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.
We were flying over Crookston Municipal Airport-Kirkwood Field (KCKN) in Minnesota at 4,500 feet to set up for a simulated engine failure at altitude and make a power off landing on the airport.
We were making a good amount of radio calls to let the airport CTAF know our intentions and scanned the area for traffic before we started descending.
As we started a circling descent over the airport a yellow aircraft was holding short of Runway 13 and asked if they had enough time to takeoff before we came in. We let them know they would be able to takeoff because we still had a good amount of altitude to lose. As we were watching the yellow aircraft takeoff we were about 3,000 feet MSL and made another radio call while continuing the circling descent.
All of a sudden a high wing aircraft (white with blue stripes) flew directly beneath us from the south, heading north, and made no attempt at making any radio calls. That traffic was not on ADS-B either.
I took the flight controls and started a climb back up and let the airport CTAF know that we were stopping the simulated engine failure.
We watched that same white high wing aircraft with blue stripes continue flying north and seemed to have no intention of actually landing at Crookston. We decided to fly back to ZZZ.
I suggest more information to general aviation pilots about making radio calls and listening to the CTAF frequency when near an airport to gain situational awareness about what is going on.
Primary Problem: Ambiguous
ACN: 1926206
I make it a point to monitor CTAF whenever I am transitioning a non-tower airport. I steer clear if there is much other traffic and report that I am transitioning the airspace. Heck, gives me something to do on those cross country flights.
My advice is to always expect the unexpected!
I agree with Scott Patterson: set up the simulated engine out over a road or green pasture. It is foolish to do this over an airport, especially one with the traffic this man saw. I was a T-33 instructor out of Webb AFB in Big Spring, Texas several years.
i would set up my student on a place distant from our base and the student and especially me in the back seat, keep a careful lookout for other traffic.
I wonder if this “instructor” or pilot uses O”Hare or DFW for simulated engine out.
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While you focused on the yellow bogie on the ground, you let one sneak up from your six and the rest is in the history books! Like all practice flights, one can learn much.
Radio calls are an important part of safety practices but should never, like anything else, be completely relied on. Never! I have continuously been a flight instructor for 50 years. I have had many incidents where there was a traffic conflict by two aircraft with radios on! I’m afraid it’s just as bad as driving your car, fly defensively and don’t forget to use your eyeballs. They’re best tool to avoid danger. Doing something out of the ordinary? That’s the time to be on high alert. And, consider if what you are doing is really safe enough at the time and place.
Personally, I make a point of not flying directly over airports when flying cross country, no matter what kind of airport it is. But it’s not illegal, nor is radio contact required. Neither is it illegal to make a mock emergency approach to a non-towered airport, so long as it doesn’t interfere with existing traffic. So anyone who wants to make a mock emergency landing at a non-towered airport better make ultra sure not to turn that mock emergency into a real one. If there was any fault here, it was in the lack of situational awareness of the reporting pilot, but the crossing pilot shares in that, too. Being legal isn’t necessarily being prudent or wise.
Unfortunately, pilots in the last 20 years have not been taught that not all aircraft gave radios, transponders, and/or ADS-B and are incapable of being so equipped, even with a handheld radio.
I don’t see that the crossing airplane did anything wrong.
Interesting?! I take it your up set? Spiraling down over a non towered airport?…….What did you expect?
First off what you did was dangerous. It is also legal to over fly a non towered airport at 1500AGL. Not all aircraft have radios or ADS-B. Not all aircraft would hear your radio calls.
If you really want to do something like this, go to a towered airport off hours and call and ask the tower (phone) would they approve this maneuver.
Completely right You’re, rwyerosk.
Did you mean: I take it (you’re or you are upset)? The word ‘your’ implies possession. And ‘up set’ is not the same as upset.
Or you could use a road or field distant from the airport since it’s just a simulation.
But thanks for the heads up, although yours apparently wasn’t….I’ll be forever watching for rouge white with blue strips high wing airplanes below 3000 feet MSL.
I understand your surprise of the white with blue strip aircraft flying under your circling to do a sim. engine out landing. Keep in mind that it would be good practice for each pilot to monitor freq. on airports they come in close proximity too while enroute but also you were performing a slighly different approach to the airport. More than likely you were focusing on your glide to a good landing and maybe not watching out as much as usual. Also, your pattern was slightly altered with the sim engine out. To aid in (see and be seen ), did you have your landing light on while circling and also possibly make some additional radio calls even though the other aircraft may not have been on freq. When we do anything slighly different arriving at an airport we need to consider all elements that can make us safer.
Perfect set-up to turn a simulated engine failure into an actual mid-air….descending into the traffic pattern while depending on your radio and electronic devices to keep you safe.
The traffic pattern is intended to be entered at pattern altitude (FAA-H-8083 Airplane Flying Handbook, chapter 7) for that reason.
A better and safer practice would be to do 180 degree power off approaches from the prescribed traffic pattern and descending simulated engine failures with a power recovery in the practice area.
Those of us who fly the correct pattern would appreciate it…
Evidently I’m the only person flying for 54 years that’s never made a mistake. Makes me feel warm at ❤️