This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
While on an instructional flight, in preparing my student to navigate from ZZZ to ZZZ1 and then return (for an upcoming student solo cross-country) we had completed the arrival and full stop and reviewed getting into and out of a non-towered field.
We were departing the ZZZ1 airport vicinity, turning south on to the ZZZ VOR on an approximate 178/182 heading and tuning the comm radio to the weather for ZZZ when the Garmin 430 alerted us to a traffic alert, which we noted a plane traversing from east to west (we were essentially southbound over the highway around the north side of the stripped fields practice area).
The L3 Transponder reported they were -300 feet and we immediately initiated a climb. We noted they did not seem to have taken evasive maneuvers and no other traffic was apparently affected.
We were not able to get a tail number, only observing that it was a white with blue trim Cessna single engine fixed gear airplane.
We continued without incident to ZZZ and landed normally.
Reason for report: Though I understood this to be a see and avoid Class G area, and we could not get on the practice area frequency quick enough to announce our position and intentions, we heard a transmission on the Tower frequency for ZZZ as we were entering the Delta airspace from another plane reporting they were nearly hit in the same vicinity that we were in.
The pilot and I were not acting reckless, careless, or with disrespect to other aircraft or safety in so much as we took this as a learning point during the debrief so he could completely understand what had happened during our flight. We reviewed the option that we could have climbed to a higher altitude before turning south as an alternate option to avoid such a situation as well as monitoring traffic and understanding the see and avoid concerns of high intensity practice areas.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1887179
Maybe I missed the point. A plane flew by.
I think I need more coffee.
Just tell it like it is and quit all the ZZZ crap. You say that ZZZ is a nontowered airport but ZZZ is. Zee and avoid. Does you craft have windows? Just saying.
“Though I understood this to be a see and avoid Class G area…”
It’s ALL “See and Avoid” airspace…
if you are in VMC…
Another scenario where ‘redacting’ the airport names limits the utility value of the report.
What did pilots do before ADS-B? I hope they were looking OUTSIDE the airplane and not watching TV inside. I learned to fly at age 14 in a glider and was taught to look outside for traffic ( especially while thermalling where multiple gliders are circling in tight circles near each other). I have noted while flying in airplanes equiped with ADS-B that the pilot(s) is/are fixated on the ADS-B screen and are “surprised” when an airplane is within 500′ of them. Look outside!
Define designated practice area, frequency, and separation requirements in G airspace around a non towered airport. Perhaps calling ahead for reservations would help your plight.
What’s a practice area? I don’t see any on the sectional charts. And a practice area frequency? Don’t see that either. This is obviously a failure to see and avoid on by both pilots. Seems pretty obvious that the person writing the article was watching the screen and not looking outside.
Sounds like they were with one of the large flight schools. They have their self designated practice areas and frequencies for coordination but the rest of the world has no knowledge of such things. As was pointed out by many others, keep your head out of the cockpit and actually look for traffic, ADSB is a crutch and you cannot always count on it. That sounds like the sort of attitude that would exist at one of those large flight schools where the instructors tend to come from their own ranks. They are just building time for that airline job and never have been out in the real world where you are on your own.
Alert Areas on sectional charts are sometimes used as practice areas.
Great… near miss story…typical one pilot wants to get other pilot in trouble with FAA …but he didn’t get the [tail Numbers]….awww too bad.