A video of one of her pilot training days has been shared in which the canopy suddenly burst open mid-flight causing a lot of pain and discomfort due to difficult breathing and impaired visibility.
Narine Melkumjan shared this video believing that it will be of help to future pilots as they can learn from her mistakes.
“On a hot summer day, two years ago, during the second aerobatic flight training session of the day. We were flying an Extra 330LX when I opened my flight canopy,” she wrote on X. “As you can see from the video, it was a challenging experience that could have been avoided. If I had made a proper visual check before taking off.”
After recovering from COVID-19 I went straight to training camp without giving enough time for my body on regaining strength and also flew with no eye protection making flight even more challenging already,” added by Narine.
According to Melkumjan, she did not notice that the canopy locking pin did not go into the locked position.
“At least it looked like this on the outside. My checks didn’t pick up that the latch wasn’t fully seat at its catch. Also, after fighting COVID-19 and getting over it I head straight to my aerobatics course without allowing for any recuperation time for me physically;” besides there was no eye protector which made her journey tougher than before,” she said.
Melkumjan added that “it took me almost 28 hours after landing to “get back all my sight”. But the hardest aspect was “exchanging sight and breath for movement energy”.
“It was a terrible journey fraught with noise discomfort due to difficulty in breathing as well as low visibility. It took me nearly 28 hours to fully recover my vision. Aerodynamically speaking I’ve got some buffetting & controllability challenges. The hardest thing probably was keeping power in thus trading vision and breath for kinetic energy,” Melkumjan said.
The pilot said the only thing she heard loud and clear was her coach’s “just keep flying” instruction.
“My coach’s words to me over the radio were hard to decipher amidst all of the noise. But one phrase was clearly audible — “Just keep flying.” If you are a pilot watching this. I hope that my story serves as a cautionary tale and that you will learn from my mistakes,” she said.
