The Day My Airplane's Brakes Failed and My Reaction..
It was a cold morning, and the plan was to fly south-east towards Florida and back from Atlanta Dekalb-Peachtree Airport. I went through the checklist and checked everything until it was time to check the brakes. Immediately after releasing the parking brakes while pressing the regular brakes, the airplane began rolling towards the taxiway, which is in the movement or active area. Thank God I had already requested permission to enter the movement area before doing the brake check, or I would have been in the active area without permission. Because there was no airplane crossing in front of me at the time, I can only thank God.
My reaction was to quickly pull the parking brake before the airplane gained momentum, and luckily, it stopped. While I was trying to figure things out, the control tower called and asked me to continue taxing because he had already sequenced another airplane behind me. I tried to be as calm as possible while I was telling them my situation. For a few moments, it felt like everybody stopped and all eyes were on me. I released the parking brakes again and started pumping the regular brakes really hard, but nothing happened, this time I was far into the movement area. I pulled the parking brakes again, and the airplane stopped.
After failing a second time, I gave up on trying to figure out what the problem was; I just confirmed to the control tower that I did not have brakes and I wanted to taxi back to the ramp. The safer way would've been to shut down the airplane right where it was and request a tow tug to push the airplane back to the ramp, but that cost money, and at the time the airport was so busy that meant I would have held a lot of airplanes behind me, so I decided to taxi back to the ramp with parking brakes.After I cleared the active area, I shut off the airplane, as I didn't want the parking brakes to fail either.
If you have any questions about this video or any aviation questions, you may ask me in the comments section of this video. I do respond to all comments.
Peace Be With You.