Accident report: Separation anxiety
Why not just go around?
The pilot was notifying the Cessna on the downwind—me—that he was overtaking me in some kind of very fast airplane.
I had no idea what a twin turboprop Mitsubishi MU–2 was in those days, but no worries, he had me in sight; would I mind if he went in ahead of me?
Unbeknownst to that pilot, the request was novel for a student pilot accustomed to flying orderly traffic patterns within a flock of trainers of nearly identical power, performance, and appearance. But this was the real world, so I summoned the vast composure bred of my 14 hours of flight experience and responded: Please go ahead; I will extend my downwind leg and follow you. Shortly thereafter, a compact high-wing twin, with what I now know of those distinctive MU–2 wingtip fuel tanks, zipped past me on a wide downwind, arced around onto final, and landed. The aircraft was well clear of the runway by the time I flew my only-slightly elongated traffic pattern and touched down.
It was good practice, a valuable introduction to the endless combinations of aircraft and pilot experience levels that comprise the everyday world of airport operations, and it underlined for me the importance of learning about the performance and operating characteristics of aircraft that other people fly.
Not every attempt to coexist with other aircraft in the terminal environment goes off so seamlessly.
Slowing down early instead of during the critical phase of a final approach might have produced a more satisfactory outcome for a Cessna T210 pilot, with an estimated 207 hours, who crashed into a residential neighborhood after punching into the traffic pattern of an airport in Peyton, Colorado, between two much slower Cessna 150s on August 26, 2020.
His compression of the traffic pattern initiated an accident chain that required only a few links before turning fatal. The NTSB, citing the eyewitness account of the pilot in the trailing Cessna 150, issued a report noting that “the accident airplane flew an extended downwind leg and that, while the accident airplane was turning final, it overshot the runway, increased its bank, and pitched up slightly. The pilot in the trailing airplane stated the accident pilot made all ‘proper’ radio calls, including for the final turn, without any mention of malfunctions.”
A witness on the ground “saw the airplane’s wings ‘wiggle’; he estimated the airplane was about 30 to 50 feet above the ground when it nosed down, then stalled, dropped ‘straight’ in, and impacted terrain. He also stated that he did not hear any engine sounds,” the NTSB accident report said. It concluded that the accident’s probable cause was the pilot’s “failure to maintain adequate airspeed and the exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during the airplane’s turn to final, resulting in an aerodynamic stall.”
The report also called out previous difficulties the pilot had experienced with specialized traffic pattern procedures. He had been disqualified on his initial private pilot practical test, with the deficient areas noted as performing the specialized and precise techniques of “soft-field takeoffs and short-field landings.” After eight additional hours of instruction, the pilot passed a retest.
Although the particulars of any loss-of-control-at-low-altitude scenario vary, examples of overshooting the final approach course, then wracking it around to correct (why not go around instead?) as angle of attack approaches critical remain among the most familiar instigators of low-altitude stall-spin accidents.
Distraction, such as anxiety about maintaining adequate visual separation from other aircraft, can divide attention even more, compounding an already challenging, if self-inflicted, scenario and triggering a kind of crash known for its consistently high lethality.
