Crittenden is a small town in Grant County, Kentucky. Interstate Highway I-75 passes through the county and there is an exit for the town. Near that exit a railroad bridge passes over the Interstate highway. As long as there are airplanes and bridges; people will be flying airplanes under bridges. In the majority of cases, there is some FAR (Federal Air Regulation) that prohibits the activity but that has never been a sufficient deterrent to prevent it from happening.
This story involves none, one or maybe two flights underneath the bridge described above. The highway under the bridge was under construction at the time of these flights but it was paved and ready to be opened to traffic soon. It was a rainy Sunday morning and the pilot's lounge at the FBO was filled with real pilots, student pilots, wannabe pilots, hanger pilots and a few other liars. The weather was forecast to improve to VFR (Visual Flight Rules) conditions in the early afternoon so the weekend fliers were just waiting until they could fly legally. While they were waiting, they was seeing who could tell the best story (lie).
One seasoned CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) had a reputation for being a very efficient story teller. He was spinning a yarn about being with a student down in Grant County where the railroad bridge crossed over the new highway being built. Conveniently, the student was not present to back up his story. It seems that he simulated an engine failure to see how the student would handle the emergency situation. Since it was a single engine training plane, the proper course of action is to find a suitable flat place that you can glide to and hopefully make a landing that you can walk away from. The student chose the unopened highway as an ideal place for an emergency landing and proceeded to do it. When the instructor was satisfied with the way the student handled the situation, he restarted the engine and abandoned the landing approach. That was when (according to his story) he realized that he didn't have enough room to climb high enough pass over the bridge. His only choice was to put the nose down and fly under it. He swore the student pilot to secrecy so it wouldn't do anyone any good to try and verify his story.
Also in the room, there happened to be a Captain for a large airline who was also an ex fighter pilot. He had a rather low tolerance level for flying stories that couldn't be verified by a reliable witness. He made a remark about the instructor's story being in the same category as something you avoid stepping in while walking through a field where bulls are grazing. The instructor retaliated by claiming that the captain had gotten so used to autopilots and copilots and electronic gadgets that he had forgotten about "real" flying like he did when he was a fighter pilot. The insults flew back and forth until the captain declared that "if you and that student flew under that bridge, I'll take the same airplane and student and fly under it inverted". Inverted is airplane talk for upside down.
This was a challenge neither party could walk away from and save face. The room was totally quiet as the captain and instructor just stared at each other. Who would blink first? That is when the FAA came to the rescue. There was an Air Traffic Controller in the room that did some moonlighting for us as a CFII. That is an instructor that teaches instrument flying. When he stood up and walked to the center of the room, we thought that he would give them both an out by telling them that they could lose their pilot's certificate for flying under the bridge and he would just forget about the instructors story and not file any complaint against him.
We were all surprised when he said that he thought the challenge was a good idea except without the student on board. He had a pilot scheduled for a instrument flying lesson that afternoon and they could be in a position to witness the captain flying under the bridge inverted. He suggested that the captain would agree to believe the instructors story if he surveyed the situation and decided it was safe to fly under the bridge inverted. It seemed to be solution worthy of King Solomon. Quite a few wagers were made concerning whether the captain would do it or back out.
Soon the weather cleared and the FAA guy and the pilot learning instrument flying took off in the instrument training aircraft and positioned their aircraft where they could see the bridge. The captain took off in the regular training plane and flew to the location. He lined up with the long straight stretch of highway and flew towards the bridge at an altitude of about 100 feet. When it looked like he was going to fly right into the side of the bridge, he rolled inverted, flew under the bridge, rolled back to normal and headed back to the airport.
Now the trainee pilot with the FAA instructor was under the hood the whole time. That is a device worn when you are learning how to fly on instruments. He could not see anything outside of the aircraft; just the instrument panel. So there was still just the captain and the FAA guy to verify the story. We found out months later that the captain hadn't been a fighter pilot at all; he had flown cargo planes in the military. In fact he had flown in the same unit as the FAA guy and they had been buddies.
And that's the truth!
Bowinkle T. Propwash
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