Narrative:

It was an early morning departure. The pilot flying was one of our normal contract pilots with 38 years experience and has always been a top notch professional that I have flown with for years. I was the captain and PNF in the right seat. It was still dark the bases of the ceiling was 900 ft and I believe the tops were 4500 ft. We were cleared for takeoff on runway 28L cleared on course to lancaster; PA; to maintain 4000'. Pilot flying instructed me; after the gear was retracted; to select heading and altitude select on the flight director which is what I did. At 400 ft I was instructed to set climb power which I accomplished as he started his turn. He rolled wings level at a 240 degree heading which is the heading lansing gives us most of the time; he quickly remembered that we were cleared direct so he reached to turn the heading knob to the correct heading which is 117 degrees (heading knob is under pilots ADI so co-pilot does not turn this for the pilot). As he continued the turn (we were already in clouds) I selected direct/enter on the GPS to align the course. At that moment the pilot stated that there is something wrong and is quite alarmed. I look up to see what his problem is and I see we are in a steep bank and he appears confused as to whether to believe what he is seeing. He later said he thought he had an inverter or an instrument failure. I was confused as I had my head down prior to this; and I had to scan back and forth to finally realize that the left side and the right side are indicating the same. By this time a rapid descent had begun and I grabbed the yoke and assisted in rolling the wings level and pulling up. Due to the stress of the situation we ended up shooting to 4300' and then corrected back to 4000'. The estimated lowest altitude was 2000 ft and bank angle around 40 degrees. The pilot flying said that when he looked up after rotating heading knob to 117 degrees saw that the flight director bars indicated the need for a steeper bank and then a descent and during that process did not recognize that this was going to be too steep and that we still needed to climb and then got totally confused. I did not see the command bars do this as I had my head down. It looked to me as if; due to the confusion; he kept trying to turn the aircraft in the wrong direction and could not figure out why this was happening. I had a moment of confusion since he stated that there was something wrong and that; therefore; there must be and my mind was trying to figure out what instead of accepting the obvious that he turned too steep for whatever reason which I feel delayed me in recovering quicker. Our procedures are now changed pilot not flying will be on instruments as well until 5000 ft. This was to us a simple departure that we have been doing for years routinely and due to a possible distraction of the flight director system could have been disastrous.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A King Air flight crew suffered a momentary loss of aircraft control due to disorientation.

Narrative: It was an early morning departure. The pilot flying was one of our normal contract pilots with 38 years experience and has always been a top notch professional that I have flown with for years. I was the Captain and PNF in the right seat. It was still dark the bases of the ceiling was 900 FT and I believe the tops were 4500 FT. We were cleared for takeoff on Runway 28L cleared on course to Lancaster; PA; to maintain 4000'. Pilot flying instructed me; after the gear was retracted; to select heading and altitude select on the flight director which is what I did. At 400 FT I was instructed to set climb power which I accomplished as he started his turn. He rolled wings level at a 240 degree heading which is the heading Lansing gives us most of the time; he quickly remembered that we were cleared direct so he reached to turn the heading knob to the correct heading which is 117 degrees (heading knob is under pilots ADI so Co-pilot does not turn this for the pilot). As he continued the turn (we were already in clouds) I selected direct/enter on the GPS to align the course. At that moment the pilot stated that there is something wrong and is quite alarmed. I look up to see what his problem is and I see we are in a steep bank and he appears confused as to whether to believe what he is seeing. He later said he thought he had an inverter or an instrument failure. I was confused as I had my head down prior to this; and I had to scan back and forth to finally realize that the left side and the right side are indicating the same. By this time a rapid descent had begun and I grabbed the yoke and assisted in rolling the wings level and pulling up. Due to the stress of the situation we ended up shooting to 4300' and then corrected back to 4000'. The estimated lowest altitude was 2000 FT and bank angle around 40 degrees. The pilot flying said that when he looked up after rotating heading knob to 117 degrees saw that the flight director bars indicated the need for a steeper bank and then a descent and during that process did not recognize that this was going to be too steep and that we still needed to climb and then got totally confused. I did not see the command bars do this as I had my head down. It looked to me as if; due to the confusion; he kept trying to turn the aircraft in the wrong direction and could not figure out why this was happening. I had a moment of confusion since he stated that there was something wrong and that; therefore; there must be and my mind was trying to figure out what instead of accepting the obvious that he turned too steep for whatever reason which I feel delayed me in recovering quicker. Our procedures are now changed pilot not flying will be on instruments as well until 5000 FT. This was to us a simple departure that we have been doing for years routinely and due to a possible distraction of the flight director system could have been disastrous.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.