Are we talking about the jet low pass case? That was because there was no attempt to land.
This is pretty accurate for the SVFR clearance I received at my home airport. They asked I approach from the North and I set up for exactly that. But when I descended to 900 ft AGL and still had no real sight beyond the cloud layer and could see I would have to fly much lower, possibly close to 500 ft I wasn't comfortable doing that so I opted to divert to another field not too far away but with better weather according to the ATIS. There were still other options for me that were farther away, but I had plenty of fuel to attempt the approach if I could see the airport, go around (low crosswind and downwind departure if needed as the airport has farm fields to the south so no obstacles to speak of) and fly to another airport further away. Luckily the airport was visible enough that I felt like I could make a safe attempt at the landing on a 6,000 ft runway so there was plenty of room to get the plane safely on the ground as I fly a PA22 and can get on deck and stopped within 1,000 ft of touchdown easily. I can do shorter if needed.
A better way for me to say that was - in an emergency I could have considered this an option as I am comfortable flying RNAV approaches and have done many to this airport, but you are correct, I am not IFR rated, therefore cannot ask for a pop up IFR clearance.
The only time they won't already know about IFR traffic is if there's a popup. And in either case, that isn't "altering the flight rules".
I don't think so, because I'm not sure I'm familiar with that one?
Some guy in a jet made a low pass over an airstrip. (This was before the Trevor Jacob nonsense). The claim was he had no intent to land and came within 500 feet of the people on the strip. I think the one I'm remembering was this one: https://www.ntsb.gov/legal/alj/OnODocuments/Aviation/5353.pdf
There was another one a few years ago involving, IIRC, a Beech 18.
Oh, sure. Good thing the feds don't tend to hang around smaller fly-ins. But the Beech 18 on I remember was notable in that the pilot fought it instead of groveling and accepting his pennance.
Buzzing or strafing, make one pass and get out.
I’m thinking most of the violations would be similar.
Ah, OK. Didn't know about that one.
Gotcha. Agreed.
You can, but yeah, it wouldn’t be legal. If everything worked out ok, no one would know. I did it when I was a student pilot. PPL student. Conditions were such that it wouldn’t have back fired on me if for some reason I’d have had to abandoned the Approach and go around. The only restriction to VFR was visibility, like 2 or 2 1/2, don’t remember exactly. If I’d have had to ‘go around’ making it now a ‘missed approach’ I’d have been in the same situation. Visual contact with the horizon and the surface. Unlike you, I had no instrument training at the time. If you’d have had to ‘miss’ and been vectored around all over the place, or been given reroutes, or been put in holding, IMC, to get set up for another Approach, would you have been comfortable?
Yes I would have been comfortable with it, I've done plenty of all of that already as part of my IFR training. It would have required me to truly believe I was in an emergency to even consider it and I was not at that stage yet. I had hours of fuel remaining as I filled up prior to my departure, there were alternate airports within an hour of flying without any real possibility of the marine layer getting to them thanks to a mountain range between me and them and I had an out available to stop my VFR approach and turn around. The only thing that would have necessitated an emergency would have been an issue with the aircraft.
Pretty good explanation, but I disagree with one item. When he talks about getting a SVFR clearance from the ground to depart a nontowered airport, he says to contact Flight Service. I would not. I would call the same TRACON number that I would call for an IFR clearance for the exact same reason - why mess around with the potential banc and forth and back and forth of a middleman when I can talk directly to the controlling agency?
Technology has probably made it a lot easier, but it can be difficult for VFR pilots to find the proper controller frequency. A one-stop shop with Flight Service can make it a lot simpler.
