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 departed the Flying Cloud Municipal Airport (KFCM) in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, with a CFI candidate for closed traffic pattern work at the airport.
We were cleared for takeoff on Runway 28R and the controller instructed us to extend our upwind to accommodate other traffic arriving at the airport, as well as a helicopter doing closed traffic pattern work on 28R.
We begin the takeoff roll and I see the helicopter ahead roughly 300 feet AGL about 1,000 feet beyond the departure end and then I lose sight of them.
The helicopter was instructed to also extend upwind, which concerned me as I knew we would be quite a bit faster than them and would quickly close the distance between us.
The helicopter was told to extend until they had downwind traffic in sight, which the traffic was just entering the downwind. The helicopter began to turn crosswind, but at a very slow speed, I would estimate roughly 15-20 knots.
My student had to arrest our climb in order to prevent a collision with the helicopter.
Tower then instructed us to make left traffic for 28L and we continued into the downwind and executed a safe landing.
At no time were we given instruction to maintain visual separation with the helicopter.
The improvement I am hoping this report will bring is more vigilance on behalf of the tower controllers at KFCM, as well as all the flight instructors and students.
Even in a tower-controlled environment, operational errors are present with the saturation of flight training that occurs at this airport.
I would also recommend that helicopters and airplanes be separated by a wider margin due to the speeds at which they travel in the pattern, as well as the difference in lengths of the pattern legs between the two categories.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1910986
I think both controllers and fixed wing pilots are often unaware of how powerful the downwash of even small helicopters can be. It can be every bit as dangerous as the wake turbulence from a large aircraft.
Aviation sometimes requires a pilot to think on his feet…
..But…you always have the option to not take off if conditions exceed your comfort level/personal minimums.
That’s certainly true. But if you’re talking about my takeoff incident, the fast helicopter was well south of the airport and out of sight when we were cleared for takeoff to the north. It suddenly caught up with us on initial climb. Generally the helicopter operations were consistent over many years and never caused any problems. They occurred when several factors all came together surprising all involved.
I can understand the writer’s concerns. Quite a few years back, the worst experience I ever had was when an arriving helicopter at the tower’s direction was instructed to fly down the parallel taxiway (a long-time procedure) at the same time we were cleared for takeoff on a day when the wind was stronger than usual flowing from the taxiway to the runway. It resulted in us going into a 45 degree bank just after liftoff. Helicopters were also directed to fly to a taxiway intersection on the other side of the airport which was close enough to the opposite threshold that on similarly windy days, we would get turbulence from the rotorwash just as we passed the numbers for landing. We had conversations with the tower about these events and appropriate changes were made but I always felt that something was missing from ATC guidelines for airplane/helicopter separation. The helicopters involved were heavier executive types.