As soon as i took off at 1200 feet i was about to enter a cloud, so i decide to remain visual and request early right turn then fly overhead the aerodrome, the tower approved me to turn right, however there is other traffic incoming for an instrument approach. That traffic establish contact with tower and was saying that he was at long final. The radio call was "Biak tower, Papa kilo whiskey (PKW), establish NDB approach long final seven thousand feet.. uuummmmm.. seven thousand..uuummm seven hundread feet". than the tower reply "Papa kilo whiskey you are clear for NDB approach, report when visual" then he replied "Wilco, papa kilo whiskey "

From that radio call i assume that he is at long final, at an altitude of seven thousand seven hundred feet and i believe that the tower is also assuming that he is at long final 7700 feet. So it is safe for me to fly overhead the aerodrome at 1000 feet. At that time, there is a cloud at about same level as me and i requested to fly low to avoid that cloud then i descend through 500 feet. As i descending, suddenly the incoming aircraft was already at 700 feet, we are only 200 feet separation so i avoid the traffic and i could hear the tower was shouting at me saying "alpha mike bravo, have you got your traffic in sight..???!!!" and i replied " traffic insight alpha mike bravo..!!" then i pull up and i thought i nearly collide with that aircraft, but i wasn't, i can avoid him and continue with the flight, but then the tower was so angry with that aircraft why is he saying that he is at long final 7000 feet instead of final 700 feet. That aircraft was maintaining MDA since he got to final until he flew overhead the aerodrome. The tower had no radar so he can only make separation according to the aircraft position reporting. After i land safely at my destination, i heard the pilot of PKW was writing an incident report and investigate him of what happen at that time, i also have to write some report about that incident.

From the lesson I've learned the effective communication between me, the tower and that aircraft was not so effective, the tower was not aware of our separation and also the other aircraft was using non standard radio call phraseology, he should have said "Papa kilo whiskey is at long final seven thousand feet, correction final 700 feet" saying "uuummmm.. will make everyone confuse and from that words could lead to potential accident.

The pilot quickly went over his pre flight checks and taxied out to the runway where he gained clearance for take off. Everything was going well for him and he cleared the zone to the north on track to his destination. Approximately 20 - 25 minutes into the flight the pilot noticed a problem. It was a major problem and had the potential to kill him. At about that time into the flight the pilot noticed that the engine began to cut out intermittently. To his horror he realised that he was out of fuel!! At that point in time his limited training kicked in and he began looking for a suitable location to land. This served him well in that the engine cut out and the propeller windmilled. He began his forced landing technique and put out a mayday call.

From this point on, the pilot did everything seemingly perfectly. He successfully landed his aircraft and walked away uninjured. The matter was dealt with by the authorities in the correct manner.

So what caused this to happen? Employing Reasons 'Swiss Cheese' model, it is obvious that the active cause was a lack of preflight checking by the pilot. He should have included a basic fuel tank check. Clearly if he had done so he would have noticed that there was insufficient fuel to conduct the flight lawfully and safely. Going further back to the latent causes, it was apparent that fatigue had no part to play in this incident. The pilot had had enough sleep prior to the flight. What was not so apparent, but came out when he spoke to associates later, was that he had a social appointment at the destination once he arrived. He was very keen to meet up with his girl friend of the time. He had been told that there was enough fuel in the aircraft by a staff member. Unfortunately the staff member was talking about another aircraft entirely.

The cause was deemed to be the absence of a preflight check by the pilot… rightly so in my humble opinion.

Expertise and awareness (or situational awareness) are the two elements that make up competence. Obviously like any equation, any increase in either of the two elements corresponds to an increase in competence. Awareness is managed by communication. In respect to this incident, there are concerns as to the competence of the pilot that day as his situational awareness was poor. He relied on communication from a staff member without double checking it to be true (in terms of the fuel in the tanks). It could also be argued that the pilot has limited expertise as his experience levels were low at the time (just over 100 hours total flight time). With these two elements being adversely affected, is it any wonder this incident occurred? His competence was reduced before he even took off.

Managers of general aviation organisations (and others) must continually assess the situation around them. They must ensure that the people hiring their aircraft are sufficiently qualified, fit, and aware to do so. This incident ended fortunately in that nobody was injured or killed. The aircraft was even relatively undamaged. The basics of airmanship were not considered in this case by the pilot and he is lucky to be alive as a result. Nothing substitutes time taken to conduct checks properly.

It is true that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. I have every bit of respect for the pilot as a person and friend. He has learned some tough lessons directly through personal experience, however he has perhaps taught us all a lesson by his mistake that day. It sounds like such an incredible thing to forget, but it can happen. This pilot I am happy to say has gone on to complete his CPL/MEIR (Single pilot) and is now a captain in a major European airline. He is stronger for the experience, and so am I!

On the day, the weather was fine, the cloud was SCT at 3500 only the visibility is a bit of an issue due to hazy weather. I took off and the flight went well, i did a couple of landing and drop of some freight. On the way back, the weather got worse, hence i decide to proceed to an IFR flight, however the traffic was busy, i requested to the controller to climb up to 5000 feet, they said negative due to traffic i had to stay at an altitude of 2000 feet. Therefore i cannot proceed IFR, i cannot get above MSA and radio reception for my navigation instrument was out of range. Hence i stay on VFR flight.

The controller told me to maintain altitude and track, then i was cross checking with my VFR map, the MSA was not that high, so i suppose i can be safe if i maintain terrain clearance visually at 2000 feet. However the visibility got below VFR minima, then i was planning for plan B, i ask my self shall i continue or turn back..? but i look on the map, i have pass my point of no return then base on that information i decide to continue with the flight. Beside that the fuel also very limited, i did not get to refuel because the facility was broken. About 15 minutes prior to arrival, my visibility got below 5km and it was very frustrated, cockpit management become clutter, information processing start to decrease and situational awareness is reducing as well, i keep thinking of the limited fuel and stuck in a very bad weather, this affect my decision making. Then suddenly i saw a straight line on the distance, it has light on it then as i approach closer to the object i realize it got bigger and bigger, and i was doing a steep turn to the right to avoid the obstacle, it was a huge power line, i almost crashed into the power line. Lucky enough for me to react quickly of not keep eye balling to the object that gets closer and closer. I think it was a very frightening flight experience of nearly colliding with the power line. Hence i try to be more focus and increase the stress level, also increase my situational awareness, i try to map read and pin point my position on the map and find out the highest obstacle surrounding my routes and get help from the ATC to give me Radar vector. I manage to land safely, but it was a bad decision making to actually continue with the flight and forcing my self into danger situation.

From this experience, the lesson i learn is never force yourself to continue to destination if the weather is so bad on the arrival phase. It is better to divert or turn back, or maybe do a precautionary landing if fuel is insufficient. What i was thinking on that flight was, i did not want to turn back because i think the fuel was not sufficient and the distance was very close to my destination, so i can not be bothered to turn back i better finish up my last leg of flight, but it was a very bad decision making. High experience and become expert on the flight, expert on predicting the weather, expert with cockpit management, and managing the flight is very important for every aviator to ensure a safety flight.

Cheers

Thanks for reading my post. You might be correct about Massey offering trial flight these days. Is is just during the time I was there, I have never seen any trial flight customers, therefore I have assumed they are still not doing it.

I did mean my instruction was not fully understood by the student, because he did have trouble to understand me. Therefore I think it was important to my story.

Thanks again for reading my post.

""the first time forgien student
The student was from an other country with English was not the first language""

I don't know how above statement " foreign student, english was not the first language" is relevant to your story at all. Do you mean he did not understand your instruction and over rotated aircraft?

good story though about complacency

[In behalf of Yu Song, originally posted on 18 August 2010 under the category "Good GA airmanship".]

During my time in GA, I worked for a company operating twin piston engine aircafts. according to the company procedures, run ups should be done if the aircraft is parked for more than a few hours.

During my ab-initial training, the run ups were alway done at the corner of the airfield, face into wind. And during my line training with the company, because I was already a pilot, therefore common sense was up to us to find a suitable place for it. And after flying from the same airfield everyday, I have seen what others been doing and pretty much followed the more experienced pilots and picked the same spot.

On that particular day, I did the same as all previous runups taxied the aircraft once the engines were warm, to the corner of the tarmac, facing in to wind. the corner of the tarmac from my understanding is far enough from all hangers and buildings, and also far enough from the edge of the grass so the engines wont suck in any FOD. I runned them up at different power settings, cycled the props, and as I completed the checklist, I turn the aircraft around, and saw an airliner was boarding passengers, with the ground staff looking at me very carefully. Then I realised what I have done.

I did not take others into consideration, especially the boarding airliners behind my aircraft, all the noise and prop wash went straight to the passengers.

We all leant during our training that runups are to check if the engines are healthy or not, the areas chosen are more to protect the aircraft not running into buildings, hangers. And I have never thought about other parties on the apron area, thought about leave enough room for the other aircraft to start up and still be able to taxi behind me, but never thought about how my engine runs would effect their operations.

The fault was on me, and I was also told off by a local pilot straight after the event, and as I have leant, which is not written down anywhere: a good airman ship should be demonstrated from my part, to look after everything around me, not just my own engines.

Lesson learnt and thought might as well pass on to other GA pilots, because the last thing you want to do is get on the wrong foot of other operators.

That flight I took was the 3rd flight of the day. The student was from an other country with English was not the first language. Normally I let students do the take off, where I use my feet on the rudders to keep the aircraft straight, and as the airspeed gets higher, I would ask the student to gentally pull back on the control column, with my hand ready to ease back on the pressure as well if the student does not do so. Once again, normally I would help the students to rotate the aircaft, as they all a bit worried to have any control input during the trial flight.

This time, as I instructed to ease back on the control collumn, with my hand ready to help the rotate, the student suddenly pulled on the controls, the aircraft zoom into the sky with airspeed around 60 knots. This was not what I expected and definitely I have never encountered before. As the aircraft was already at full power for take off, with this sudden high nose attitude at low speed, I quickly changed my hand from helping to rotate to push the control forward, so to prevent the aircraft going into a stall.

As I was pushing forward, the first time forgien student must flet my pressure and continued pulling really hard to break out of my control. I started talking him through to release pressure and set the aircraft nose to a normal climb, while I was helping to avoid the aircraft stalling with my hand pushing on the controls.

This all happend in a matter of seconds and all no more than 50 feet above ground level. I was a little shaky after that, however, trying not to show any signs of anger or stress to the first time student just wanting to enjoy the ride.

Complacency of my part probably caused this incident, as this flight was the 3rd flight of the day, with previous flights include preflight briefing, debriefing and paper work, I was ready to just talk through a trial flight without any drama. Trial flights are the easiest flights to do as an instructor, normally end up with great customer satisfaction and feed back, rather than a lesson that has to be constructive with objectives and student progression.

Since then, I have been extremely caucious about all take offs, with my hand at a different position, in case of me taking over control, no matter is pulling back or pushing forward on the control collumn. Take off phase is just as important as landing, and just as dangerours, when this close to the ground. Therefore I can not be careless.

Lesson learnt, and it had never happened again.

A recreational GA pilot had rented a Robin from a flying school in Tauranga and was practicing aerobatics manoeuvres at a nearby training area. Whilst performing aerobatics at 5000 feet, the pilot suddenly found the controls to be completely locked, unable to control pitch and roll. This caused the pilot to enter a dangerous spin. The pilot managed to forcefully regain full and free motion of the control column and recover from the spin at 1000 feet agl.

After much investigation, a bent metal-cased pen was found on the floorboard of the aircraft and identified to have been the main cause of the mysterious locking of the controls. Whilst performing aerobatics, it was believed that the pen had managed to find it way under the dash (instrument panel) and wedge itself between the chain/cable that connects the control column with the ailerons and elevators.

Many students still do not understand the need to keep the interior of an aircraft clean, leaving all sorts of litter especially writing material and other stationery. This incident is clearly a good example of how a harmless pen could have cost an aerobat pilot his life.

I personally keep my pens and pencils clipped onto my clipboard during flight. I feel it is important for flight training institutions to make it a policy rather than simply 'good practice' to keep or remove all lose objects in the aircraft especially away from the control column.

There was an aircraft on short final, if i remember rightly, it was a Cessna 172. The tower was aware of us backtracking but did not ask us to expedite, even though we were already expediting because we knew there was traffic on finals. What alarmed us was the fact that the controller actually cleared the aircraft to land, even when we were about 30 meters from the exit of the runway.

From our position in the aircraft, it looked like the aircraft on finals was about 200-300 feet high, which means he was touching down soon, and it wasnt a very long runway, so if we did not hurry up, we would hope that the pilot in command of the aircraft on finals would have the common sense to go around instead of land as cleared to do so. Eventually we swung the aircraft off the runway and the aircraft landed.

Our instructor wasnt too happy but we did not pursue the matter. At the point of the incident, the fact that the other aircraft could land with us on the runway, I thought there were three solutions to this problem, firstly, the controller could have told the landing aircraft to go-around or expect late clearance. Secondly, the aircraft landing could have decided to go around themselves. Thirdly, we could have simply jumped on the radio and asked the aircraft to go around due to us being quite far from taxiway and them being quite close to the threshold.

He had calculated the flight off the dipsticks with a 30 min reserve and should have made the destination ok, except the dipstick was wrong. At some stage the aircrafts owner had replaced/re-marked the dipstick and made a mistake with the markings in the middle range. Very low quantities and above ~75% full were correct. But in the range of 25-75% full the dipstick overread.

This issue had been hidden by 2 factors- (1) normally the aero club used 45 min reserve rather than the 30min legally required and this had protected any number of flights. (2) the aircraft was usually flown with full, or near full tanks and often on long flights where leaning and altitude have a significant effect on fuel consumption. But in this case the four heavy POB, necessitated less than full fuel and weather dictated a lower, less efficent route.

There were two significant outcomes- the club revised it flight rules to reflect the 45min fuel reserve and we recommended that CAA impliment a requirement for fuel dipsticks to be calibrated, marked and date stamped when installed or made. This was not required before then.

An unrelated thought- the fuel load you suggest you had would be pretty normal for the lesson you describe. Depending on the size of the instructor and student or pilot and passenger you may not get much more onboard legally, and more fuel would only leave the trap for another pilot, who may be less aware.

After the engineers had inspected the tanks it was found that one of the fuel lines had been compromised during its last service and as such was completely blocked. Hence if i had continued the lesson for its full duration we probably would have made it to the harbour entrance but more than likely not the runway.

I believe this is an incident worth mention for several reasons, the first being that even though we were only going on a short flight to the training area i should have made sure we had the maximum allowable fuel which would have given us a safer buffer above what we actually had. Also even though we are advised as pilots not to completely trust our fuel gauges as they can often be unreliable, hence we use mental calculation of fuel remaining, if i had been paying more attention to the gauges i may well have spotted the problem before it almost became a disaster.

I also want to mention that in the flight school environment we are encouraged to have the aircraft pre-flighted, airborne and returned within the allowable time. The unfortunate part is that if for any reason the aircraft is returned late from the previous flight or the student has taken more time than usual to preflight or prepare, the reality is that we can be rushed and as such in order to maximise the lesson, there may not be time to consider for example (ensuring that we have maximum allowable fuel), even though we have more than the safe legal requirement.

Therefore as can be seen in this particular case, had we not been working to such a tight time schedule we would have certainly taken the time to fill the aircraft. As a result of this incident, i have since spoken to a CAA representative and was advised that the information could lead to an AD airworthiness directive being circulated to ensure similar situations do not arise. In the meantime there maybe other instructors or pilots that can learn from my very fortunate escape from a potentially fatal situation.

This incident happened a couple of years ago, and was followed up appropriately with CAA.
1. NEAR MISS
Auckland Tower cleared pilot from AA to Ardmore via Weymouth and was advised of a helicopter operating Papakura at 800ft. Pilot’s first call was “Weymouth tracking to Karaka 1000ft to join downwind runway 21, looking for helicopter”. At Karaka, with no visual of the helicopter, tracks towards Drury to stay well clear of traffic. Called at Drury to join downwind 21, and when abeam Papakura heard helicopter call “Papakura tracking to Hunua” – at this point should have been well clear. Tracked downwind for 21 and at Red Hill helicopter appeared at 1 oclock low, heading west. GA pilot entered steep climbing left turn to avoid collision and continued on to land at Ardmore.

[In behalf of tcl01, originally posted on 14 January 2009.]

Another instance, same problem. Two GA aircraft boarded and ready to start. In the background there is the hustle and bustle associated with two private planes who have landed, untold people milling around them, unloading and not paying any attention to the fact two aircraft are about to start and depart. Pilots are about to start their engines, when incredibly 3 people just walk right towards them and are only a matter of feet away from about to be fully operational aircraft. Pilots stop what they are doing and wait for these 3 to saunter to the gates, full of apology for walking through our busy operational space. They could have gone around the back of the aircraft by the fenceline and exited the field through a side gate. Or they could have waited with all their passengers at their aircraft for 2 minutes whilst the GA planes departed. Instead they chose to ignore what was going on, and walk straight into a potentially dangerous situation.

The lessons learned in all these situations

1. extreme vigilance when taxying in, and when about to start engines to taxy out
2. to watch out for people who will potentially approach an aircraft
3. to brief the people associated with the private flights of our movements and to direct them and their passengers to use the side exit
4. ops staff need to watch for people who look like they will make a move on an aircraft
5. to be aware that quite often people disregard or ignore, or are perhaps unaware of the extreme danger they place themselves in when they are around aircraft.
6. look left and right before starting engine/s to make sure no one is in your space
7. these incidents clearly demonstrate just how easy it would be for a nasty accident to occur
8. never assume anything when people are nearby to your aircraft
9. vigilance at all times!

[In behalf of tcl01, originally posted on 14 January 2009.]

Still, there's more:

at this particular field, the Westpac Rescue helicopter visits on a fairly regular basis to ferry patients to hospital in emergency situations. It has its own parking area. One particular day, it is parked, still running, for a quick turnaround when some people from a private plane approach its tail rotors on their way to exit the field - this was a close call, which saw Westpac doubling its parking area to force private planes further away from its operational area.

[In behalf of tcl01, originally posted on 14 January 2009.]

But that's not all…..

yet another busy day in GA. Yet another plane, another pilot, boarded ready to go - hands reaching for the start, when a person vaults the fence and runs at aircraft with arms waving to try attract attention of pilot - staff in hot pursuit with voices raised - luckily pilot spots this person and takes hands off start. Incredibly this person was also a pilot (private pilot), and also should have known better.

[In behalf of tcl01, originally posted on 14 January 2009.]

Another day in the life of a busy GA pilot who was about to complete his third rotation of the day. He had flown in, unloaded passengers and freight on what was another very hot and busy day. He had re-loaded his plane, and boarded his passengers and was about to start his engines when he looked to the left (hands on the start buttons) and saw a person shutting the door directly in front of the propeller! He immediately took his hands off the start mechanisms and got out of the plane to go check the door… By this time the person had scarpered through the gates and was busy trying to make a quick getaway. When ops staff caught up with him to discuss his inappropriate and dangerous behaviour - he just said, oh for goodness sakes, I know how to shut a door, I am a pilot. (a retired pilot - even so, he should have known better than to do what he did).

1. Luckily the pilot checked left and right before starting the engine
2. If he had not done so which I guess he might easily have missed seeing as it was hot, it was busy, he still had another 2 rotations to do, the person could have been decapitated - in front of his family, who he had opened the door to talk to, and probably to the utmost horror of staff who witnessed the event and not least of all to the pilot
3. People can do strange things around aircraft and vigilance is always necessary
4. Check left and right before starting ! this saved that man's life