Teller1900
En-Route
We gave everyone a bit of a scare coming back into the airport the other day with 13 passengers on board.
I was the pilot flying. 22 miles out, the CA made the first position report on the CTAF. No response. 16 miles out, another. Still no response. 11 and change, another report. No response. 9 miles out on the ILS we start configuring, got the freq change, and made another report. Yet again, no response. 7 DME, fully configured (except for flaps only at 17), another position report, and still no response. 6 DME we break out and start our circle (ILS is to 17, wx was 320@19G26 10mi 020b 024b 3o). We report breaking off the approach. No response. We report the approximate downwind, base and the turn to final (since it was a circle to land, it was more like an arc at about 4-5 DME). No response to any of those calls. I roll out on a three and a half mile final and we see a Skyhawk halfway between the runup pad and the hold-short line for runway 35 on Alpha. Normally we wouldn't think twice about it, but the day before, we got about 8 inches of snow, and braking action was Poor at best when we took off from here two hours before. The CA warns me to watch out in case he slides. Airport maintenance calls us on the CTAF and warns us that the braking action is still poor. We thank them, then verbally brief the missed approach/go around procedure...just in case; "In the event of a go-around it's 'go around, set max power, flaps 17; positive rate; gear up; Venr; flaps up...'" etc.
As the DME passes 3 miles we finish the before landing checklist. The CA makes another position report and asks the Skyhawk what his intentions are. We're both staring fairly intently at the 172 that is now less than 25 feet from the hold short and not slowing down. 2 miles, I start trimming aft to help with the flare, but the Skyhawk still hasn't slowed. "Tell me if any part of that plane crosses the hold short line, call the go-around and we're outta here." Airport maintenance announces that they're crossing runway 35-17 at Bravo, and they assure us that they'll be out of our way.
The RadAlt makes the 500 foot call out. We're fully configured and on the slope, but this other plane isn't slowing down. I start to roll in a bit of extra power and I see out of the corner of my eye the CA's hands are starting to move up to the controls. He makes a "Short final" announcement and asks the Skyhawk what his intentions are. Still no response.
A half a heartbeat after the 200 foot RadAlt alert the CA calls "Go Around!" I slam the power levers forward and haul back on the yoke to ten degrees nose up. The ITTs spike as the FCUs dump gas into the burner can and the engines start to whine as we climb away from the concrete below. We run the Missed Approach/Go Around profile, the climb and cruise checklists, then the decent checklist (again) as we re-enter the traffic pattern. As we turn cross wind, the CA looks over his shoulder to see the Skyhawk stopped on the numbers.
We enter the downwind with another position report...still no response from the Skyhawk that's still sitting on the numbers. I pull the power back and dirty up the aircraft as quickly as possible...this gives us a speed of 135kts on the downwind - borderline uncomfortably slow. Abeam the numbers we ask the 172 what his intentions are again. Still nothing. I stretch the downwind as long as I comfortably can with us both losing sight of the airport (I lose it over the CA's shoulder pretty quickly on the downwind until the wings are level on base, but as long as the CA has the visual it's pretty easy to fly the base and final turns on instruments alone).
Base and final turns...more position reports, more requests to know what the 172 is doing...more silence on the other side of the radio. We make S-turns across final at about 3 DME when we see the Skyhawk finally start to move...unfortunately he's making a U-Turn on the runway.
By the time we re intercept the centerline, the Skyhawk has cleared the runway on Alpha...the same taxiway he entered on.
We put the plane on the ground (I love landing on snow covered runways...it's hard to make a rough landing), got all the pax off, then sat down to debrief the situation. While we were going over all the would'a-should'a-could'as and talking about what we were going to write on the report to company and the FAA. While we're sitting in the plane talking, the station manager comes out and tells us that there's a couple guys that want to talk to us.
We walk inside to find an instrument student and his instructor from another airport, very ****ed off, and asking us why we almost landed on top of them unannounced, and how dare we blast into the pattern on a MVFR day without making any traffic calls. We discuss with them what they think happened, then asked them if they were monitoring the correct CTAF? Long story short, the CTAF here is 123.00, their radio was tuned to 123.02. They swear that must have happened during their taxi back in (they decided not to takeoff after getting a haircut from a phantom turbo-prop), we don't know for certain that it didn't, but we're pretty much certain we made traffic reports.
What's this mean for us? We executed the go-around at a little less than 200 feet AGL, according to our RadAlt. The terrain slopes up drastically to the threshold of runway 35...meaning 200 on the RadAlt is closer to 50 above the runway. The RadAlt also doesn't take into account the landing gear, or any of the fuselage that is aft of the wings (which is significantly lower than the radalt's dome when we're in the flare), so at some point between when we put the power to the plane and when it decided to turn its 16,000lbs skyward parts of our airplane were probably within 30 feet or less vertically of parts of that airplane.
The big thing that we came up with that we did wrong...waiting until he crossed the hold short line before we went around. Our only concern was him sliding a few feet past the line, turns out he crossed it because he didn't see us or hear us...he didn't know there was a plane on final, let alone that short. He had cleared the final, but then, they said, they looked back down at their charts to review the DP and then powered straight out onto the runway without taking a second look for anyone on final. Turns out we were on our base leg when they had last looked outside, and they didn't know we were their until they felt our prop wash as we climbed out. We were both disappointed in our selves...we had questions all the way down about whether or not the landing would be successful. Just because we were on speed and on profile does not mean that we must continue the approach. We talked about the procedure for a go around, but did not decide to execute it until we were required to. While our company's book definition of a stabilized approach was met, in all honesty, it wasn't really met because there was a shadow of doubt for both of us as to whether or not we would actually be landing.
We filled our reports with the company's safety dept and with the feds. We talked to the FAA folks over in RKD when they ramped us the next day and they said they had heard about it and they're glad we filed such a detailed report (we delayed the next flight almost 10 minutes because we were talking to company and typing the report). So now we know for next time...when in doubt, don't just do s-turns to try to delay, just go around and try again later.
I was the pilot flying. 22 miles out, the CA made the first position report on the CTAF. No response. 16 miles out, another. Still no response. 11 and change, another report. No response. 9 miles out on the ILS we start configuring, got the freq change, and made another report. Yet again, no response. 7 DME, fully configured (except for flaps only at 17), another position report, and still no response. 6 DME we break out and start our circle (ILS is to 17, wx was 320@19G26 10mi 020b 024b 3o). We report breaking off the approach. No response. We report the approximate downwind, base and the turn to final (since it was a circle to land, it was more like an arc at about 4-5 DME). No response to any of those calls. I roll out on a three and a half mile final and we see a Skyhawk halfway between the runup pad and the hold-short line for runway 35 on Alpha. Normally we wouldn't think twice about it, but the day before, we got about 8 inches of snow, and braking action was Poor at best when we took off from here two hours before. The CA warns me to watch out in case he slides. Airport maintenance calls us on the CTAF and warns us that the braking action is still poor. We thank them, then verbally brief the missed approach/go around procedure...just in case; "In the event of a go-around it's 'go around, set max power, flaps 17; positive rate; gear up; Venr; flaps up...'" etc.
As the DME passes 3 miles we finish the before landing checklist. The CA makes another position report and asks the Skyhawk what his intentions are. We're both staring fairly intently at the 172 that is now less than 25 feet from the hold short and not slowing down. 2 miles, I start trimming aft to help with the flare, but the Skyhawk still hasn't slowed. "Tell me if any part of that plane crosses the hold short line, call the go-around and we're outta here." Airport maintenance announces that they're crossing runway 35-17 at Bravo, and they assure us that they'll be out of our way.
The RadAlt makes the 500 foot call out. We're fully configured and on the slope, but this other plane isn't slowing down. I start to roll in a bit of extra power and I see out of the corner of my eye the CA's hands are starting to move up to the controls. He makes a "Short final" announcement and asks the Skyhawk what his intentions are. Still no response.
A half a heartbeat after the 200 foot RadAlt alert the CA calls "Go Around!" I slam the power levers forward and haul back on the yoke to ten degrees nose up. The ITTs spike as the FCUs dump gas into the burner can and the engines start to whine as we climb away from the concrete below. We run the Missed Approach/Go Around profile, the climb and cruise checklists, then the decent checklist (again) as we re-enter the traffic pattern. As we turn cross wind, the CA looks over his shoulder to see the Skyhawk stopped on the numbers.
We enter the downwind with another position report...still no response from the Skyhawk that's still sitting on the numbers. I pull the power back and dirty up the aircraft as quickly as possible...this gives us a speed of 135kts on the downwind - borderline uncomfortably slow. Abeam the numbers we ask the 172 what his intentions are again. Still nothing. I stretch the downwind as long as I comfortably can with us both losing sight of the airport (I lose it over the CA's shoulder pretty quickly on the downwind until the wings are level on base, but as long as the CA has the visual it's pretty easy to fly the base and final turns on instruments alone).
Base and final turns...more position reports, more requests to know what the 172 is doing...more silence on the other side of the radio. We make S-turns across final at about 3 DME when we see the Skyhawk finally start to move...unfortunately he's making a U-Turn on the runway.
By the time we re intercept the centerline, the Skyhawk has cleared the runway on Alpha...the same taxiway he entered on.
We put the plane on the ground (I love landing on snow covered runways...it's hard to make a rough landing), got all the pax off, then sat down to debrief the situation. While we were going over all the would'a-should'a-could'as and talking about what we were going to write on the report to company and the FAA. While we're sitting in the plane talking, the station manager comes out and tells us that there's a couple guys that want to talk to us.
We walk inside to find an instrument student and his instructor from another airport, very ****ed off, and asking us why we almost landed on top of them unannounced, and how dare we blast into the pattern on a MVFR day without making any traffic calls. We discuss with them what they think happened, then asked them if they were monitoring the correct CTAF? Long story short, the CTAF here is 123.00, their radio was tuned to 123.02. They swear that must have happened during their taxi back in (they decided not to takeoff after getting a haircut from a phantom turbo-prop), we don't know for certain that it didn't, but we're pretty much certain we made traffic reports.
What's this mean for us? We executed the go-around at a little less than 200 feet AGL, according to our RadAlt. The terrain slopes up drastically to the threshold of runway 35...meaning 200 on the RadAlt is closer to 50 above the runway. The RadAlt also doesn't take into account the landing gear, or any of the fuselage that is aft of the wings (which is significantly lower than the radalt's dome when we're in the flare), so at some point between when we put the power to the plane and when it decided to turn its 16,000lbs skyward parts of our airplane were probably within 30 feet or less vertically of parts of that airplane.
The big thing that we came up with that we did wrong...waiting until he crossed the hold short line before we went around. Our only concern was him sliding a few feet past the line, turns out he crossed it because he didn't see us or hear us...he didn't know there was a plane on final, let alone that short. He had cleared the final, but then, they said, they looked back down at their charts to review the DP and then powered straight out onto the runway without taking a second look for anyone on final. Turns out we were on our base leg when they had last looked outside, and they didn't know we were their until they felt our prop wash as we climbed out. We were both disappointed in our selves...we had questions all the way down about whether or not the landing would be successful. Just because we were on speed and on profile does not mean that we must continue the approach. We talked about the procedure for a go around, but did not decide to execute it until we were required to. While our company's book definition of a stabilized approach was met, in all honesty, it wasn't really met because there was a shadow of doubt for both of us as to whether or not we would actually be landing.
We filled our reports with the company's safety dept and with the feds. We talked to the FAA folks over in RKD when they ramped us the next day and they said they had heard about it and they're glad we filed such a detailed report (we delayed the next flight almost 10 minutes because we were talking to company and typing the report). So now we know for next time...when in doubt, don't just do s-turns to try to delay, just go around and try again later.
...ICT is my home town!