a much worse one.  There is a very small window in which you have enough speed that you can pull yourself out of the dive, though have not accelerated too much and over-G the aircraft.

Obviously, I’m writing so it all worked out but I knew I had used up some of my luck bag token/s.  The rest of the flight was pretty much just doing “border patrol” which is the term used for just flying around the borders of your practice area when you’ve scared the crap out of yourself.

Desert Storm used up quite a few tokens as war’s always do.  The night before the war started, they brought all of us KC-135 tanker crews into a briefing room to tell us how things were going to operate.  They put up a slide that showed all the different flight tracks and how they were deconflicting them. It looked like a large serving platter of squid ink spaghetti.

I think of the poor crews of those 2 tankers that collided over Iraq in March.  Even if you’re part of the crew that lived, your life is forever shaken.  The big sky theory isn’t really so big, especially during a war… I know.

We were on station one night over northern Saudi Arabia when all of a sudden, we had a big burst of turbulence hit us and incredibly a split second later we saw this dark outline come across our nose from above left going to lower right.  As the outline moved away, we could see 3 lights on it and having refueled mostly F-117’s during our missions, we recognized it as one.  The fighter had crossed our nose 50-75’ or less in front of us!

Many times during the war we would be on station and fighters would just show up to bootleg fuel from us.  If we had more than was designated for that mission we would give it to them.  Since we were radio silent they would connect to the air refueling boom first and then we’d talk to them over the intercom.  The reason to wait until we were connected was so there wouldn’t be any radio signals for the enemy to receive and pinpoint locations.   This guy no doubt was looking for fuel and misjudged his join up.  He stayed to the lower right of our position for a few seconds, probably cleaning his pants then thought better of asking for fuel from the guys he almost killed and flew away.

To wrap up Desert Storm, we had an electrical fire with sparks coming out from under the plane, navigation failure where I had to navigate all the way back to Riyadh using the very few lights on the ground in the desert, blown tires, anti-aircraft fire below us and much more.  Ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching, luck coins going out faster than you can count them.  But you need to count them, otherwise they don’t go into that experience bag.

But things can happen at any time.  We were taking off out of Beale AFB in Northern California fully loaded to support the Red Flag exercise out of Nellis AFB in Las Vegas.  I had just pulled the nose off the ground for takeoff and our #4 engine failed.  We totally screwed up the engine failure procedure but did the number one thing, flew the plane.  We survived after dumping 80,000lbs of fuel over the grapes of the central valley and I still have pieces of the engine that shelled out and strewn its insides down the runway. Ca-ching.

I’ll finish up this time with one that I blame on myself but had those used luck tokens in my experience bag to fall back on.  Before I went into the air force, I earned my private pilot’s license in the flying club at Glenview Naval Air Station figuring it would help me get through training. I think it did and when I moved back to Chicago, I wanted to do some private flying again but Glenview had closed.  They had worked out a deal that those who had been members, could be part of a flying club at Palwaukee (PWK) so I joined there.

My private training was all in high wing Cessna’s but this club had some more sporty low wing planes and now being the great pilot that I was, I decided to get checked out in one of them.  I’m still flying KC-135’s, I’m now an airline pilot as well and yep I know it all, so get me checked out in the Beech and off I go to $100 hamburgers and fun.  I flew a bunch of times in the Beech and it was great fun but it was definitely designed differently than the Cessna and I didn’t get into the books as much as I should have.

On my last flight (and you’ll understand why) I was coming over the final approach fix heading south to land on the long runway at PWK.  I had taken up a guy who was thinking about learning to fly and we were having a great time.  The final approach fix is where you start your decent to stay on a 3º glide path to the runway, this 3º path does require power though.  Just after we pass the fix and I’m heading down, the engine quits.  My first reaction out loud is “S#!t”, I turn the key… nothing, “S#!t”, I turn the key again… nothing “S#!t”.  Now my mind is racing, I look out in front, I see the runway.  I also see I’m not going to make it but I set up my glide speed to give me as much time as I can to work the problem.

My mind goes back to the old story of the dog sitting between two pilots and when one of them is trying to do something stupid it snarls and leans forward to bite the hand.  So, I start thinking, what did you last do, what did you last do?  Maybe that would be what stopped the engine from running.

One difference between Cessna and Beech was, since the Cessna was a high wing the fuel tank selector didn’t have to be moved because gravity fed the fuel out of both wings.  In the Beech, the wings were low and used fuel pumps so you needed to keep swapping tanks to keep the wings at a similar weight.  I realized the last thing I had done was swap tanks from right to left, so I moved the fuel lever that was down between the two front seats back to the right tank.

I turned the key… nothing.  Now the expletive switched to “F~<K!”.  I turned again… nothing, “F~<K!”, I turned a third time and the engine roared to life!!!  I looked at my passenger who was sitting there in stunned silence and kinda smiled. Ca-ching!!!  We landed and that was the last general aviation flight I have taken as the primary pilot.  I had not moved the fuel selector all the way into the detent and starved the engine of fuel.

I looked at that Beech Luck Token and realized I did not know the design/engineering of that plane well enough.  I was too busy with KC-135 flying and airline flying to stay proficient in a third plane.  I still look at that now “Experience Coin” periodically when the urge grabs me to go out and get a general aviation plane and start private flying but the brain says wait until you can focus in retirement.

There are a few more stories both military and civilian to tell but that’s enough for Behind the Glareshield #2.  As always, if you have questions, you can put them in the comments and I will try to address them.

Safe Travels and Happy Landings (I know that last one was),

Steve the Pilot

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Steve the Pilot was born, raised and lived most his life in the City of Chicago.  The Covid restrictions of JB, the pathetic leadership of Lightfoot and the crime allowed under Preckwinkle/Foxx, caused him to flee and seek refuge in the free state of Florida.  Where the fishing is good too!