I wanted to personally reach out to you and thank you for the high level of training provided by FlightSafety International as I feel it potentially saved my life and the lives of my passengers in an incident that recently occurred to me.
I was flying at FL410 in a Citation CJ2+ when the Cabin Alt annunciator came on and the Master Warning light came on. I looked at the pressurization controller and the needle was moving rapidly upwards. We immediately donned our masks, declared an emergency, and entered an emergency descent. With our FSI memory items completed, we ran the checklist during our descent and then we ran it a second time to ensure we didn’t miss anything. As we came through FL200 we started to feel a little tingling in our fingers, but that was about the only physical symptoms we had during the event. We leveled off at 11,000 feet and completed our trip with no adverse effects on me, my FO or my passengers other than we all had rather elevated pulse rates. A stuck outflow was discovered as the source of our issue.
We had a number of debriefs after the event with company management and the FAA, and the crucial aspect that was highlighted in my mind was the FSI training that immediately kicked in. During initial and recurrent training at FSI, it is drilled into us to act immediately and then we have to go through the simulated event of a depressurization over and over again…every single time we go to recurrent. The instructors work to make this an almost muscle memory reaction, and then one day, it actually happened at high altitude and the training paid off. My FO remarked to me that the whole event seemed so calm and benign – he had thought such an event would be panic and chaos, but, again, it was the FSI training that allowed us to react in a calm and calculated manner.
I elected to write this email after a discussion with another pilot who was chiding me for not trying to troubleshoot what was causing the depressurization event before commencing the emergency descent, but one of the FAA guys pointed out to me that had I delayed my response to this event, the ending result could have been very different. Tragically different. Thus, I decided to write this email to you all.
I have been under the instruction of quite a few FSI instructors, but there are a few that have become my aviation mentors and over the years I have reached out to them frequently for their advice and wisdom and they have played a huge part in shaping the pilot I am today. While I am not even a scratch compared to the calibre of pilot they are, I would like to recognize them and their input and training that allowed me to react in the way I did when I experienced this event: Allan McVicker, John Fox, Blaine Bacchus, James Brewer, Mitch Lyons, and Timothy Owen. In some sense, I feel I owe my life to these individuals because of their genuine concern for me personally and their passionate pursuit of excellence in aviation training and ensuring that I am prepared for events such as what I experienced.
Thank you for taking the time to read my email and for the excellent training you provide to all of us in aviation.
With kindest regards and much appreciation,
Ken Evers Director of Safety Burgess Aircraft Management/OzAir Charter Service
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