By Capt. Tred Barta
Illustrations by Shannon Crawford Askins
At 30,000 feet flying a Beechcraft King Air 300, a twin-turbine pressurized nine-passenger aircraft, the starboard engine started to come apart, throwing the stator blades almost through the cowling, black smoke billowed out of the engine as oil and fuel ignited in a big fireball, the P-3 pressurization valve (which takes bleed air off the engine and pressurizes the cabin) let go, and smoke and 600-degree air filled the cabin, multiple calamities accrued at one time, immediate and rapid cabin decompression, fire, fuel and oil problems, etc. etc. etc.
As I shut down the right starboard engine, I raised the nose, dropped the gear, added 15 degrees of flaps and started a spiraling emergency descent at about 5,000 feet per minute, declaring an emergency to Louisiana IFR Control. My four passengers were scared to death but smartly stopped screaming, my co-pilot lost it big time, he was reading off checklists but doing nothing, I finally told him to shut up, I yelled “put your oxygen masks on number 1; number 2, be quiet, number 3, read calmly the emergency descent checklist, and let me fly the aircraft.”
What’s my point in all of this? We all are too close to the forest to see the trees and the more experienced one becomes as a boat captain or an aircraft captain, the more one can separate what is really important. No matter what the in-flight disaster, first you need oxygen at attitude; second, cut off the fuel and feather the dead engine, and then fly the aircraft, my co-pilot missed all three. As we descended to 12,000 feet, the Louisiana Center asked if we still had an emergency, I answered “yes sir, Vector to the next
