Almost busted Bravo airspace

But "Just Barely" counts in EVERYTHING! Just barely passed your checkride? Yeah, but you did. Just barely busted that bravo? Yeah, but you did.

Just barely missed it ... or as we southerners say he pert' near hit it!
 
Beautiful day out here in S IL so I decided to go pick up some famous St. Louis style BBQ. Got there without any hiccups. On departure out of KCPS I was in the climb to to 5500. I was looking at foreflight zoomed too in and thinking I had cleared the B. At 4300 ft and still climbing at 1000 ft/min I realized the B shell I was under had the floor at 4500.
Crap, throttle idle and nose dive before I busted it. Tuned in to the approach frequency and was hoping I don't hear my call sign. It was close but I didn't bust in.

Lesson learned.

The issue was not your IPad being zoomed in to much. Lack of planning and situational awareness was the cause.
 
I flew into the floor of the Chicago Class B many years ago near DuPage, due to a navigational error. Told by DuPage Tower to contact Chicago Approach and ask for the supervisor. (Shudder. This was long ago, but they had my tail number.) Controller just asked me where I was going and said they were launching to the west out of O'Hare and were concerned about me. I was flying around the south side of Lake Michigan enroute to Kalamazoo. He gave me a squawk code and flight following until I left their airspace.

I should have filed a NASA report but didn't think of it. Never heard another word.
 
I wouldn’t recommend testing this out in practice, but I suspect where most of your deviations come from is when you bust the Bravo and cause a conflict or when you bust the Bravo in an area where the flow is transiting. I transition the Bravo frequently around Scott AFB where the poster got nervous and that’s mostly a subdued area. In fact I’ve only once been denied a Bravo clearance through there.

Most people think Bravo busts are Joe Sixpack in his put-put plane but that’s not always the case. About a month ago I was going into Dewitt Spain (reliever just north of downtown Memphis), and heard a Citation going out of West Memphis get b——ed out by the controller for busting the Bravo while waiting on an IFR clearance. A lot of jet jockeys and mini airliner types forget about the notion of VFR airspace requirements. That’s also part of the reason you’ve got to be careful flying along under Bravo shelves as you’ll find all kinds of planes and for that matter sometimes terrain (e.g. Phoenix) lurking around. To me one of the more dangerous things you can do in a high performance airplane is depart VFR to pick up an IFR clearance in an area where you do not know the airspace and/or terrain. I know that’s exactly what happened to my Citation buddy’s in West Memphis.
 
Hi again folks,

Kind of related to my earlier post and why we should all be so careful.


Fly safe - fate is the hunter
 
I wouldn’t recommend testing this out in practice, but I suspect where most of your deviations come from is when you bust the Bravo and cause a conflict or when you bust the Bravo in an area where the flow is transiting. I transition the Bravo frequently around Scott AFB where the poster got nervous and that’s mostly a subdued area. In fact I’ve only once been denied a Bravo clearance through there...
That seems likely. All of my bravo busts over the 31 years that I've been flying have involved just nicking an edge or a corner, and I never heard from anyone on any of them. On the other hand, the pilot who got me hooked on flying told me that he had gotten busted for following the San Mateo Bridge across San Francisco Bay. A portion of that goes through the SFO surface area, resulting in a complaint from the crew of an airliner on final.
 
Hi again folks,

Kind of related to my earlier post and why we should all be so careful.


Fly safe - fate is the hunter
I had flown into the Phoenix area the day before that crash, to spend Thanksgiving with relatives there. I'll never forget watching the TV coverage that showed the lights of the plane immediately before the crash, followed by the flames coming up from the crash site immediately after.

I've always been keenly aware of the need to be sure of my position relative to terrain during night VFR (or any night flying), because my ex-wife's uncle died by colliding with Mt. Tamalpais during a night-VFR flight.
 
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