I will use the lessons from this flight for myself and all future students for the purpose of discussing complete airplane maintenance with airplane owners (especially new airplanes), what to do when engine becomes rough, and procedures to follow with a flat tire.
ASRS Reports
A banner pilot’s dangerous habit
The banner towing pilot has a dangerous habit of flying through the traffic pattern. Earlier that day another pilot had a near miss with the same aircraft at the same location.
Another close call at an unsafe airport
ZZZ is in need of a Control Tower. It is an unsafe airport with the type of flight operations and how much activity there is. There seems to be close calls for various types of events nearly every day.
CFIs anger hangar owner
Five days later we start hearing from other pilots how “pissed off” a hangar owner is that we used the taxi lane in front of their hangar adjacent to the taxi lane.
Pilot feels pressured to conduct ferry flight
“I shouldn’t have let the plane owner and mechanic pressure me into going when we suspected that the engine driven pump was ‘weak.’ Ironically, the owner has the fuel pump sitting in his house so he knew it was having problems and failed to tell me before I flew five hours over water outside of gliding distance of land.”
An increasingly dangerous traffic pattern
“It seems like the traffic pattern at LMO has become increasingly dangerous. Many instructors have had near misses with other pilots not making calls or entering the pattern however they wish.”
Extreme frequency congestion leads to near miss
Communication in the area was encumbered by heavy usage and several radio calls we made were blocked due to other transmissions, leading to confusion over aircraft positions at the airport we were using.
Trim moves in wrong direction during training flight
The Cessna 172 started pitching up slightly nose high. The student was adjusting trim, and at some point I told him that “you are adjusting trim wrong direction.”
A student who doesn’t use checklists plus a broken fuel selector valve leads to engine losing power
I noticed he was very busy on final this last trip around, and it appeared at this time he was switching tanks. I have never instructed him to switch tanks on final before. For some reason, he continues to do things in the airplane that were not taught, or are in direct opposition to what was being taught. Most of them are minor, but fuel is something I’m very passionate about having on board.