My biggest scare to date.

I'm still working to get my PPL. Yesterday I was up flying with an instructor and something happened that for the first time really made me question the safety of what we all love to do even when doing it correctly.

In preparation for my check ride, we were in class E airspace quite a distance from the closest airport practicing maneuvers. That all went well. We then did a simulated emergency descent like you would as if there were smoke in the cockpit. Here's the thing. Just as we pulled out of the descent, I noticed another plane popping out from below us at our 10 o'clock and I'm guessing less than 500 feet below us. To date, nothing has given me more pause when it comes to the safety of flying. If either of us were in a slightly different position or if the odds were against us, all occupants of both craft could possibly be dead right now.

My question now is, how could I, as the pilot of the quickly descending aircraft, ensure that there isn't anyone coming up on me in that gigantic blind spot beneath me? Are we really leaving that all up to chance or is there something I'm missing?

You can make S turns on descent if you wish, to gain visibility below.
Not unlike the S turns a tailwheel pilot makes when taxiing.
ADS-B is a help. Flight following helps. Staying alert.... which is the lesson you learned just now. It will stay with you for years. Turn those memories into a tool not fear. Best of luck and have some fun !!!

Making an emergency descent you should have been in a bank anyway and that should give you good visibility below.

flyinga said:

Making an emergency descent you should have been in a bank anyway and that should give you good visibility below.

Click to expand...

Clearing turns are your friend.

Avoiding other aircraft

First, good on you for pursuing a license!
Second, flying is dangerous "...even when doing it correctly." Good on you for recognizing this early. You can manage the risk, but it never goes away.
You have several suggestions to consider, as you and your instructors develop your flying skills.

To your question, there is no one way to "ensure that there isn't anyone coming up on me in that gigantic blind spot beneath me.." but there are techniques that help identify other flying aircraft.

1. Self-announce on the air-to-air frequency.
"Dogpatch County, White 172, 5,000 ft, 7miles north of XYZ, simulated engine out, Dogpatch County."
(Interesting that the air will be quiet until one person checks in, then others pipe up

2. Clearing Turns.
This will help identify what is currently below.

3. Continue to search.
"Clear" won't stay that way; terrain, clouds, lighting, visibility -and other aircraft- continue to change, some quickly, some slowly.

4. Use your crew and passengers.
If you have others aboard, put them to work, especially during initial training. Once your airplane handling skills are developed, you can add technical resources such as ADS-B In, TCAS.
Suggest you explitictly add this to your "passenger briefing" checklist; passengers will appreciate the opportunity to help, and examiners will appreciate your demonstration of "cockpit resource management"

I don't know that answer to your question but it is a good experience you had, believe it or not. It will stick with you during your flying career. I could name a few similar incidents I had as a student but I'll go with one.

I was on a right downwind in the pattern to land, and I was solo. The tower of my delta airspace was speaking to another pilot that was transiting that airspace. But he was at pattern altitude. Why the controller thought that was a good idea I don't know. This pilot was coming at me from my 8 o'clock and headed to my 2 o'clock. The controller instructed him to not make his turn across the field until he was well clear to the north of the pattern area. He did not wait and crossed the center of the pattern. I was in a Skyhawk and never saw him until he was just coming into view over the leading edge of my left wing, about 50 feet above me.

I take responsibility of knowing what is going on around me and "seeing and avoiding." Maybe if I was not a low-time student on solo I would have had more room in my head to process the conversation the controller was having with him, and have looked for him. At any rate, it was an eye opener. And even though the controller apologized to me profusely over the radio, it didn't me a thing. You ultimately have to be responsible for yourself and your own safety regardless of whether you are using flight following, or you have an instructor in the plane, or even if you have a buddy pilot in the right seat sharing the workload. You are always going to be the one that needs to be in charge. This in my mind is one of the key skills or capabilities you are developing on every flight as a student, and part of what your instructor is waiting for you to develop before he will sign you off for your check ride.

Have a long talk with you instructor and see what his post-flight opinion is. You'll learn something from the discussion too. Flight instructors are not infallible. That is another good takeaway from this experience.

Does it bother you that you have hundreds of near misses every time you get on the road? A pair of 4000+ pound vehicles, near head on with 120+ MPH closure rate, separated only by a stripe painted on the street. Pretty frightening if you stop and think about it.

As a new pilot, the sooner you realize flying is not and never will be "safe", the sooner you can start focusing on taking an active role in managing your risk posture.

And to answer your original question - clearing turns. I'd be rolling it up on a wing and check out what I'm descending into.

Mid-airs are very rare, but they do happen. Radio monitoring helps, following traffic procedures helps, but the only thing that will keep you safe in uncontrolled airspace is your eyes. We've only had one midair in this area in recent memory. A guy on final hit a guy turning final. Both were talking on the radio, but I guess they were just going through the motions and not really listening. Weather was fine. Everyone died.

From this I concluded that the mk 1 eyeball is the only thing that will keep you safe. People don't always do what we expect them to do. They will fly through the pattern of an airport without realizing it, overshoot and turn right when everyone else is flying a left circuit...or other mistakes. We are all human and under stress we don't always make the best decisions.

So look out for number 1.

As Jim pointed out, and "emergency decent" is a steep spiral in the Commercial PTS. You're in a steep bank looking down and where you're headed.

Dangerous?

The most dangerous thing about flying is driving to the airport.

Flying has its hazards, but I strongly assert that flying is not dangerous.

10 o'clock and 500 below? You saw it, you avoided it. It's that easy.
12 o'clock and 100 below? Well, you still missed it. Your chances of a mid-air are about the same as winning the lottery.

Lots of good advice in previous posts, but don't let something of small probability scare you off from the true adventure of flying.

Jim
RV4 444JT

Don't get me wrong. I am not in any way questioning if I want to keep flying. The plan is to make sure GA will always be a large part of my very long life. I fully understand and accept the risks of flying. I know the most dangerous part of flying is the drive to the airport, but (for better or worse) I have gotten comfortable with my ability to foresee and mitigate most of the risks associated with driving. I'm not there yet when it comes to flying. This just threw me for a loop and kinda made me feel helpless. I was mostly wondering what was the best way to mitigate the particular risk of hitting someone below you during an emergency descent. So far it sounds like the best way is to use a spiral descent instead of a straight one. Thanks for the advice and encouragement.

Have you ever had someone pull into an intersection in front of you while you have a green light to go through it? Ever had a pedestrian jump out in front of you in a parking lot? Ever accidentally backed into something?
It happens in cars all the time. What you just experienced was a potential "accident." No matter how safe we make an activity, there will always be factors about it that we can't control and some times those factors will cause accidents and sometimes those accidents will kill people. The important thing is to recognize those possible factors and do our best to manage them as you are doing. But we must also be honest about the risks involved in single pilot GA. I have had a close friend killed in a plane crash that was entirely not his fault, a design flaw of a certificated aircraft and I have had two family members (relatives...not immediate family) killed after making a critical error in judgement while flying in a group of Beech Bonanza's on a sunny, clear morning. They were both accidents, and they both killed people.
I agree, flying is dangerous. My opinion is that people who say it isn't are just trying to make themselves feel better (flame away). The reality of the safety statistics out there is that most of them are based around commercial aviation which is very safe. General aviation…well that's a different story. GA and in particular EA is without a doubt more risky than driving. All the statistics PROVE THAT OUT WITHOUT A DOUBT.
Recognize the risks, plan as best as you can, fly safely, enjoy and always remember, the laws of physics are unbending and the ground is VERY hard. All that being said…I love aviation, I always will. I love the people involved in it, I think we are a top notch bunch. But we HAVE to be honest about our passion. It is risky. If we understand that we are all better pilots.
Here is a great article in flying magazine regarding the statistics of flight safety.
http://www.flyingmag.com/forums/training-safety/flying-really-safer-driving

SMRacer said:

The most dangerous thing about flying is driving to the airport.

Flying has its hazards, but I strongly assert that flying is not dangerous.

10 o'clock and 500 below? You saw it, you avoided it. It's that easy.
12 o'clock and 100 below? Well, you still missed it. Your chances of a mid-air are about the same as winning the lottery.

Lots of good advice in previous posts, but don't let something of small probability scare you off from the true adventure of flying.

Jim
RV4 444JT

Click to expand...

And don't forget that the guy below is likely going to see you as well.

There are many sports and leisure activities that have risks involved. In fact driving down a 2 lane highway with no median is dangerous...one flick of the wheel and you are dead. But everyone accepts that risk because they are used to it. I guess that's human nature.

RVScooter said:

Don't get me wrong. I am not in any way questioning if I want to keep flying. The plan is to make sure GA will always be a large part of my very long life. I fully understand and accept the risks of flying. I know the most dangerous part of flying is the drive to the airport, but (for better or worse) I have gotten comfortable with my ability to foresee and mitigate most of the risks associated with driving. I'm not there yet when it comes to flying. This just threw me for a loop and kinda made me feel helpless. I was mostly wondering what was the best way to mitigate the particular risk of hitting someone below you during an emergency descent. So far it sounds like the best way is to use a spiral descent instead of a straight one. Thanks for the advice and encouragement.

Click to expand...

Hang in there Greg, the near miss will be stuck in your brain forever.

If at all possible, never make a straight ahead descent. An S turn in either direction will help clear airspace below. Sometimes you can't do that but if you can, do it.

You will love flying the 8....it is the best RV there is for pure flying pleasure.

SMRacer said:

The most dangerous thing about flying is driving to the airport.

Click to expand...

I'm not trying to start an argument, but since I think we can all agree that a high level goal of all that participate on these forums is to pass true / factual information, I have to point out that this statement is totally false.

I agree there is a lot of variability regarding the danger of any given flight, and because of a wide variety of experience and skill levels, any given flight might be higher risk for some pilots than it would be for others, but as a whole, the accident record of private aviation per 100,000 flight hours is no where near as good as it is for personal transportation in cars.

Having said that, we can each do things (for better or for worse) that can swing where we personally land within the data pool (as far as likely hood of an accident happening on any given flight).

One other thing that requires consideration when making comparisons to car accident statistics is that for a lot of people involved in a car accident, it is the result of someone elses bad judgement, which caused a situation they were unable to avoid. It is this premise that makes a lot of people (incorrectly) assume that the drive to the airport is the most dangerous part of the trip.

With airplane accidents, people are rarely involved in an accident that was the result of someone elses bad decision. This in itself makes the accident record of personal aviation look even worse.... if someone (myself included) is involved in an aviation accident, in all probability it will have been the result of decisions they them self made.

flyinga said:

Making an emergency descent you should have been in a bank anyway and that should give you good visibility below.

Click to expand...

And don't forget to level the nose periodically during a climb to check for traffic. It really opens up a lot of sky and potential hiding places for other aircraft.

I've had two near-mid-airs that scared the **** out of me...one, I was right-seat for a buddy's IFR practice work. Coming back to our home field, we followed procedures for a non-towered airport (tower was closed that late at night) to a T, entering at pattern altitude on the 45, announcing our position at every step, etc. Dead quiet on the air when I looked out, as were on downwind, to see a Cessna not more than 100' below us. I grabbed the controls, said "My airplane", throttled up and made a hard left climbing turn. After we were clear, I told my buddy what happened. We landed, then drove over to have a chat with the guy about what happened. He saidi, Oh, yeah, I heard you and I was announcing, too. Is your radio working, we asked? He poked at it, and...the whole thing fell off the underside of his dash. So, no, it wasn't. Chalk that one up to some really, really bad maintenance (and how he flew around in one of the busiest airspaces in the world not realizing he wasn't transmitting is beyond me).

Second one, heading out of town, using flight following, going over one of the passes at 6500' level, northwest bound, suddenly, I'm beak-to-beak with a Bonanza hauling butt in the opposite direction. Both of us executed immediate hard right turns, me climbing, I don't know what he did. Next thing I hear is *this guy* bitching at ATC about how come they didn't point out the traffic, that was a really high rate of closure, blah blah blah. Needless to say, the response from ATC (and me) was pretty terse and involved "appropriate VFR altitudes" and such. I was actually pleased that I didn't scare the bejesus out of my passenger, merely explaining that I was "just avoiding a little traffic that I saw". 3 more seconds and we would definitely have had an exchange of parts.

What I learned from both: never, ever, EVER trust the other guy to do the right thing. Ever.

I'd still like to find that doctor-killer driver and give him a piece of my mind...

rvbuilder2002 said:

I'm not trying to start an argument,

Click to expand...

Yes, you are.

but since I think we can all agree that a high level goal of all that participate on these forums is to pass true / factual information, I have to point out that this statement is totally false.

Click to expand...

Thus your opening statement violates the stated high level goal.

I just re-read the entire published VAF site rules, and I can't find any prohibition for a sense of humor.

I yield to your statistics. But will not concede that flying is dangerous.

Jim

SMRacer said:

Yes, you are.
Thus your opening statement violates the stated high level goal.

I just re-read the entire published VAF site rules, and I can't find any prohibition for a sense of humor.

I yield to your statistics. But will not concede that flying is dangerous.

Jim

Click to expand...

I am very confused by this response.

And, I am not even the one who presented links to statistics....

It's good practice to move your head position now and then when scanning, the roll bar on my previous 7A hid a Bonanza one day until I saw his wings on either side of the bar.
Now that was a near miss...the nearest I've had.

Playing the Odds

Sometimes it just gets down to the big sky, little airplane theory. No way you can ever develop 100% confidence in your situational awareness. There will always be the other guy doing what he's doing - not necessarily in compliance with good lookout doctrine or the VFR rules.

one additional point of view

with 15,000 pilots on this forum, naturally the responses vary widely ( sometimes wildly!) Lots of good info, and opinions...we can all learn something '....from that'.

One that I might add, although obvious. YOU are PIC.
We choose to give up control to varying degrees, go where the tower tells us, or regulations dictate, or passengers request 'just a little lower'.
Ultimately we need to stop and ask 'Is this eroding our safety margin?"
IF so, take immediate action.
Some 'practice' forced approaches have become, at the least, real off-airport landings when the engine didn't respond on the go-around.
or....my personal contribution as follows.

I am transiting a control zone, and given a course and altitude, to fly up the west shore of a long lake until clear of the zone.
I hear another aircraft on a reciprocal heading, which was a standard arrival path.
He SHOULD have been 500 feet below.....I am scanning, scanning, and semi-consciously pulling back on the stick, adding about 200' to my altitude.
I finally see him about 5 seconds before passing, about 200' below me. Evidently his transponder, showed the tower he was at 3500', and his altimeter seemed to agree. My equipment, recently certified, also showed that I was at the 'correct' altitude.
The controller could only relay the situation based on a few dots on a screen....I don't see him at fault here. There is a valley with a fair bit of traffic, and the 'perfectly safe' routing and procedures do not exist.
We all need experience, judgement, and application of 'air sense' to survive in this environment. Some can be taught, some learned, some must be experienced.

SMRacer said:

The most dangerous thing about flying is driving to the airport.

Click to expand...

We all like to think that, but it simply isn't true.

Flying has its hazards, but I strongly assert that flying is not dangerous.

Click to expand...

Fatalities per hour, single engine private GA has an accident rate comparable to motorcycle riding.

We all love to do it, and we all love to convince ourselves that it's safe, but nobody seriously believes that motorcycles are a low risk activity, do they?

Where the two pursuits differ, imho, is that motorcyclists have a lot less control over their environment: They can be the safest rider in the universe, and they can still be run off the road into a mailbox at 50 miles per hour by an 18 wheeler.

Pilots can (should) make a lot more command decisions about the risks they expose themselves to: Do I need to fly that low-level beat-up? Is it really necessary to launch into that foreboding-looking sky? Is that 25 knot crosswind a better idea than landing into the wind at that other airport 15 miles away? Should I just leave the hangar doors closed today?

If you're making decisions like that, then you are vastly less likely to have accidents, and the fatalities-per-hour-motorcycle-numbers happen to other people... Other people who must have truly horrendous accident stats to keep up the average once the sane and rational pilots have removed themselves from the pool.

Fly safe. But don't for one moment believe that it is safe.

- mark

Didn't John and Martha King take this on a few years ago?

https://www.kingschools.com/news/BigLie.htm

I've had some close calls. They make me smarter. They make me keep my head outside the cockpit. More than anything, they do what you're doing -- they make me think.

If EVERYONE would fly with your landing lights on, MANY more aircraft could see each other.
But that won't happen till the FAA makes it a law. And then there will still be people flying into the pattern without a landing light on, or doing a 7 mile straight in final.

gasman said:

If EVERYONE would fly with your landing lights on, MANY more aircraft could see each other.
But that won't happen till the FAA makes it a law. And then there will still be people flying into the pattern without a landing light on, or doing a 7 mile straight in final.

Click to expand...

Good point. Modern LED landing/position/strobe lights have a pretty negligible amp draw, so short of being in the soup where strobes can be distracting, why not light 'em up all the time?

Since we have been flying my new 7 with Dynon Skyview ADSB traffic, I am amazed at how many airplanes flying close to us that we cant spot! It has become a game with my wife and I to see if we can spot the planes on the screen. I have taken several evasive turns in the last 60 hrs from traffic that I never spotted! I know that 100% traffic is not on that screen so I have to watch carefully, but I'm really glad I sprung for that equipment!....As for ADSB out?...You better **** well believe I want them to see me, even though most of them probably cant! Even if they can see my tail number!

carry on: not that safe

Okay, so you've seen lots of advice to absorb here, most of it really good and I can only disagree a tiny bit with some.

Please allow me to post for those who cannot do so. In particular, those who have first-hand experience with mid-air collisions. I doubt there is even one amongst this august group.

The facts are these: flying scheduled airlines is darn safe, compared to getting out of bed. Any other kind of flying is not that safe. Now, some will say "it's no more dangerous than driving if (throw some conditions in)". My response is this: Is that the best we can do? Really? We train for way more time ( not to mention money) than drivers; our vehicles are very carefully built and regulated; we rarely operate within 100 feet of another moving vehicle; we are required to check "all available information" before going each time we fly and that's the best we can do? About like cars? Cars are dangerous! 30,000 plus deaths per year in the US. I dunno about other places but probably not much better than that.

Do everything you can to make flying as safe as you are able. Make it safer than driving. Seriously. Every flight. Stop and think; how can I make this safer today? There is always a way: see the other posts.

Don't stop flying. But know it is not as safe as some claim, or as safe as you'd like.

Make it as safe as possible.

I guess I should throw in my 2 cents on particular tactics. OK. Same as some others have said. Big sky theory is dead. Don't just "see and avoid". Know where the others are ( to the extent possible). Flight following, fish finders, head out of the cockpit and on a swivel. If your neck isn't tired; get busy, man! For each aircraft you see in crowded airspace, there are five more.

Zoom the fish finder way in. Targets within a mile are serious. Those at 10 miles are a distraction at best. Avoid or minimize time in crowded airspace. Put your %&$#%$ lights on!

And have fun.

carry on: not that safe

Okay, so you've seen lots of advice to absorb here, most of it really good and I can only disagree a tiny bit with some.

Please allow me to post for those who cannot do so. In particular, those who have first-hand experience with mid-air collisions. I doubt there is even one amongst this august group.

The facts are these: flying scheduled airlines is darn safe, compared to getting out of bed. Any other kind of flying is not that safe. Now, some will say "it's no more dangerous than driving if (throw some conditions in)". My response is this: Is that the best we can do? Really? We train for way more time ( not to mention money) than drivers; our vehicles are very carefully built and regulated; we rarely operate within 100 feet of another moving vehicle; we are required to check "all available information" before going each time we fly and that's the best we can do? About like cars? Cars are dangerous! 30,000 plus deaths per year in the US. I dunno about other places but probably not much better than that.

Do everything you can to make flying as safe as you are able. Make it safer than driving. Seriously. Every flight. Stop and think; how can I make this safer today? There is always a way: see the other posts.

Don't stop flying. But know it is not as safe as some claim, or as safe as you'd like.

Make it as safe as possible.

I guess I should throw in my 2 cents on particular tactics. OK. Same as some others have said. Big sky theory is dead. Don't just "see and avoid". Know where the others are ( to the extent possible). Flight following, fish finders, head out of the cockpit and on a swivel. If your neck isn't tired; get busy, man! For each aircraft you see in crowded airspace, there are five more. Use all available resources. And watch out for skydivers....

Zoom the fish finder way in. Targets within a mile are serious. Those at 10 miles are a distraction at best. Avoid or minimize time in crowded airspace. Put your %&$#%$ lights on!

And have fun.

Just curious how many of these stories of evading traffic occurred while you weren't talking to ATC?

I get the whole ADS-B thing and its value and all, but asking for advisories and flight following is incredibly cheap -- free -- insurance that a surprising number of aviators don't bother purchasing.

We need to use EVERYTHING at our disposal.

Lights... ADS-B... flight following.... everything.

AOA saved my bacon

With 900 hours of great flying in my 8A I had a new experience this past weekend. Was flying back from Tenn. to IN over the mountains. The plane was at gross, 2 on board full fuel and luggage. The WX 50 miles down the road was sever clear but we were in the crud with mountains below. I had just loaded the synthetic terrain on the Foreflight.

I decided to pop up above the cloud deck (in hindsight not a good move). I quickly got into hard IFR. At full power I started to climb, at 4000' the Angle-Of-Atack started warning of diminishing lift (reading 180 Kts. on ASI). I was in light rain and only able to manage about 100-200fpm climb. The controls were feeling mushy. I did not see any ice on the windshield or on the wings. At 4500' I aborted the climb attempt and concentrated on a 300 fpm wings level decent. The Foreflight was showing the high spots of the terrain below. We popped out of the overcast about 800' AGL to misty but certainly comfortable horizontal visibility.

The remainder of the trip was uneventful. Without the AOA there is a good chance we would have stalled in the zero vis and it could have gotten real bad from there. When I was building the plane 11 years ago an ex navy pilot told me if he could only have one instrument in the cockpit it would be an AOA. I have to say I think it saved my bacon this time.