Thursday, June 18, 2009

Crazy people

Over the past few weeks, I have had many a close call. Several on the road, one or two in the air. Just last week I was flying at the Spanish Fork Airport practicing traffic patterns with my student. We were using the main runway (for those of you who don't know, every runway has two directions, 180 degrees opposite of each other), making all the correct radio calls and listening for anybody else in the area. We called our final approach for runway 30 (a heading of 300 degrees on a magnetic compass) and lined up with the runway. As we did this, another call was heard. It was some airplane asking if anybody was in the pattern. I repeated our call, and we landed. After a few moments of instruction, we called "on the go, 30" (meaning we were going again for another pattern). Another call from the airplane indicated he was setting up for 30 as well. As we got up to speed and began to climb, we heard "final for 12" which is the opposite direction and head to head with us. Sure enough, there was the plane turning into us?! We broke right and avoided the plane, making a call that we were doing so. The plane had nothing to say. Not an apology, not anything. Sometimes I wonder if some pilots even have eyes or ears. That isn't the first time that that has occurred. I hope its the last, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

1 comment: