Emergency. Electrics failure part one. Cessna 303

Had a major emergency in the twin over France. Lost all electrics (nav equipment, radios, lights, de-icing equipment, tansponder,flaps, fuel pumps, stall warner, engine instruments, fuel guages, landing gear indication e.t.c) and had to navigate VFR, at night, in icing from France to UK using a compass! Thank god for ELTs and mobile phones!! This first video is just a quick introduction to the dark cockpit.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Mayday
• emergency
• electric
• cessna
• twin piston

[cvemery1]

We did land once we found a suitable runway. December, at midnight, most fields were closed and covered with snow. We navigated vfr. Yup the engine instruments fail. The only one working was the MAP guage because its based on pressure. RPM guage was electric. If you think its fake maybe you should look up the Flight International article about it as we did such a good job!

[JWY]

Land. If this happened, land. Flying on to the destination would be a foolish risk. Get out the map and/or portable gps and find the nearest field likely to be of help. IFR requires lights, transponder, radios and directional gyros, not to mention some sort of navigational aids like vor. Some of these can fail without you needing to land - but everything? Land. You would seem to be one flashlight blub/battery away from disaster. I think the video is fake though (engine instruments don't fail).

[stratobee]

Good job! I had my instrument lights and all nav, landing lights fail twice on my old Aero Commander twin at night. Thankfully, my radios still worked as they're on a separate bus, but still quite sobering. This failure was far worse and you did a great job maintaining your cool!