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.
Hi, I am a CFI at a local flight school. I was training a client in a Piper PA-28-161. We were doing laps in the pattern working on his takeoff and landings.
On the second lap in the pattern, we cleared base, made a call, then turned. We didn’t see any traffic at this point.
As we were seconds away from turning final, we turned to clear extended final approach when a Cessna 172 came across our flight path, narrowly missing us.
Personally I think he was maybe 150-200 feet in front of us and he was slightly higher (maybe 100, not too positive). He made a straight-in approach, no radio calls, and just about caused a midair collision if we turned final four or five seconds earlier.
Luckily, since we were slightly below him, we flew underneath his flight path (he was ahead of us at this point), continued on base, turned on the depart leg then started a climb to get re-established in the pattern.
He made a touch and go and since we were at pattern altitude at midfield on the departure leg (much higher than he was) and there was no one on upwind, crosswind, or downwind, we just turned a modified crosswind and downwind to get ahead of him.
After a couple of more laps in the pattern with him making no radio calls, he started making radio calls, did maybe one or two more laps, then departed the pattern.
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and thought he didn’t have radios or didn’t have the correct frequency in, but after he made a radio call, I knew these were both false and he just neglected to make calls.
When I looked up the tail number, he is based out of a local towered airport, which means he has operable comms.
I truly think there was nothing more I could have done but I wanted it to be reported to bring awareness to midair collisions at uncontrolled airports since the accident that happened.
While radios aren’t necessary, I think use of them should be required and will make every airspace much much safer.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1933139
One item not mentioned in either the report or the comments is if the 172 had it’ lights on. The CFI reported that he and the student looked for traffic but failed to see the 172 on its final approach. A 172 is not a fast plane it was there. Landing lights, wig wags, strobes all help an aircraft to be seen. I find moving aircraft especially small white aircraft hard to spot against a cloudy, snowy, or even cityscape background can be very difficult to see. Never assume you have been spotted and never assume no one is there just because you looked.
Concur with George… many of the near-miss reports include the mention of seeing any high intensity flashing lights.
With various ambient conditions and proliferation of ‘visual ground clutter’… flashing strobes enhance visual-ID/tracking on/around an airfield.
And almost every aircraft in/out of production has high reliability strobes [Zenon flash-tubes] or extra-brilliant LEDs… not incandescent hot-white bulbs with insufferably short life spans.
Anti-collision lights ON = enhanced survivability
Anti-collision Lights OFF = Crap-shoot
The “offending pilot” could have been on the wrong frequency, or perhaps had some difficulty working a different nav/com. That doesn’t make him/her a “cowboy”.
I learned to fly in the early 70s in a high-traffic area, Anchorage, when each of our aircraft had one nav/com radio without flip/flop capabilities. It was easy to twist to the wrong frequency, although we got pretty adept at doing so. Then over the years, I flew more and more aircraft with complicated avionics, but all had some form of nav/com that was fairly easy to use as a transceiver, mostly King, Narco, and Honeywell. Many had flip/flop capabilities, and many had dual nav/coms.
I laid off flying for awhile, and then started up again about 19 years ago—and the first airplane I checked out in was a 172 with a Garmin 430 in it. That’s an ingenious box, but it’s anything but simple. I was OK with it until someone had fiddled with the settings before I took it up one day, and I couldn’t remember how to change the frequency to the local Unicom to transmit. So I flew the pattern for a few circuits without transmitting. Sounds stupid now, especially since I’m pretty adept at using the 430W in my own airplane, but at the time I felt it was better to fly the airplane than be distracted by fiddling with the radio.
So imagine that the “offending pilot” was somewhat unfamiliar with the avionics in the 172 he/she was flying and had some difficulty recalling how to change frequencies—or perhaps had dialed in the wrong one—and then realized his/her mistake and corrected it after a couple of circuits. If it can happen to an experienced pilot, it can certainly happen to a student. Aviation isn’t easy—it’s not always intentional flaunting of the rules or “cowboy” mentality that create conflicts. So keep your eyes open and your head on a swivel, especially in the pattern.
I will say this again, it is not a computer glitch of some type, but, how many pilots get ramp checked in a year? That we have so few that can say this is somewhat of an indication that the FSDOs are not doing their jobs.
There are too many near misses and actual collisions taking place. The collisions get the NTSB involved. But the FAA is absent.
And we have how many of these type incidents being posted here with various comments that in the long run don’t get published widely enough to make a difference?
When you have two flight schools close together and they use each other’s runways for practice, they need to be teaching their students to play by the rules — set the freq and communicate.
In many of these ASRS’s there is never any mention of using strobe lights in the pattern to enhance visibility at/around airfields… controlled or uncontrolled or private.
Variable visibility conditions, the clutter-of terrain and ‘stuff’ surrounding airfields, the routine urgencies of operating aircraft [piloting], etc… appear to demand we employ as much ‘bling and sparkle’ as we can put-into the environment. Radio calls, and strobes and eyes-out and a healthy sense of self preservation and focus are essential elements every where we fly.
Cowboys in the air. Like their namesakes of yore — running cattle across private property and cutting down fences — the cowboy mentality endures in the hearts of some people. How about air cops ready to take off after one of those cowboys with lights and sirens blaring to ground the offender and give him a ticket and possibly suspending his license on the spot? Law enforcement has a way of prompting ‘attitude adjustments’ in some folk’s behavior. Just saying… Seems like the Wild West up there. Sure, the tower giving out a phone number to the offender is a baby step, but cowboys blow that off as a nuisance. Need some teeth in rules enforcement in the air, by which I mean immediate action taken against offenders, not just a ‘good talking to’ and possible FAA license action months down the road.
Regards/j
Agreed. VFR is just that. Radios help a lot, especially when they are inbound and still not visible. Like our student lesson number one, keep those eyes out the window and not in the cockpit.
Statistics show that most midair collisions happen between radio equipped and communicating aircraft. Sometimes on different frequencies, sometimes on the same. Electronics, and especially deceptively distracting ADS-B, are NO SUBSTITUTE for vigilant traffic scan with the human eyeball. Always expect and anticipate conflicting traffic.
In my early flying days, 15 years ago and less than 500 hrs, I was flying to an airport in western Idaho with a CTAF of 122.7. My home base is 122.9. As I entered the pattern I was unknowingly on the wrong frequency, either .9 or .8 and I did the standard announcements as I entered the pattern. The radio was quiet and I didn’t see any other planes in the pattern but turning final I saw one ahead of me and then realized my mistake and dialed in the correct frequency. I was lucky things didn’t go south but I learned a big lesson that day. As new pilots with 50 hrs and a new pilot’s license we still have a lot to learn and I imagine many of us still wet behind the ears have made a few “dumb” mistakes as we get comfortable with this new world of aviation.
I agree with Tom Strong above, and that was my first thought for the report posted here. Most likely he never changed to the correct frequency upon arrival at this airport. Upon sighting the reporting aircraft in the pattern he corrected his oversight and began transmitting on the proper frequency.
Not good, and obviously creating a hazard, but guessing most have done such things somewhere along the way, including more than likely the reporting pilot.
Oh well, the offending party learned a lesson. Too bad the reporting guy/gal couldn’t do the same.