ASRS Reports

After reviewing the regulations I now realize that I did not follow the proper protocol. I learned that as PIC I should not have let anyone influence my decision to fly or not to fly no matter what implications it may have.

I asked my student “Did I miss anything? Did you hear him say he was taking off, departing, on the roll, or on the go for Runway 21?” My student didn’t hear anything of the sort either.

ATC asked the student pilot if he had the airport in sight, because after the incident he was flying away from the airport on the departure leg. I do not think the Tower Controller ever realized the mistake nor was the light aircraft pilot instructed to call the Tower. I believe Tower may have been “behind the plane.”

I believe the cause of this near mid air collision was the Tower Controller’s lack of situational awareness. I do not believe he knew we were both on the downwind until he made a mistake. There were two planes in the pattern and a small plane flying a practice approach inbound, as well as a jet inbound, which I believe led to task saturation for the controller and the loss of situational awareness.

This is a flight I have made multiple times and before the flight I updated my sectional chart and checked the airport NOTAMs before departure. At no point in that process did I realize a tower had been added to this airport.

Later in the day we found that our radio silence had rattled nerves and caused problems for the flight school. We spoke to the flight school manager and offered our apologies for causing a disruption.

Other planes begin yelling for me to go around.

I believe that “get-there-itis” (the airplane was due back at 0900 and I was worried about being late) tempted me to exit the runway while traveling a bit faster than I would normally do.

When I saw them in the left window, they were the same altitude less than a quarter mile turning towards us fast. They were in our blind spot as we were climbing (they were slightly higher). I cut power and did an emergency descent to the right to avoid getting hit.