We had scheduled our training flight for early morning as opposed to our usual afternoon session, because it was Mother’s Day and my instructor wanted to have brunch with his wife and sons.
After practicing power-on and power-off stalls, we headed for home where I called touch and go for Runway 19R, as was our usual routine at the end of each training day. Scott Williams, my instructor, immediately corrected that to full stop, and as we taxied to the tiedowns, Scott told me he was hopping out and I would fly on my own for my solo. I had 13 hours and felt comfortable enough with my progress to have thought I would solo later in the week, but today would be the day.
Taxiing back to 19R, I heard a clear, calm professional voice from a yellow Piper Cub, intent on pattern work, taxiing onto 19L, the parallel gravel runway. As he called each turn in the pattern, his voice was soothing and encouraging as I followed two turns behind.
My first landing was an uneventful confidence builder. Staying in a closed pattern, the Cub called full stop for 19L and then back-taxi, but also said he would delay the back-taxi so as to not distract me.
Turning final as before, I called 19R touch and go. Almost immediately my call was followed by a Super Cub declaring his intention to taxi for a mid-field departure from 19R. With my airplane’s wheels almost down I noticed the Super Cub stopped at the mid-field hold short, but my full attention was on the landing. With the wheels down, I pushed in the carb heat to cold and raised the flaps, and as I firewalled the throttle for full power, the Super Cub pulled out onto the runway in front of me while declaring that he was “taking the active.”
I was moving too fast to stop and too slow to fly, and now things seemed to be happening in slow motion. Holy [expletive], where the [expletive] did you come from?!? suddenly screamed over my headset.
The Super Cub thankfully was a little right of the center line and I was a little left, and I applied left rudder pedal pressure enough to barely swerve a bit more left. In a flash of his red and white and my blue and white, my right wing tip somehow avoided his left wing, perhaps because his tundra tires had him standing higher than my 150. I was safely by, and all I could think of was aviate, aviate, aviate. My headset was reverberating with a constant barrage of expletives, and I changed my mantra to aviate, aviate, concentrate. The vitriol ceased when I reminded my tormentor that I had called final, touch and go for Runway 19R.
Safely back at the tiedowns, the pilot of the yellow Cub—who had witnessed the entire thing—came over to see if I was OK. I was trembling so badly I could barely tie the ropes.
A few minutes later the Super Cub landed, and the pilot of the yellow Cub went over to talk with that pilot. Later I would find out, the pilot of the Super Cub had been distracted in the cockpit. He was taking a boy for a birthday sightseeing ride, and was running late. He did not think anyone was in the pattern, and for some reason he had failed to see me approach and land. And when I reminded him of my radio call announcing being on final, he had suddenly remembered that call, but again it did not register—most likely because he was terribly pressured and distracted at that critical time.
Scott and my other pilot friends drove into my head the importance of checklists; of being methodical and deliberate; and at the hold short before takeoff to look, listen, look, and look again. And that not all light aircraft have radios. The feelings of pressure and distractions are signals to slow down and return to the basics of safety.
My new friend in the yellow Cub, upon finding that I was a student on my first solo flight, was concerned that this near miss would discourage me from finishing my training, but I went right back to it the next day, and two months later I passed the checkride and earned my certificate. That certificate is a mandate to study, train, and constantly renew the commitment to safety.
Even on the ground, accidents can happen. Take the Air Safety Institute’s Runway Safety interactive course.
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