I would like to read about some major mistakes made by pilots at airports. My
dad is becoming a pilot and became highly discouraged for three reasons.
First, he made a right-hand turn in a left-wise circuit. Second, he climbed
1000 feet higher than he should have in the circuit, and lastly, he aligned
himself on the incorrect runway for landing. I want to encourage him because
he is thinking of giving up. He was majorly embarassed, needless to say. Are
these mistakes common, if so, should the pilot in command feel bad about these
errors. I would like to hear from others on bad experiences they’ve had with
flying and how they coped with those mistakes please. -Richard
31
Dec
Major errors made at airports?
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Richard Thompson <rthomp…@man.net> wrote:
>I would like to read about some major mistakes made by pilots at
>airports. My dad is becoming a pilot and became highly discouraged …
heh. You won’t have to look far. Pilots and ATC make mistakes all
the time (god, I hope wild bill doesn’t read this!). After all, they’re
human. How often do you get 100% on your tests in school?
The mistakes your dad made are really minor. Airliners have landed
at the wrong airport, taken off when they weren’t supposed to (tenerife),
flown at the wrong altitude + encountered cumulo granite (kathmandu),
etc etc etc.
More experienced pilots are used to student pilots flying, um,
suboptimally. After all, everyone was a student pilot once.
No flight is perfect, but the idea is to try real hard to only make new
mistakes. Small ones, preferably.
–
#include <std.disclaimer>
In article <rthompson.23.00106…@man.net>,
Richard Thompson <rthomp…@man.net> wrote:
>I would like to read about some major mistakes made by pilots at airports. My
>dad is becoming a pilot and became highly discouraged for three reasons.
>First, he made a right-hand turn in a left-wise circuit. Second, he climbed
>1000 feet higher than he should have in the circuit, and lastly, he aligned
>himself on the incorrect runway for landing. I want to encourage him because
>he is thinking of giving up. He was majorly embarassed, needless to say. Are
>these mistakes common, if so, should the pilot in command feel bad about these
>errors. I would like to hear from others on bad experiences they’ve had with
>flying and how they coped with those mistakes please. -Richard
I might as well tell of my latest mistake (oh no!). I was doing circuits at
CYOW on runway 35. ATC will change the direction of ciruit almost every time
you do a touch and go, depending on traffic. We were practising cross-wind
landings, and my instructor was handling the radio while I concentrated on
trying (and failing) to stay on the centerline. Well, ATC told us to do a
right hand circuit (we’d been doing left) while we were on final. This
was my worst circuit yet, and I was quite high on the approach. Because
of many factors, we ended up ballooning badly, and did a go around. I hadn’t
heard ATC request the right hand circuit, and my instructor was busy having
a minor heart attack, so I proceeded left. Shortly thereafter, ATC
pointed out that we probably should have turned right if we intended on
doing a right hand circuit. They then pointed out that a Dash 8 on runway
32 was being held up while we crossed the end of the runway. Ooopps.
Well, I still owe my instructor a beer for that one…
By the way, tell your dad to keep trying…
John
jcla…@bnr.ca
tell your dad not to worry. the only way that he will never make another
mistake as a pilot is if he quits flying. like the last post said, pilots
and atc are humans and they always will and have made mistakes……i was
listening to my scanner at the airport the other day and heard a guy in a
bonanza land on a closed runway. this wasn’t a temp closure either, no
markings, weeds growing through it etc etc, closed for at least 10
years…….and im sure he had some time in his log book since he was
flying a complex……im sure that there isnt a pilot around that can’t
think of something stupid that they did when they were learning to fly.
he is only learning to fly, and you learn from your mistakes.
In article <rthompson.23.00106…@man.net> rthomp…@man.net (Richard Thompson) writes:
>I would like to read about some major mistakes made by pilots at airports. My
>dad is becoming a pilot and became highly discouraged for three reasons.
>First, he made a right-hand turn in a left-wise circuit. Second, he climbed
>1000 feet higher than he should have in the circuit, and lastly, he aligned
>himself on the incorrect runway for landing. I want to encourage him because
>he is thinking of giving up. He was majorly embarassed, needless to say. Are
>these mistakes common, if so, should the pilot in command feel bad about these
>errors. I would like to hear from others on bad experiences they’ve had with
>flying and how they coped with those mistakes please. -Richard
Richard,
Tell your dad to take heart. I remember making a very similar error
once. Shortly after getting my private ticket, I moved to Miami and
was flying out of Tamiami airport. I had just checked out in a new airplane,
too, and it was my first time being based at an airport with a control tower.
Although I felt fairly confident, the combination of new, rather congested
airport, new airplane, the fact that I only had < 100 hours, etc. worried me
a bit. The second time I went to fly, I took my mom and dad and was going
to shoot some touch and gos. Tamiami has a set of parallel runways, and
that day 27L and 27R were both in use. Although I took off on 27L, the
controller was trying to move all touch and go traffic to 27R. On downwind,
he asked me to make a left base to 27R. However, he seemed to forget about
me, and never cleared me to land. As I turned final, I was just preparing
to confirm that I was cleared, when he told another plane he was cleared for
takeoff. Now this plane was not even in position and took his sweet time
getting onto the runway. It was not a really difficult situation, but it
was the first time since training that I had had to prepare for a REAL go-around. Of course, this is a task that one practices over and over, but until you
do it the first time with radio chattering a mile a minute, flying a non-std.
pattern at a new airport, etc. , it’s not apparent just how quickly you must
make decisions. I was completely flustered seeing that airplane pull out
on my runway. It took me much longer than it should have to make my
go-around decision.
Just before touching down, I executed a go-around. Moments
later the controller remembered me and called ‘go-around’, but I was already
going. Being cautious not to get too close to the airplane who cut in front
of me, but still thinking about making left traffic to 27L, I completely forgot
I was on the right side and began to make a left turn. This time, though,
the controller was on his toes and caught me before I could cross the
departure path of the other runway. It was not the most graceful go-around,
but I certainly learned a lot from the experience. On top of that, later on
I was asked by the controller to do all kinds of other hijynx in the pattern,
including returning to the left runway again, doing some 360s, extending
downwinds, etc. This time I was ready, handled it all OK, and after I landed
the tower controller commended me on my subsequent pattern work and thanked
me for all the help. Tell your dad that he’ll have good days and bad days.
Mistakes are inevitable. All it takes to persevere is reverence for sky
and airplane, and a desire to learn as much as possible, even if by error,
about both.
–
Mike Reed >>>> Internet: gt25…@prism.gatech.edu
ab…@qnx.com (Andrew Boyd) wrote:
> No flight is perfect, but the idea is to try real hard to only make new
> mistakes. Small ones, preferably.
When I took my private checkride, the examiner said to me something like,
"Don’t worry about making mistakes. I’ve made all of them, at least the
small ones".
–
Roy Smith <r…@nyu.edu>
Hippocrates Project, Department of Microbiology, Coles 202
NYU School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
"This never happened to Bart Simpson."
Well as long as you don’t make the error one of our Usenet avaition
pilots made, you’ll be OK. He is a very sharp guy and learned to fly
and got his instrument rating in about 150 hours. Was really quick
and able to do things without lots of delay…until one day in
the pattern the tower asked him to please expedite and cut his
pattern and land quickly so the following traffic would not have
to circle. He cut his pattern tight, dropped all the flaps and
put the Arrow down…on the belly…and closed the airport for
an hour until they could get the plane off the runways (he managed
to have it stop right at the intersection).
Me, I’ve managed to be on downwind for an international airport
(they vectored me there) and still not be able to find the
runway until they turned on the approach lights..dumb, but
no real problem. I also had the airshow announcer ask if I
could log three landing when I bounced (but good) coming into
a Lindberg Days Fly In…embarrasing!
–
Alan L. Peterman (503)-684-1984 hm & work
a…@qiclab.scn.rain.com Tigard, Oregon 97224
As I get older the days seem longer and the years seem shorter!
Not really an error but an embarassment. I used to fly
a Cherokee 180 C (Hershy bar wing archer). They
had nonpositive locking doors (just a cam not a real latch).
So the door had this tendency to pop open in flight.
This got even worse in cold weather and on takeoff at gross
(The fuselage shrank and twisted and popped the door).
Anyway, I was at gross at Minneapolis International about -20F
taxiing for takeoff in a line of 727′s. Finally I am cleared for
takeoff so I takeoff the door pops open, I land (and tell tower
what I am doing), slam the door and take off again all
on the same runway.
My biggest error happened when I was training happened at the end of my
second solo X-country flight. I had had a really enjoyable time,
check-points coming up exactly on time, radio-work was starting to come
together everything seemed cool. As I returned to my base airport I
called for joining instructions and was given a straigt in clearance.
I did all my pre-landing checks, got nicely established on final and
was tracking the centre-line (though with a lot of drift to the left)
at 70kts the nose of my 172 was probably on a heading of 270 for an
approach to runway 23!
As I called the tower that I was established on final he cleared me to
land and gave me the wind, which I ignored because by this time I was
concentrating so hard on keeping my approach good in this cross-wind.
I touched down and immediately the trusty 172 started skittering about
all over the place, at one point I was on the left-main and nose-wheel
with the right wing (into wind) and tail high off the ground I was
absolutely convinced that I was going to crack up and simply reacted on
the controls without thinking, countering the by now violent gyrations
of the aircraft.
After what seemed an age I was down to walking pace, the plane still
felt skittery and hard to steer, I was convinced that I had seriously
damaged the nose-gear in my attempts to keep the plane on the ground.
I taxied back to the ramp veeerrrrrryyyyy sllllooowwwlllllyyyy!
When I got out my instructor was waiting for me, he had been monitoring
me on the radio and told me that the wind equated to a 23kt cross-wind
with gusts up to 35kts! The cessna I was flying had a demonstrated
cross-wind limit of 17kts!!!!
Fortunately there was no damage to the plane, we gave it a thourough
check. If there had been I guess the insurance would not have covered
it because I had screwed-up and landed outside the cross-wind limits.
This really brought home to me the importance of trying to stay cool
and not to allow the concentration on one task to blot out another.
I believe/hope that if a similar thing happened to me now I would be
more aware of what was going on around me and so able to identify the
potential problem early enough to do something sensible (in this case I
should have paid attention to ATC who were giving me valuable
information, aborted the landing and gone an found an alternate with
better winds or an into-wind runway!).
Flying aeroplanes is not the same as driving a car, if things go wrong
you can’t stop and think it over, but this is both the challenge and
the fun of it. I hope you dad doesn’t give up because he made a
mistake, everyone does at some time, the important part is to learn
from it. I often wonder if the people that you read about who die
because the continue VFR into IMC or aerobat a plane not cleared for it
do so because they didn’t make enough mistakes when they were training
and so think that they are invulnerable.
I’m still very inexperienced <100hrs total, and am sure that I’ll get
, I
things wrong in the future, though hopefully not the same things
learned to treat aviation with more respect because of my experience, I
hope your dad does the same.
——————————————————————–
Dave Farely EMail d…@ios.softwright.co.uk
——————————————————————–
In article <240868056…@iosltd.demon.co.uk>, da…@iosltd.demon.co.uk wrote:
> Fortunately there was no damage to the plane, we gave it a thourough
> check. If there had been I guess the insurance would not have covered
> it because I had screwed-up and landed outside the cross-wind limits.
[Nice story!]. Though I think the 23G35 kt that you refer to in your
article is a bit stiff, it’s worth pointing out that the "maximum
demonstrated crosswind component" in the POH is *not* a *limitation* and
so it’s not *illegal* to exceed it. Whether it’s a condition of you
insurance that you obey it is another matter (unlikely I would think).
Other limits (max takeoff weight, max speeds etc.) *are* legal limitations
which appear in the POH or on the C of A).
Julian Scarfe
ja…@cus.cam.ac.uk
Richard Thompson (rthomp…@man.net) wrote:
What the heck. Finally a post that I can add to. :)
Tell your dad that it happens after you get your ticket too. In
my case "right" after.
I had to fly about 2 hours from my home airport to the examiners
on the day of my checkride. Got there went through the oral exam
and then an approximately 2 hour check flight. We get back and
the DE tells me congrats you passed let’s write up you license.
I walk out SOOOOOOO proud. Do another very careful preflight,
hop in and head for home. About 10 minutes into the flight I
realize, SHIIIIIIIIIIIT (standard pilot response I’ve been told)
I forgot to taxi to the FBO and fill up. Get my E6B out and do
some calculating. Figured it’d be REAL embarrising to return with
less than reserve left and even more so if I ended up in some
field 20 miles short of home.
Turned back and stopped at an airport about 15nm from where I
departed. Didn’t want to go back to the airport with the DE.
He had a radio with airport traffic on it! :) Turns out that
the FBO I stopped at was owned by the DE and he had flown over
there right after my test. He got quite a chuckle out of it.
Jeff
***************************************
* /~-__ Jeff West – Sr. Test Eng. *
* { x }/ Cray Research, Inc. *
* \ / Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin *
* |___| jw…@els.cray.com PPSEL *
***************************************
rthomp…@man.net (Richard Thompson) wrote:
>I would like to read about some major mistakes made by pilots at airports. My
>dad is becoming a pilot and became highly discouraged
My personal favorite:
A C172 with a student pilot is in the taxiway awaiting departure, with a
B737 behind him. When tower tells the C172 to backtrack (back-taxi for
you Americans) to position 33 the pilot enters the runway and turns the
wrong way, heading for the button of 15. Tower points out to the pilot
that he is headed for the wrong end of the runway, and suggests maybe an
intersection departure would save the pilot from having to turn around.
After the C172 departs, tower clears the B737 to backtrack to position 33.
You guessed it– after watching and listening to the above, the B737 pilot
*still* manages to enter the runway and turn the wrong way. Needless to
say, the B737 did *not* want an intersection departure, and had to do a
big one-eighty on the runway right in front of the terminal building.
–
Chris Rasley
ATC (CZQM ACC), Private Pilot, Computer Geek.
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.
My opinions only. If you want an *official* interpretation, ask elsewhere.
In your request for exeriences, here are a few words.
First, student pilots do make mistakes. Exerienced pilots also
make mistakes. We are all human. Once while in the pattern and on
final I witnessed an individual taxiing onto the active runway in
opposition to the traffic pattern. With seven airplanes in the
pattern at a small municiple airport, this caused quite a tangle.
Not only are there students who make mistakes, but there are foolish
people who do not regard basic safety. An individual should be
thinking well ahead of his or her aircrft. Know where your plane is
to be and when. Start with yourself. Are you mentally alert as you
are preparing to fly? I have on a few occations found myself behind
the "eight ball". Although I felt fine, I wasn’t as alert as could
have been. Radio calls, traffic patterns, preflight are but a few
things to think about. Above all els, you must fly the plane.
As for mistakes, I once took off after being cleared by ground.
Although that was with cooperation from the tower, it was to say
questionable. I also switched frequecies without permission, not
being comfortable with situation, and received clearence to land
at one airport before being released from control of the first.
If that wasn’t enough, it gets better. An inbound jumbo was about
to execute a missed approach and that would have been awfully close.
This was dispite tha fact that I couldn’t see him due to varying
clouds. To sum this situation up, I was low and slow with no radio.
I just want to say that I have seen others make mistakes and have
made a few of my own. Let he that has not sinned cast the first
stone. Keep Flying.
jw…@cray.com (Jeff West) wrote:
>Richard Thompson (rthomp…@man.net) wrote:
>What the heck. Finally a post that I can add to. :)
>Tell your dad that it happens after you get your ticket too. In
>my case "right" after.
And just before to. I walk in to take my check ride, went through all
the standard questions and flight planning, during the review of my
Log book we discovered that one of my cross countries was only 48nm
instead of the required 50. The examiner ask me if I wanted to go on
with the test, but he would not give me my license until I completed
the Cross country requirements. I only had 9 hours instead of the
required 10. I took the remainder of the test and passed. Shortly
after the exam My instructer signed me off for a short cross country
of about 70nm. The next morning I depart on the flight. As a low time
pilot I was haveing difficulty relating the size of a feature on a map
to the size of the feature on the ground. about 2/3rds through the
flight i was looking for a small body of water for a checkpoint. It
was about 5 min late showing up. and looked rather large. The next
check point was my destination itself. It also was about 7 min late
showing up. I arrived over the town and began looking for the airport.
No airport, I couldn’t find anything that looked like an airport. the
town had a population of only about 300 to 500 peaple. As did my
destination. So there wasn’t much place for it to hide. I finally
circle the town dropped to an altitude of a few hundred feet and
followed a major road into town. Just before enter then town I spotted
a sign. The only word I could read on the sign was HALFWAY. Great,
halfway from where. I reverted to my backup plan. Climb to about
10,000 in a 152, and intercept the nearest VOR for a postion fix and
possibly fly to it as it had an airport at the VOR station. While
doing the climbing circles to get to an altitude where I could recieve
the VOR and get out over the surrounding mountains. I began looking at
my sectionals, starting at my destination and running my finger
arround in increasingly larger circles to find anything on the map
thatllooked familiar. Final about 35 miles out from my destination I
found a small town called HALFWAY. I had managed to fly down the wrong
side of a mountain range. I finaly climbed high enough to cross the
range and sure enough on the other side was my destination. The whole
time I am thinking all I have to do is make this one short cross
country to get my license. All my other cross counties had gone great.
So I have to get lost on this one.
Brian