Preventing Mid Air Collisions in the Pattern

R

Rambo

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So, I'm posting anonymously cause I don't want my current employer to find out I'm posting this stuff on the internet, but I'm curious what y'all think. Apparently we've had quite an uptick in near mid air collisions at our flight school recently. We primarily operate out of Class D airspace, but it definitely gets crazy busy every day. Helicopters in the pattern, corporate jets consistently flying in/out, and IFR, private, multi traffic, you name it--probably the busiest airport I've been to and you're consistently number 4 or 5 to land and there's a parallel that is just as busy.

Anyways, most of these near mid airs happen on final, so the school is proposing to create a SOP where once you've done 3 touch and goes, you have to do a full stop taxi back. The aim is to prevent instructors from teaching in the air to help create situational awareness. I'm curious what y'all see as the pros, cons, and externalities.

I think if instructors were to actually limit teaching while in the pattern, it would work. But, I'm sure the instructors who have made mistakes think they have situational awareness until they realize they've made a mistake... my point is, I don't think it'll actually limit teaching in the pattern.

What other alternatives are there? Would hate to criticize their ideas without having an alternative solution....
 
I don't see how that policy would help, and if it's as busy as you say may even exacerbate the traffic problem. I also don't see how it is beneficial to your students. I would go somewhere else to practice T&G's...
 
I am just a lowly sport pilot, but I was only shown 1 touch and go during training, all mine were full stop with taxi back to take off. This excludes emergency training and go arounds of course, but these were not touch and goes either, unless you count that one time I landed the plane 4 times before he yelled go around. :eek:

Also I was also taught the worse class room is the cockpit. The cockpit is where you demonstrate what you have learned on the ground. I know you are still learning as a student and yes I even asked questions in the pattern, but it was more like. Am I doing this correctly, as in altitude or speed or when to start the descent to properly manage airspeed and altitude for base to final.

So yes you are still learning, but the pattern is far from a good place to be learning new things. Unless it is how to prevent minor mistakes from turning into major mistakes that turn in mishaps, but then again most of this should be taught on the ground.
 
If it's really that busy, why are you doing traffic pattern training at that airport? Fly to another one nearby that's quieter. That's what I did during my training
 
Rambo said:
Anyways, most of these near mid airs happen on final, so the school is proposing to create a SOP where once you've done 3 touch and goes, you have to do a full stop taxi back. The aim is to prevent instructors from teaching in the air to help create situational awareness.
Click to expand...
Not sure how that solution would solve anything. Are the instructors only able to provide instruction AFTER the three touch and goes take place? If so, I’m not sure how you can prevent them from ‘teaching in the air’ that’s their primary job.

Flying is all about multitasking, so if the instructor and student can’t provide and receive instruction in the air without losing SA, than I think there’s other issues at hand. Like others have said, just go someplace else to work on takeoffs and landings...:dunno:
 
Rambo said:
So, I'm posting anonymously cause I don't want my current employer to find out I'm posting this stuff on the internet, but I'm curious what y'all think. Apparently we've had quite an uptick in near mid air collisions at our flight school recently. We primarily operate out of Class D airspace, but it definitely gets crazy busy every day. Helicopters in the pattern, corporate jets consistently flying in/out, and IFR, private, multi traffic, you name it--probably the busiest airport I've been to and you're consistently number 4 or 5 to land and there's a parallel that is just as busy.

Anyways, most of these near mid airs happen on final, so the school is proposing to create a SOP where once you've done 3 touch and goes, you have to do a full stop taxi back. The aim is to prevent instructors from teaching in the air to help create situational awareness. I'm curious what y'all see as the pros, cons, and externalities.

I think if instructors were to actually limit teaching while in the pattern, it would work. But, I'm sure the instructors who have made mistakes think they have situational awareness until they realize they've made a mistake... my point is, I don't think it'll actually limit teaching in the pattern.

What other alternatives are there? Would hate to criticize their ideas without having an alternative solution....
Click to expand...

Alternatives? The place you describe sounds like a total cluster. If you are frequently having near mid airs on final, I can’t believe the tower supervisor isn’t having a come to Jesus meeting with your flight school. If the school cannot deconflict be sending sorties to satellite airports, go teach some where else.
 
Rambo said:
So, I'm posting anonymously cause I don't want my current employer to find out I'm posting this stuff on the internet, but I'm curious what y'all think. Apparently we've had quite an uptick in near mid air collisions at our flight school recently. We primarily operate out of Class D airspace, but it definitely gets crazy busy every day. Helicopters in the pattern, corporate jets consistently flying in/out, and IFR, private, multi traffic, you name it--probably the busiest airport I've been to and you're consistently number 4 or 5 to land and there's a parallel that is just as busy.

Anyways, most of these near mid airs happen on final, so the school is proposing to create a SOP where once you've done 3 touch and goes, you have to do a full stop taxi back. The aim is to prevent instructors from teaching in the air to help create situational awareness. I'm curious what y'all see as the pros, cons, and externalities.

I think if instructors were to actually limit teaching while in the pattern, it would work. But, I'm sure the instructors who have made mistakes think they have situational awareness until they realize they've made a mistake... my point is, I don't think it'll actually limit teaching in the pattern.

What other alternatives are there? Would hate to criticize their ideas without having an alternative solution....
Click to expand...

By "teaching" I don't think you mean that instructors are drawing diagrams and lift vectors in the cockpit. But an instructor has to demonstrate things, point things out, and correct errors immediately as they occur, and not always have to wait for the post-flight briefing. Taxiback is good for complex airplanes where you might accidentally raise the gear on rollout, but I don't see it doing much to the teaching aspect. My question is, where is the tower controller in all of this? Also, is the flight school charging by tach or hobbs? If it is the latter, there may be a hidden financial motive for this as well.
 
What is the tower doing during all this? I was under the impression that tower is in charge of airspace in the pattern.
 
Joey4420 said:
I am just a lowly sport pilot, but I was only shown 1 touch and go during training, all mine were full stop with taxi back to take off. This excludes emergency training and go arounds of course, but these were not touch and goes either, unless you count that one time I landed the plane 4 times before he yelled go around. :eek:

Also I was also taught the worse class room is the cockpit. The cockpit is where you demonstrate what you have learned on the ground. I know you are still learning as a student and yes I even asked questions in the pattern, but it was more like. Am I doing this correctly, as in altitude or speed or when to start the descent to properly manage airspeed and altitude for base to final.

So yes you are still learning, but the pattern is far from a good place to be learning new things. Unless it is how to prevent minor mistakes from turning into major mistakes that turn in mishaps, but then again most of this should be taught on the ground.
Click to expand...

It sounds more like he's a CFI there, not a student, hence why he doesn't want his employer to know he's posting about problems, or potential danger in the school's program.
 
There's a lot of problems here. If you're routinely having near mid-airs ON FINAL at a towered airport, there have been multiple failures to get there. The tower has failed, and at least 2 pilots (and it sounds like at least one CFI) have failed. I can't even fathom how that happens repeatedly; the odds just don't pencil out. There's got to be more to this story.
 
It's a situational awareness AND a priority issue with the CFI's, if that is the truth.

Teaching collision avoidance is required pre-solo, no? How many instructors LOG that into a student's logbook pre-solo? How effectively is it taught?

If the school has some knowledge that there is too much debriefing going on about the last landing in the pattern, maybe they have a point, but in my experience, I would focus on the safety and the takeoff, critique a bit on crosswind and give a few pointers on how to do better next time, then focus on the next landing. By the time the plane is abeam the numbers to final an instructor's priorities are (as always) #1 - safety, #2 - effectively communicating to the student how to accomplish the goal of landing, the last landing is done, history, but that doesn't mean you don't need to coach the next landing. I doubt somehow that the full stop taxi back is really going to help that much because if the students are needy, the CFIs are going to be right back in teaching mode abeam the numbers which is where it sounds like the problem is occurring.
Also it seems like maybe the student's are the hard-to teach type maybe? Maybe y'all need to find an airport that's less busy and do ALL of the initial landings at the other, slower airport? Also, if the third touch and go is bad, why not eliminate all of them? Here in Texas, one of the better reasons NOT to do touch and goes is that on a hot day, it can actually be quite fatiguing in the heat to taxi back and potentially hold in a hot cockpit with little air movement for another 5 minutes. That doesn't help situational awareness any, either, and students can get antsy and start worrying about wasted time, even though they shouldn't. I'm not the worlds' biggest fan of touch and gos, but this just doesn't seem like a well though-out solution. It seems like they need to tell someone they did something but haven't figured out the real solution yet.

As far as suggestions? A lot of instructors actually talk too much at times. Sometimes you give a student more information than they can absorb, and my guess is that with foreign students this is even more true. There may be a push from the flight school to have them talking on the radio too much while they are learning to land. Trying to speak a second language, learning to land, and trying to absorb instruction from a rooking instructor is a lot to ask of a person. I've flown with instructors who just needed to give a simple command, shut up and see if the student can follow it, and pay attention to their surroundings. Another possibility in Class D with a tower might be to de-task saturate the landings my making it clear to the CFI's that for a portion of the training the instructor is completely responsible for making the radio calls and watching for aircraft in the pattern until the student is capable of say making three takeoffs and landings on centerline between the 500' and 1000' markers in a row and then the workload will start to be transferred to the student.
 
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