A pilot in Powell River, British Columbia encountered the very definition of a close call a couple of weeks ago while on short final for the airport there. As he approached the threshold in his Cessna 172, another 172 descended in front of him, missing a collision by not very many feet. The pilot hit the gas and overflew the other Cessna as his passenger recorded it all. They went around and landed and discovered the other pilot was still on the ground.
I hope the pilot and passenger filming this had a spare change of underwear with them! Unfortunately, virtually all GA aircraft have that blind spot below them that can completely obscure a plane beneath you. ADS-B anyone?
I never really understood the âsee and avoidâ mantra, as if it had serious significance. While I do agree one should definitely look outside the aircraft while flying, I fail to see the weighted significance it is given considering all of the variables involved. How many times has ATC given you altitude and distance of a converging object that you have never see as it passes you? âNo factor.â
Iâd say âsee and avoidâ alone is less than 10% effective most of the time, even in the pattern. Now, the combination of ADSB and see and avoid is a different story.
âanother reminder that âsee and avoidâ doesnât really work.â
This was a student PILOT failure, not a see and avoid failure.
See and avoid works when you use your standard pattern entry points and standard altitudes and standard approaches and use the radio and use ADS-B and fly defensively.
When someone ignores the AIM and simply points their plane down at some airport, then they are a menace to everything else in the air. Birds too.
Agreed⌠and Iâll go a step further and say that if Iâm the CFI of the student pilot, it was MY failure. Iâm not certain what the best method of teaching the necessities of following proper AIM procedures, but Iâm going to use this video as part of the process.
A related side note: I recall some the âoldâ pilots grumbling and pontificating about the ADS-B requirement when it was on the verge of becoming (nearly) mandatory. I donât hear much complaining anymore. Even after many years of instructing, I still have problems spotting other aircraft, particularly when Iâm trying to instruct. Yes, I use all the recommended visual spotting procedures, but ADS-B has been a very definite safety factor improvement for me and my students. It wonât prevent the clueless (or worse) NORDO pilot in a vintage airplane from making a blundering pattern altitude airport transition at right angles to downwind a football field distance in front of us (I DID manage to see that one⌠and I keep clean underwear in my desk drawer just in case), but ADS-B has been very useful.
Flying has never been without risk. You can follow all of the rules and be just as dead as the person who doesnât.
I had a similar experience happen when I was a student pilot. I was correctly flying a RIGHT pattern for the designated runway and made radio calls on unicom. But the other guy made an incorrect LEFT pattern, no radio call, and zoomed in front of me. I was WAY more upset than he was, and he was a certificated pilot flying a low wing plane, said he never saw me.
Several comments here about ADS-B, but not sure why the commenters assume these aircraft were not ADS-B equipped - I donât think we know one way or the other.
Having instructed for a while in the ADS-B era, I can assure you that most pilots are not looking at or listening to traffic displays on final approach and in the landing flare, and near misses (and collisions) still happen even to ADS-B equipped aircraft. TIS is a nice risk mitigation tool, but it doesnât magically fix everything. As one of the guys still advocating for âsee and avoidâ, Iâd say the point is not that itâs better than TIS, but only that the more you look, the more your risk is reduced, even with TIS technology.
Agree. God willing I will pass my CFI checkride on 6/19 and my CFII checkride soon after that and scenarios like this are one of the things that stress me as I assume a new advocation.
Hmm, âsee and avoidâ has worked just fine for over a century. Do we have additional tools/toys that might enhance S&A? Sure, but Iâm far more concerned with some knob-twiddler, head-down in his electronic toys, who doesnât bother to keep a decent scan of his surrounding airspace. Every aircraft (except Wonder Womanâs) has blind spots. Itâs our job to minimize them, for our own sake.
Iâm just a low time pilot, a tad over 2500 hours. I currently operate out of an uncontrolled field that has two skydiving operations. Every year there is some amount of turnover of pilots just wanting to put in time. They might of heard of the AIM, but generally think of this airport as the wild wild west and anything goes in the pattern. There have been some close calls and just about every year the airport manager has to have a talk with one or more of those pilots.
I use ADS-B and the radio for big picture information. But coming up to the pattern, pattern entry and in the pattern, it is 100% eyes outside. Due to latency, ADS-B is of no benefit in close to the airport.