This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
I was the third aircraft to land on Runway XX in a row. I dropped off my friend and taxied back out to Runway XX.
There was a Citation jet departing Runway XX. A Cessna 310 and the jet were talking, saying they saw each other.
The 310 announced downwind for Runway YY, but in my mind I was thinking XX since everyone else was using that runway.
I looked at my traffic display and saw the 310 looking like it was on downwind for XX (when actually he was on base for YY). I looked at final and base for XX and it was clear. I announced departing XX and took off. Someone called go-around three times loud and fast.
I looked left and saw the 310. He banked left and I banked right to miss each other. Had he just landed, I would have flown over him.
This was my most close call in many years of flying. The 310 pilot didn’t know the other planes had been using XX other than the jet.
My main mistake was in expecting the 310 to use Runway XX like all the other planes.
ZZZ has become so busy, a tower would have prevented this near miss from happening.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1910449
AWOS/ASOS is the problem. Gives you enough information to make “your decision. The other guy makes his.
What runway to use? What dictates that decision? Direction of flight? Taxi time to other end of long runway. RNAV approach? Power available, engine size? I can beat that tail wind and up slope! Noise abatement? RP one direction LP the other direction. Calm wind day, coming in from the north, my choice, right. That’s what the other guy says too.
The good news: At least the Aerostar and C-310 involved are still flying, presumably, two years later…
The bad news: Incidents at non-towered airports continue to dominate this forum.
Unfortunately, the folks that need to change their behavior probably aren’t paying attention.
I recently visited KMEV, and when it was time to leave I taxied to the departure end of runway 34. I waited for an opportunity and announced my take off and subsequent “left downwind departure to the southeast”. All aircraft (except gliders and tow planes using runway 30) were using runway 34 with left hand traffic, and there was a fair amount of radio traffic announcing just that.
After climbing out of the pattern (in CAVU) I hear on the radio, “Minden Traffic $$$-jet XYZ ten miles to the south descending through X-thousand. We’ll enter a right downwind for runway 16.” There were plenty of ADS-B targets on the IPad – including the jet – and I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I told the jet that “everybody else” was using runway 34, and the amazing response was, “Roger that, we’ll keep an eye out”.
Where do people learn stuff like that?
It’s called situational awareness! You made an assumption of where the 310 was going, didn’t he make callouts about his intention? Did you miss those calls ? You could have very easily asked the 310, then you would have known. Uncontrolled fields are pilot responsibility. Don’t use the excuse of saying that all fields should be tower controlled relieving you of being lazily situational unaware!
The message is correct, the messaging is
unnecessarily critical.
At some point we have to get back to being respectful and taking time to offering suggestions without criticizing.
I think you meant Expectation Bias. And we all do it at one point in time or another. I did it at OSU. I was sure that the tower had given me ground freq and cleared me to parking just like the prior aircraft. My read back was not corrected.. The ground controller and I had a bit of an exchange…. Expectation Bias.
I watch out for this now and try to not get caught up in it.
There are frequent occasions where the pilots need to do more than report their position. Agree that the pilot departing could have asked the 310 for position/intentions. Then again when the writer announced his departure, why didn’t the 310 alert him of the potential conflict. A tower isn’t necessarily the answer. I remember one report where a pilot was holding short, the towered cleared him for takeoff, and an airplane on short final said something like ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that’.