MidAir at Centennial Airport Cirrus and Metroliner

gkainz said:
Centennial Air Park? Oh yeah, just a sleepy little community with airplane addictions. I know it was a mis-speak, but still struck me as funny.
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murphey said:
2nd or 3rd busiest airport (depending on the year) in the US that isn’t Class B. And at times, busier than some Class B.
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Well, isn't that the darndest thang. All you good folks at that lil ol' Air Park must have a lotta friends with them errplanes that come to visit ya'll. :)
 
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Salty said:
Everybody’s amazed the key lime held together, am I the only one shocked that a cirrus could take that big a bite out of it without killing the pilot?
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Shows the difference between San Antonio built aircraft and Swiss ones with baggage door follies.

(what???? Too soon?)
 
Steve Costello said:
I would have never thought that you could not only remove, but VIOLENTLY remove half of the fuselage aft of the wing and still have the empennage stay intact. Sounds like the Metro pilot didn't really grasp the amount of damage he was dealing with.

Tower was all like, "hey pal, you... you need some help on the runway there? We've got equipment headed your way..."

"Naw, I'm good... just gonna taxi to the FBO, mebbe see what's happening with this engine here. Hey, crazy about that Cirrus driver that just deployed the chute back there, eh? Whew."

Tower: "Uh... y... yeah."

[note: not actual quotes.... but that's absolutely the vibe I got from the LiveATC]
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Me too. I'm waiting to hear when he realized what happened. May have to wait for the NTSB report unless he/company gives it up first.
 
Checklist update is out. LOL

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Salty said:
Everybody’s amazed the key lime held together, am I the only one shocked that a cirrus could take that big a bite out of it without killing the pilot?
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Nah. It looks like he knocked the gear off.
 
AggieMike88 said:
Shows the difference between San Antonio built aircraft and Swiss ones with baggage door follies.

(what???? Too soon?)
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I don’t see the comparison. The PC-12 door flew open because two pilots failed to latch it. The only real damage was that interior panels may have blown off, but the airframe stayed intact.
 
AggieMike88 said:
Shows the difference between San Antonio built aircraft and Swiss ones with baggage door follies.

(what???? Too soon?)
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Nah. It's never to soon. But whadda ya talkin about. Did they used to make em in Switzerland and then moved manufacturing to San Antonio and they built them better here????
 
luvflyin said:
Nah. It's never to soon. But whadda ya talkin about. Did they used to make em in Switzerland and then moved manufacturing to San Antonio and they built them better here????
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Dave Theisen said:
I don’t see the comparison. The PC-12 door flew open because two pilots failed to latch it. The only real damage was that interior panels may have blown off, but the airframe stayed intact.
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No worries. Was an attempt at humor than a discussuon point.
 
flyingron said:
Remember people that this is a 6000' field elevation. In most the knob goes to the firewall on takeoff and stays there until roughly abeam the numbers.
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I don't recall being at full throttle all the way to roughly abeam the numbers in anything more powerful than a Cessna 152 during the 20 years I flew and ultimately taught at that airport.
 
Tantalum said:
The DA62 up the coast though, that's something else. Last I checked that was $600 hr / dry
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That's interesting. The DA62 seems so specialized, I wouldn't have thought anybody would be renting those out. Really cool plane. If I ever had the $$$, I'd definitely check one out.
 
sarangan said:
Even with radar this can be dicey but APA is a non-radar tower, so that didn't help either.
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I'm not a controller, but would radar have made a difference? The controller saw the Cirrus overshoot and said something. Based on their responses, it also sounded like they saw the collision. If there was radar, could he have called the overshoot faster?
 
sarangan said:
The critical moment here seems to be when the Cirrus reported the Keylime in sight. Did he really have him in sight, or was thinking of the Cessna traffic, or did he just spot him on his ADS-B display? I guess this should be relatively easy to resolve since everyone lived.
In any case, this illustrates the hazards of parallel runway operations for visual approaches. Even with radar this can be dicey but APA is a non-radar tower, so that didn't help either.
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Explain what you mean by non-radar. I’ve been in the KAPA tower more than once. Displays encompass more than the 30 nm radius.
 
Lindberg said:
I'm not a controller, but would radar have made a difference? The controller saw the Cirrus overshoot and said something. Based on their responses, it also sounded like they saw the collision. If there was radar, could he have called the overshoot faster?
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700 feet to close at 160+ knots ... I’m gonna say no.
 
Lindberg said:
I'm not a controller, but would radar have made a difference? The controller saw the Cirrus overshoot and said something. Based on their responses, it also sounded like they saw the collision. If there was radar, could he have called the overshoot faster?
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Probably not. And I just say probably to not be accused of jumping to a conclusion. That being said I’m sure they have Radar in that Tower. An airport that busy, that close to a major airport with Radar, not having Radar in the Tower is pretty much unheard of. Key point here is Radar rarely shows where an airplane is. Except for the instant when the Radar ‘sweep’ hits the target, it shows where the airplane ‘was.’ Sometimes about 4 seconds ago if an ASR which is the typical Approach Control Radar. Or about 12 seconds ago if an ARSR Radar which is a Center Radar. Some ‘surveillance systems’ have faster updates with the combining of multiple Radar sources and sometimes ADSB inputs to an individual Controllers Radar Display.
A key point to this incident is the Cirrus hit the Metroliner from behind. Not a ‘rear end,’ but the Cirrus was behind the Metroliners 3 o’clock when the collision occurred. And was going faster than the Metroliner. If I’m reading everything right above. Most of it seems to come from pretty reliable sources.
What if the Controller had called the Cirrus as traffic to the Metroliner? And what if he had seen the Cirrus over there at his 1 or 2 o’clock on a base leg? Should he have thought ‘ya know, that FLIB may be haulin azz and he may overshoot final and run my azz over from behind, so I’m hangin a hard left now and gettin the F outta here? Unreasonable conclusion in my opinion.
 
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I guarantee they have a radar feed (CTRD). With the west side tower controller issuing traffic at 1-2 o’clock and mile, you can bet that’s being done with radar.

Does radar help in this situation? Yeah it allows for a more precise traffic call. Is radar in this case used to ensure seperation? Nope. The cirrus is VFR and the Metroliner IFR. There is no prescribed airborne seperation for the two. Based on the spacing of the runways (greater than 300 ft) and the two categories of aircraft (I & 2), they can run simultaneous same direction ops there.

Personally, I think the NTSB will fault the eastside controller for not issuing traffic to the Metroliner. Even though the Cirrus reported them in sight, that close of parallel it still warrants the call.
 
Lindberg said:
I'm not a controller, but would radar have made a difference? The controller saw the Cirrus overshoot and said something. Based on their responses, it also sounded like they saw the collision. If there was radar, could he have called the overshoot faster?
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For whatever reason, the guy was flying the pattern way too fast. He overshot both runways and would have completed his turn east of 17L, except he ran into an airplane instead of a building or ridge.

If caught early enough, a controller might have instructed the Cirrus to continue downwind and turn away. But it looks like there was no time for that, and I doubt a radar track would make a bit of difference in reaction time.
 
PaulS said:
I'm not shocked at all, I'm thinking the landing gear did all that damage, a foot lower and everyone would be dead. There is a a lot of kinetic energy in the Cirrus going 160+ knots relative to the Metroliner and that aluminum is thin.

I think most don't appreciate that size difference really doesn't make a difference in situations like this. I have a couple jet skis that I ride when the weather is good around here. I'm always amazed at some of the doofuses in their big boats who go out of their way to cut me off while flipping me the finger. They are easy to spot so I give them wide berth, but there are a lot of people on jet skis who are clueless too. While the jet ski obviously loses in a collision with a bigger boat, if the 800 pound jet ski is going 50 mph at impact with a boat, it will go right through the boat, probably barely slowing down, killing anyone in it's path. (I'm talking fiberglass 30 foot sized boat here).
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A boat rental place at a vacation area I used to go maintained a big picture behind the counter of a boat cut in half by a personal watercraft.
They pointed it out to all renters under 30.

Tim

Sent from my HD1907 using Tapatalk
 
murphey said:
Explain what you mean by non-radar. I’ve been in the KAPA tower more than once. Displays encompass more than the 30 nm radius.
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Not too well-versed on this but FWIW, as best I understand it, it's a classification. "Non-Radar Tower" just means the facility does not have primary radar to provide sequencing (approach control) services. At Centennial, that service is provided by Denver TRACON. If you remember Pueblo before DEN TRACON took over approach control, it had its own approach services. APA does not.

APA is a "Tower with Display, " best I understand, a tower which uses eyeballs as primary but has a TRACON feed to assist. The classification list is here. Details take a deeper dive.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Just one caveat. If armed and properly trained I would expect fight to be higher on the list.
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This is supposed to be about flying, yet so often conversation in too many threads turns into a “whose gun is bigger” match or “would have been better if everyone had guns” or “I would have tackled that gun maniac with two hands tied behind my back”.

Stop talking about guns and get back to flying.
 
Matthew Rogers said:
This is supposed to be about flying, yet so often conversation in too many threads turns into a “whose gun is bigger” match or “would have been better if everyone had guns” or “I would have tackled that gun maniac with two hands tied behind my back”.

Stop talking about guns and get back to flying.
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I just learned to ignore the blather.
 
Matthew Rogers said:
This is supposed to be about flying, yet so often conversation in too many threads turns into a “whose gun is bigger” match or “would have been better if everyone had guns” or “I would have tackled that gun maniac with two hands tied behind my back”.

Stop talking about guns and get back to flying.
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Rather an odd turn for a thread about a mid-air collision. But I would have gone to the back of that Metroliner and ordered it to stay together until we've landed, I would.
 
Matthew Rogers said:
This is supposed to be about flying, yet so often conversation in too many threads turns into a “whose gun is bigger” match or “would have been better if everyone had guns” or “I would have tackled that gun maniac with two hands tied behind my back”.

Stop talking about guns and get back to flying.
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You make a lot of wrong assumptions. I’m referring to people actually trained to respond. You know like former or active law enforcement military etc. I don’t care about your gun and I’m not talking about mine.
 
Palmpilot said:
Yeah, that does seem high
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In the meantime I found out today that Pokemon (anime cartoon with the yellow guy?) cards are high value and cause violent fights in stores.. with apparently something called a charzard card selling for $360,000 recently. And we say "there are fewer pilots because it's too expensive" wow. Amazing that a piece of paper with a cartoon character will sell for that much.

LoneAspen said:
The DA62 seems so specialized, I wouldn't have thought anybody would be renting those out
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Indeed. But Angel City flyers has a couple: https://aerocitygroup.com/angel-city-flyers/ I don't think it's common. They also have jets for rent, dry, so not your usual mom and pop flight shop with a 50 year old beat up 172
 
Matthew Rogers said:
This is supposed to be about flying, yet so often conversation in too many threads turns into a “whose gun is bigger” match or “would have been better if everyone had guns” or “I would have tackled that gun maniac with two hands tied behind my back”.

Stop talking about guns and get back to flying.
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What is your definition of "so often"?

This is the first thread I've seen that had a mention of guns.
 
donjohnston said:
What is your definition of "so often"?

This is the first thread I've seen that had a mention of guns.
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You have to remember that for the poster in question, any mention of other people’s rights offends him greatly, particularly their gun rights.

Probably should just stick to reporting the posts if he thinks they violate the TOS here, rather than adding to the extraneous traffic, IMO.
 
Tantalum said:
In the meantime I found out today that Pokemon (anime cartoon with the yellow guy?) cards are high value and cause violent fights in stores.. with apparently something called a charzard card selling for $360,000 recently. And we say "there are fewer pilots because it's too expensive" wow. Amazing that a piece of paper with a cartoon character will sell for that much.


Indeed. But Angel City flyers has a couple: https://aerocitygroup.com/angel-city-flyers/ I don't think it's common. They also have jets for rent, dry, so not your usual mom and pop flight shop with a 50 year old beat up 172
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Yep. I saw a report tonight that (at least some) Walmart and Target stores no longer sell trading cards at all.
 
I don’t know the experience level exactly, but don’t we think ‘student pilot’ can explain a good amount of this? That’s not to say anyone else with more experience can’t come up short. With a setup like this, a reasonable angling track to final would be my goal, no overshoot.

Depending on the student experience level, are they back to talking to the CFI over training particulars?
 
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