MidAir at Centennial Airport Cirrus and Metroliner

The Cirrus pilot obviously is at fault for either lining up with the wrong runway or overshooting his final, one or the other. However I bet the NTSB will find that, just like the accident in the video below, that neither pilot was in a position to see the other prior to the collision. The Cirrus was in a right turn, hiding the Metroliner behind the wing on the outside of his turn. The Metro pilot probably couldn't see the Cirrus merging from his 3 o'clock position.

 
midwestpa24 said:
The Cirrus pilot obviously is at fault for either lining up with the wrong runway or overshooting his final, one or the other. However I bet the NTSB will find that, just like the accident in the video below, that neither pilot was in a position to see the other prior to the collision. The Cirrus was in a right turn, hiding the Metroliner behind the wing on the outside of his turn. The Metro pilot probably couldn't see the Cirrus merging from his 3 o'clock position.

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But didn't he verbally acknowledge visual contact at one point?
 
He obviously went to the Jerry Wagner school of precision flying.
 
midwestpa24 said:
The Cirrus pilot obviously is at fault for either lining up with the wrong runway or overshooting his final, one or the other. However I bet the NTSB will find that, just like the accident in the video below, that neither pilot was in a position to see the other prior to the collision. The Cirrus was in a right turn, hiding the Metroliner behind the wing on the outside of his turn. The Metro pilot probably couldn't see the Cirrus merging from his 3 o'clock position.

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RyanShort1 said:
But didn't he verbally acknowledge visual contact at one point?
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He did acknowledge seeing the Metroliner and his clearance to land was based on his acknowledgement that he had the traffic in sight. I wonder if he actually did see the metroliner? I don't think he did, or if he did he lost it quickly, because I think it would have been painfully obvious that turning when he did would result in at least a close call. "Follow the traffic" ahead does not require an immediate turn, I would have stayed on downwind and timed my turn so the metroliner I supposedly had in sight was past me when I started the turn to final, I also would have been very concerned about catching up to the 172 ahead of me, and that's at normal Cirrus approach speeds.

This guy screwed the pooch, I'm doubtful he will be very forthcoming with what actually happened as it seems he has a lot of liability from this on his plate.
 
Lindberg said:
From other posts here, it seems like Cirrus doesn't really trust Cirrus pilots' judgment. Maybe with good reason. In the past, I've argued against the stereotype, but I don't know if I will anymore.
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**Cough**Apple**cough**
 
Perhaps he saw the plane in adsb. Which lags a bit. And can be misleading with scale sizes. Zoom in enough and 100 feet looks like miles.
 
Salty said:
Perhaps he saw the plane in adsb. Which lags a bit. And can be misleading with scale sizes. Zoom in enough and 100 feet looks like miles.
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I just can't comprehend that level of stupidity, but you could be right.
 
Let’s play what if. What if the airplane wasn’t a Cirrus. It was some other kind of airplane. The same thing happened. Discuss.
 
Lindberg said:
Everything in this picture. And the robotic training Cirrus provides.
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I became a CSIP quite a few years ago - I’m no longer current - but at that time the training was anything but robotic. It was standardized, but a lot of emphasis was on scenario-based training. And lest anyone dump on standardized training, it’s that sort of thing that keeps airlines orders of magnitude safer than general aviation. Had this pilot flown the standardized Cirrus speeds, there’s an excellent chance this accident never would have occurred.
 
luvflyin said:
Let’s play what if. What if the airplane wasn’t a Cirrus. It was some other kind of airplane. The same thing happened. Discuss.
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We’d be crucifying the pilot as an individual rather than part of an airframe related stereotype.

There are too many variables with other types.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The problem with Cirrus isn’t the airplane, it’s the clientele that the airplane attracts who have more money than skill. And no, I’m not labeling all Cirrus owners/pilots. There are just too many who unfortunately refuse to get a clue.
 
Fearless Tower said:
We’d be crucifying the pilot as an individual rather than part of an airframe related stereotype.

There are too many variables with other types.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The problem with Cirrus isn’t the airplane, it’s the clientele that the airplane attracts who have more money than skill. And no, I’m not labeling all Cirrus owners/pilots. There are just too many who unfortunately refuse to get a clue.
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Like Bonanzas and Doctors.
 
luvflyin said:
Let’s play what if. What if the airplane wasn’t a Cirrus. It was some other kind of airplane. The same thing happened. Discuss.
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Fearless Tower said:
We’d be crucifying the pilot as an individual rather than part of an airframe related stereotype.
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Also worth noting that (justified or not) we'd be speaking ill of the dead.
 
PaulS said:
I just can't comprehend that level of stupidity, but you could be right.
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It’s pretty common around POA for people to talk about how great adsb is for seeing traffic while in the pattern. I don’t get it, but it is a thing.
 
Salty said:
It’s pretty common around POA for people to talk about how great adsb is for seeing traffic while in the pattern. I don’t get it, but it is a thing.
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I don't recall people saying that, but I regularly fly into a busy delta and sometimes I'll get a traffic callout I can't find, a quick glance at the traffic screen will help me zero in on it.

What I perceive as a problem is people trying to please controllers. Or maybe pilots not wanting to have to extend a downwind so they might call traffic in sight they don't actually see. No one should ever do that and professional controllers should never sound exasperated when you can't find traffic or don't see the airport. Unfortunately we are all human.
 
PaulS said:
He was going about 160 knots over the ground at that fateful turn, a standard rate turn at that speed would result in a 0.8 nautical mile radius turn.



I doubt we'll ever really know Salty. If he was focused inside, it wasn't on his airspeed, flaps setting or power.
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Why would he be doing a stand rate turn in the pattern? That seems inappropriate to me.
 
A bit of new data. Just had a chat with a CFI very familiar with the incidet. There was no CFI on board.It was a pilot renting the Cirrus from Indpendence. What the person who told me was not clear about, was if it was a student pilot with a pax (illegal) or a cert pilot with a pax.
 
PaulS said:
It will be interesting to see the details about this guy, how long he's been flying the Cirrus, and hopefully we'll find out if he had done any of the Cirrus recommended training.
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Probably he did. Unless I'm mistaken, the airplane was a rental from a Cirrus training center based at KAPA.
 
PaulS said:
Why would he be going 160 knots over ground on base behind a 172? That seems inappropriate too.
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My apologies I thought you were saying that was a normal thing to do standard rate turns in a visual pattern. I don’t think any of it was normal. Just a good example of pilot error and being task saturated.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
My apologies I thought you were saying that was a normal thing to do standard rate turns in a visual pattern. I don’t think any of it was normal. Just a good example of pilot error and being task saturated.
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No need to apologize, interesting discussion.
 
denverpilot said:
I'm feeling more convinced over time and looking at the data that he was turning to line up with the wrong runway.

The only way a local does that is if they replaced "Right" with "Left" in their head due to an expectation bias that they'd be landing left for a full stop.
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That was going to be my guess too, only because I've done it, all the way to the landing; successfully sandwiching myself between the preceding and following traffic. This was in the single Cessna, not either of the "Twin Cessnas". I had no idea until the tower said, "You know you landed on the wrong runway". "Oops, sorry". Then they said, "Don't worry, we'll take care of you." And they did. Never heard another word about it. But this was in the late 1980s, and the plane and I were a known quantity.
 
Everskyward said:
That was going to be my guess too, only because I've done it, all the way to the landing; successfully sandwiching myself between the preceding and following traffic. This was in the single Cessna, not either of the "Twin Cessnas". I had no idea until the tower said, "You know you landed on the wrong runway". "Oops, sorry". Then they said, "Don't worry, we'll take care of you." And they did. Never heard another word about it. But this was in the late 1980s, and the plane and I were a known quantity.
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Betcha the boys in the Tower were watching the whole thing developing and taking bets on it. Will she or won’t she
 
Everskyward said:
That was going to be my guess too, only because I've done it, all the way to the landing; successfully sandwiching myself between the preceding and following traffic. This was in the single Cessna, not either of the "Twin Cessnas". I had no idea until the tower said, "You know you landed on the wrong runway". "Oops, sorry". Then they said, "Don't worry, we'll take care of you." And they did. Never heard another word about it. But this was in the late 1980s, and the plane and I were a known quantity.
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I've been blown all the way over in a massive west crosswind there also, but didn't land it. Still wasn't pretty. The only good news was nobody else was stupid enough to fly that day except me.

Tower said something along the lines of, "If it looks like that's going to happen, let us know next time" during the resulting go around where I was just crabbed some insane amount to get back over the grass between the runways.

Should have executed the go around a lot sooner. It was power off 180 practice and I had no power and not enough altitude to trade it for steeper bank and more nose down. To save it I would have needed full power the second I turned the base.

Live and learn.

If there had been parallel traffic I would have jammed the power back up... No traffic allowed target fixation. Absolutely a screw up on my part. Thankful there were no metroliners flying for me to hit that day.

I'm convinced this pilot screwed the pooch. I'm also aware we all occasionally screw the pooch and get away with it. Can't let it become acceptable, is all...

Or as a friend and CFI I know who worked for a place that had a formal way of recording student performance jokes...

"UNSAT!"
 
PaulS said:
I just can't comprehend that level of stupidity, but you could be right.
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I can't comprehend the level of stupidity of JW zooming in on the approach plates so tight all you can see is a single black line and a georeferenced ownship symbol, let alone doing it on all available screens simultaneously, yet he does and posts it publicly for all to see.
 
Everskyward said:
That was going to be my guess too, only because I've done it, all the way to the landing; successfully sandwiching myself between the preceding and following traffic. This was in the single Cessna, not either of the "Twin Cessnas". I had no idea until the tower said, "You know you landed on the wrong runway". "Oops, sorry". Then they said, "Don't worry, we'll take care of you." And they did. Never heard another word about it. But this was in the late 1980s, and the plane and I were a known quantity.
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Sometimes it's easier just to get them on the ground and out of harms way than try to get them to do it right. I remember hearing a guy pop up on final on the Oshkosh tower frequency one year. Apparently he hadn't read the notam and had no clue about going to Ripon, etc... The tower just figured it was safer to get him down. Cleared him to land 36L.

FLIB: Which one is 36 Left?
TWR: The one with the big numbers on the end and the dotted line down the middle.

I suspect the guy would have had a stroke if they'd asked him to land on the green dot.
 
flyingron said:
Sometimes it's easier just to get them on the ground and out of harms way than try to get them to do it right. I remember hearing a guy pop up on final on the Oshkosh tower frequency one year. Apparently he hadn't read the notam and had no clue about going to Ripon, etc... The tower just figured it was safer to get him down. Cleared him to land 36L.

FLIB: Which one is 36 Left?
TWR: The one with the big numbers on the end and the dotted line down the middle.

I suspect the guy would have had a stroke if they'd asked him to land on the green dot.
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Also, I don't think any separation was compromised. The preceding airplane was off the runway by the time I touched down and the following one wasn't sent around. Definitely expectation bias on my part, since I rarely used the right runway, as it was normally for touch and goes, and we were always a full stop since we were based there. I noticed that in later years, they repeated the runway assignment and emphasized RIGHT more often.
 
There's no rule that says two aircraft can't be on the runway at the same time. At a controlled field, the tower just has to assure that there isn't going to be a conflict.
 
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