Not long ago, I did something stupid in an airplane. Gulp.
The scenario looked like this: I departed a non-towered airport that lies under Class B airspace. As my flight home was a short one, I didn’t use Flight Following, as I normally would. Instead I simply took off, climbed to 2,000 feet, and settled in for a half hour of casual cruising over Floridan’s flat, wild countryside. And that’s where the trouble started.The cloud bases, which had been hanging low at about 700 feet when I flew in hours earlier, were now at 2,200 feet. At my cruising altitude I didn’t have legal cloud clearance for Class E airspace.
Rather than descend, which would have put me lower than I was comfortable with, considering the pointy metal towers and large expanses of nowhere to go in case of an engine failure – I chose to climb.
Climbing was a good choice. I chose 3,500 feet, which gave me a better glide range should the unthinkable happen. It gave me legal cloud clearance too. But I shouldn’t have climbed without considering what airspace was above me, and making a call to request clearance.
The simple truth is, I suffered a brain fade. I climbed into Class B airspace, without clearance, three or four miles short of the Class E airspace I intended to climb into. No alarms sounded. No lights flashed. I flew along fat, dumb, and happy without a care in the world.
A few miles down the road, I called a Class D tower to let them know I’d be clipping the edge of their airspace as I transitioned through on my way home. The tower asked me to ident. That was a little odd, but I complied. Then I got the bad news. The tower said, “I’ve got a phone number for you to copy. Call the supervisor after you land.”
Uh, oh.
In 26 years of flying professionally I had never busted Class B airspace. Not once. Not anywhere. Now I had, and I knew it.
This is where the wheels start turning. Some people believe you should not call the phone number, and certainly never admit an error. I take an alternate view. I was in the wrong. That being the case, I felt the need to take responsibility for my error. So I called.
I talked to the supervisor. I told him I was embarrassed. I explained that in trying to maintain weather minimums, I’d inadvertently climbed into his airspace without a clearance. I admitted my error and apologized for adding complexity and annoyance to his day and that of his team.
The upshot of all this was wonderful. He thanked me for calling. He acknowledged that my infraction was inadvertent and not malicious. He let me know that his primary concern is that an errant pilot like myself knows what he or she did wrong and knows to be diligent in our attempts to prevent it from happening in the future. He closed our conversation saying, “I don’t have any plans to pursue this further.”
I thanked him. Then I filed an ASRS form. More commonly known as the NASA form, the Aviation Safety Reporting System is a process that allows a pilot to self-report a blunder to the authorities. I explained what had happened and why it happened, in writing. I outed myself as an offender. I took responsibility for the lapse in situational awareness that led to my transgression.
This entire reporting process, both the phone call and the ASRS form, required me to review the full series of events. It allowed me to consider what I’d done and how I did it. It also allowed me the freedom to consider what my alternatives might have been, and how I might handle that same situation in the future should a similar scenario present itself.
This is the pilot way. In aviation, taking responsibility is ingrained in us. It’s a major part of our training. Taking responsibility is expected. It’s encouraged. And when done properly in a timely manner, it’s often rewarded.
As a result, it’s a common occurrence for pilots to take a ton or more of aluminum structure filled with humans and fuel, climb a mile into the sky, and head out for the horizon in near perfect safety. The impossible has become the pedestrian. It’s a scene that plays out thousands of times a day, every day.
That’s not the case in our lives away from the airport. Taking responsibility for one’s actions is considered a fools errand. Instead we make excuses. We obfuscate the core issue and muddy the water until the truth of what happened is almost impossibly lost to the whirlwind of words.
As an example, drivers aren’t required to seek out or receive recurrent training in any of the 50 states. You take a class and get your driver’s license as a teenager, then spend the next half century or more developing bad habits, and suffering from our areas of ignorance, without any requirement or even a suggestion that we might learn a bit more about how this darned car works, and how traffic flow is planned to be executed.
Nation wide, the standard for competence is quite low and the willingness of drivers to take responsibility for their errors in judgment or action is missing almost entirely.
Rolling a car down a road at a moderate speed should be incredibly predictable and unassailably safe. Yet in 2015 more than 38,000 people were killed in traffic accidents. Nearly 4.5 million were seriously injured.
From 2009 through 2016 not a single person died in the crash of an American registered airliner. Not one. Yet aviation is considered dangerous. Driving is considered to be relatively safe.
In complete disregard for what we know to be true, car accidents are largely regarded as unavoidable. We blame the intersection, not the driver. We pretend the speed limit played a role, rather than consider the decision-making of the motorist. We consider these tragedies an inevitable part of modern life, and fail to even consider that training, and the taking of responsibility might be the missing links.
Personally, I’ll take a seat in the airplane high up in the sky over a crowded road filled with distracted, under-educated drivers any day. And I don’t expect the situation to change — ever.
I applaud the FAA for issuing FAA JO 800.373. It is a step in the right direction for air safety. It is my belief that we should and can learn from others mistakes.
On the other hand I shake my head in disbelief regarding what the FAA did regarding the airspace at KSLE. With NPRM FAA-2014-1069 the FAA removed the E4 extensions at KSLE. I have been dealing with this issue since August 26, 2015. A FOIA was filed regarding the airspace change with the FAA releasing a considerable amount of information. But here is the kicker, they (FAA) redacted 27 pages of documents. I made an appeal for the redacted documents on January 11, 2016 that appeal is now 18 months old. The FAA has yet to respond to my appeal. Oh so much for FOIA laws and openness of government.
FAA JO 8000.373 in part reads:
“To foster this open and transparent exchange of data, the FAA believes that its compliance philosophy, supported by an established safety culture, is instrumental in ensuring both compliance with regulations and the identification of hazards and management of risk.”
It great sadness i report that the FAA is anything but “open and transparent”!
The following NPRM’s are largely due to my efforts:
NPRM FAA-2015-3751
NPRM FAA-2016-6984
Why the airspace was changed at KSLE is important!
But what is most important is:
That all airspace is designed per procedures and polices of the FAA and for it to be safe.
E5 extensions at 700 feet is inappropriate for Class D airspace.
No airspace should be modified or changed for benefit of a few!
After January 1, 2020 with the ads-b mandate, anyone inadvertently busting airspace boundaries may not get the “Ident” request from ATC. I’m sure we will still be asked to call the Supervisor when we land.
Great article! I love it!
The most dangerous part of flying is driving to the airport!
Keep up the good work!
Ellexis / VP, South Texas Flying Club
Just think of how many violators will be easily ID’ed when they equip their airplanes with ADS-B ‘out.
With Mode S transponders, they have your “N” number but I’m not certain what the lateral accuracy of actual position is? The vertical correspondence between the altimeter and the encoder is supposed to be <125'. I guess there'd be SOME wiggle room if you just nicked a piece of Class B? With ADS-B squitting WAAS based present position every second along with the "N" number, they've got your aircraft ID'ed if you've been bad and it can be automated no matter how small the violation. For airliners, even speed restriction violations would be noted.
ADS-B 'out' is a unidirectional communication where the airplane 'tells' ATC, et al, where it is. The bit stream includes info on whether the aircraft has 'in' capability. With just a little tweaking, ATC could likely send out a twitter type message to an offending airplane that has the 'in' capability by addressing it specifically. Mode S (and ES) transponders are addressable individually. I could even foresee a time where future ADS-B transponder front panel displays could flash a message of … "Call this number" without the 'in' function.
Faced with the situation you described, I would have done exactly the same. We can all hope that the FAA truly is being "kinder and gentler." I have read where the attitude of the offender makes a big difference in deciding your fate. I wonder if they wrote your name down in some database, however, without a violation?
The FAA policy used to be “don’t hesitate, violate” (the offending pilot) Now, there is a change in the wind called “Compliance Philosophy.” This is based on the (very reasonable) assumption that most pilots *are* trying hard to be safe and legal but occasionally stumble. There is such a thing as an “honest error in a system as complex as our aviation world.
Largely based on the concept of “Just Culture” (see Sidney Dekker’s eponymous book), the FAA rolled out “Compliance Philosophy” this fall. Pilots who are trying hard and accidentally goof, as you did, will not be violated: https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/cp/
I clipped the class B airspace about a year back. The tower gave me the number to call after landing and I spoke with the supervisor. I also apologized for my error and nothing more came from it. My home airport is on the outskirts of class bravo and I’m definitely more diligent about giving myself buffer after my incident.
If you leave your tooth under your pillow, the tooth ferry will come and leave you a dollar for it.
It would be interesting to have the statisticts showing the percentage of pilots admitting their mistakes that didn’t receive the correct response your ATC supervisor displayed. I would suggest it would weigh heavily on the side of violations.
You can accept responsibilty to yourself and change your personal limits and proceedures, improving safety, without placing your licenses and livelyhood in danger.
Just a thought from 60 years of violation free flying.
Tom, that’s good advice on some level but, in this case, as an airplane owner who had been contacted, it means he had also been identified. This was probably the best course and now we all get to learn. I suspect calling was the best plan.
Thanks Jamie for sharing.
Well one of the number of car infractions of not taking blame or responsibility comes right from our Insurance Company (place your company name here)! That’s right folks. They all say it and it is written on the back of the insurance cards is “Don’t admit fault”. You are requested by that company to shut your mouth like Sargent Shultz himself…I know nothing…I see nothing…and so on. We know our rates will rise most of the time. So I open my aircraft Insurance Company card and there is a bullet list with this coming in at the fifth one, “Do not discuss fault with anyone except the authorities or the insurance company”. It’s a good thing that this little infraction of “B” airspace didn’t get you a notice from the local FAA office. What would have happened if your rates rise. We would be just like the car insurance…folks telling all sorts of stories to get out of that happening.
Good article, sir!
38 yrs and 22,000 hrs of aviatin’ I’ve made mistakes aplenty. All my fault and none, thankfully, bending metal.
Take responsibility, admit mistakes, learn from errors and always pay attention.
Add ‘be courteous’ to the mix and one has a recipe for successful living, methinks.
Thanks for sharing outstanding tips how to do it right. I learned safety for myself and safety for other Pilot around me. Class B no joke at all. I like the fact you were honest and knew what went wrong that’s a good sign for experience pilot to recognize the mistake and fix the issue and fly safely.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. I teach many things from this and how to take right step.
Excellent write up! We all need to ALWAYS, in the cockpit and out, own our mistakes and take responsibility. It’s great that the outcome of your story was a positive one, mainly because you made the right choice to call and own your mistake.
Thanks for sharing this story.