Yo, guys! This is incredible.
This Dutch chick was piloting her Extra 330LX when the flippin' canopy over head broke! Watch this gal handle it like an absolute champ and nail the landing after what could have been a deadly disaster.
What. A. Pro.
The pilot, Narine Melkumjan, recently posted this video on her Instagram to help others and explain how a couple of simple mistakes she made caused the whole issue.
A couple of years ago during my second aerobatic training flight of that day, on a very hot summer day, the canopy of the Extra 330LX that I was flying opened in flight and shattered. 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. The canopy locking pin had never gone into the locked position, and I failed to notice it during my checks ...
The flight was a distressing experience, filled with noise, breathing difficulties, and impaired visibility. It took me nearly 28 hours to fully recover my vision. Aerodynamically, I've experienced some buffet and controllability challenges. Probably the most difficult part was to keep the power in, thus trading my vision and breathing for kinetic energy.
Although due to all the noise it was difficult to hear what my coach was saying on the radio, one thing I've heard loud and clear was "just keep flying"
We all make mistakes, but to be able to recover from a mistake, stay calm and cool, learn from it, and teach others? Well, that's a real skill.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
