Stories about calling the Tower

midlifeflyer

midlifeflyer

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I periodically do a program on FAA enforcement. I try to improve it a little bit each time i give it. The last time, one of the most positive comments was that I include stories about real events. Some of them are real enforcement cases, some are from personal experience.

What I am missing is a good story about receiving a message to "call the tower" or another ATC facility in which the pilot is worried about some potential violation. The pilot calls, discusses it with ATC, and it doesn't goes any further than that. I'm not interested in stories where discussion it with an ASI goes no further - I have plenty of those.

If you want to tell me the story but not post it on the public part of the forum, send me a PM. Your name will not be mentioned.

Thanks.
 
I got a "possible PD" at KRHV during taxi. I was told to contact Ground during the rollout, then given an instruction to follow another aircraft, by Tower (still finishing the rollout). I thought it was an instruction to taxi with Tower, so I never switched to Ground. The instructor in the right seat made the same mistake. Ground was not happy and Tower gave us the number.

We called after securing the aircraft, and Tower said the instruction had been "ambiguous" and the supervisor would call in a few days to resolve. When he did, we were told a review of the recordings had shown we did exactly as we were told, and it would be resolved with controller training.

In retrospect, I should have asked, but it didn't cross my mind. Now, it does.
 
Only got "fussed at" once.

Landed in a C150 on KLEX Rwy 22, years ago. A nice short landing... I started to turn left onto the first reasonable taxiway intersection (C). They didn't give me the phone number, just yelled at me,
"What are you doing!!? Continue on 22 and turn left onto taxiway G -- no one turns on C."

To this day, I don't know why but I do remember the incident.
 
You mean like someone that says "Tower, I just busted Class B airspace what should I do?" or something like that?
And towers reply is "Turn off your transponder and radios and go land at a Class G airport. They will probably never find you"?
And thats the last we hear of him again. :)

Trouble with posting something like this. It never happened to me or anyone. I just made it up because I think its funny. Is that what you want? A funny story? Most of them are more along the lines of "How I got screwed with a full load of passengers". Those are sad and full of anger. Personally I think the funny ones are better.
 
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Towers have humans working in them, too, and humans can make mistakes. When I was working on my instrument rating (maybe 15 years ago) I received a "call the tower" instruction from a particularly salty controller who worked at our home field. I was flying with an instructor that day, and for the life of me I can't remember what the alleged violation was. What I do remember is that I had just studied that particular issue, and I knew that I was right.

The controller invited us up to the tower to "discuss" the issue, which I knew from other friends' experiences meant that he wanted to chew your ass in person, after which he would let it go (90% of the ops at this airport were training flights, and at least back then they seemed to handle minor deviations this way from time to time).

But, I knew I was right on this issue, I held my ground, and we consulted the FAR/AIM for guidance. The controller ultimately agreed with me, and we got along fine from then on. Nothing related to the issue was ever formalized on either side.
 
coloradobluesky said:
You mean like someone that says "Tower, I just busted Class B airspace what should I do?" or something like that?
And towers reply is "Turn off your transponder and radios and go land at a Class G airport. They will probably never find you"?
And thats the last we hear of him again. :)

Trouble with posting something like this. It never happened to me or anyone. I just made it up because I think its funny. Is that what you want? A funny story? Most of them are more along the lines of "How I got screwed with a full load of passengers". Personally I think the funny ones are better.
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I can make up funny stories. I want the real thing. [Like the ones being posed here and via some PMs - thank you all!]

But perhaps you have never heard the phrase "call the Tower" or "take down this number."To use your Class B example, it's not a pilot calling a Class B TRACON out of the blue to confess a Class B incursion. It's a pilot getting caught doing a Class B incursion and getting a call on the radio to take down a phone number and call for a chat.
 
My last flight before moving from paper charts to iPad.

I needed to get from N07 to KMHT, but thought I only had the fuel to get from N07 to KBAF, so that's what I planned. Weather at N07 and KBAF was VMC. I get to the airplane and realize there's more fuel in it than I recalled, and I have a honking tailwind.

Oh good, I'll just continue on to KMHT, then. It turns out it's 2000 overcast there. I see the clouds in the distance, and I hear a tops report from a Lear that took off from there and was now talking to Boston Departure. I call for and receive a pop-up clearance with instructions to expect the ILS. No worries.

Pull open the approach plate book and can't find any plates for MHT. It turns out it's in a different state and isn't covered by the books I have on board. So, knowing I won't be flying the missed (or if I do, I can maintain VFR), I ask the controller to read me the things I need to be able to shoot the approach with vectors to final. He's a little perplexed, but grants me my wish and everything goes swimmingly.

As I'm exiting the taxiway, the tower gives me a number to call.

I get to the ramp and give them a buzz right away. The controller on duty is trying to work out how it came to pass that I departed my airport under VFR (he didn't know the whether beyond the range of his scope was clear and a million), and why I didn't have plates on board for MHT. Once I explained both and that my original destination was going to be BAF where I would've briefed for MHT, seen the weather, checked the plates and realized I needed to buy a new chart book for the area, all was well. He chuckled and that was the end of it.

After that, I was done with paper.
 
Thread creep (heck, it's my thread!):

Amazing, @coma24 ! Things never ever go wrong with paper! Only with electronic tablets! (That was irresistible!)

Yours is a great story even without the call. What you did when your paper charts "failed" is the answer to all those questions folks ask about what you will do when your tablet dies, runs out of batteries, locks up,.....
 
I've had to call ATC once - here's my story:

I was repositioning a Citation SII from ONT to CRQ, a pretty short flight. My FO was new to the airplane, having come over from a King Air 200. He was fully typed and had a small amount of time in it, but this would be his first empty leg. He's the pilot flying.

We were doing the Prado departure, departing west. Basically you make a climbing left turn back to the PDZ VOR, and have to cross 6 miles prior to the VOR at or below 4000'. It's been over a decade, so I don't remember what our initial clearance altitude was, but it was higher than 4000'. He briefs the departure just fine, and we talk about the 4000' altitude restriction and how to manage it. So we were both well aware of the restriction.

We take off and I switch over to departure (Socal). I get no response. I try again, check the frequency on the plate, and end up going back to Tower to get a departure frequency that was different than what was written down from the clearance, and also different than the plate.

Since we're empty and lightly fueled, the plane was climbing like a bat out of hell, and my FO wasn't used to it. He was aware of the restriction, but slow to get the nose over and power back. I let myself get distracted by the frequency issue and made a rookie mistake of being heads down at a critical time. I think we got as high as 4400' before going back down to 4000', then continued the climb after passing 6 DME from PDZ. Socal didn't say anything about it and we landed uneventfully at CRQ.

As we were taxiing in, Ground told us we needed to call Socal and gave us the number. We both immediately knew what it was about. I made the call, and Socal confirmed that we missed the restriction by a few hundred feet. He was very, very cool about it, and I told him that although we briefed it, we just screwed up the execution and I apologized for being a bonehead. He said it wasn't a problem at all, and just wanted to make sure we were aware of the restriction and what it meant. He said it's there to keep us out of the way of LAX arrivals, but there were no inbound airplanes, so no harm, no foul.

We both filled out NASA reports, but we never heard another thing about it.
 
I'm sure you'll find even more stories about having a PD and never even told to call.
 
It's funny, my instinct to do that was born from a random, comical experience in a sim. I never thought I'd actually need to do that in real life, but when the time came, that was exactly what I opted to do.

As for the sim, we were shooting a promotional piece for PilotEdge (this was before the service had even launched), showing an end to end flight in a Citation from SBA to some far off destination. The idea was we'd edit it down to just the most interesting pieces. Well, unbeknownst to me, some smart ass failed the nose gear actuator from the instructor console, so when I went to retract the gear, the nose gear remained down and locked. I decided the best course of action was to turn around and return to SBA. Of course, we didn't have any plates printed for SBA, and it was 500 overcast in the sim. So...I put two and two together and realize my only recourse is to have the controller read out the things I need. It ended up making for great video, but I truly had no idea that was comin'. The controller didn't either, but he did a good job of reading out the things I asked for on the plate.

Actually, I just found the video... http://www.pilotedge.net/pages/introduction-videos. 2nd video from the bottom, at about the 2:08 mark. It goes for about 90 secs. There's an engine failure on final, too....they were just having too much fun on that instructor console.
 
Kayoh, it's remarkable how things work when you open with, "yep, we messed up, here's why, sorry about that." Things tend to go remarkably well when you don't put up a wall of BS to cover tracks and just tell 'em what happened. Human nature, I think.
 
I can tell an actual funny story. Back in the mapping days the tower asked me to call them after we landed. I couldn't figure out what I might have done, but what they really wanted was an aerial photograph of the airport area so they could measure off the distance to landmarks to be used for visibility reporting and they knew we were in the business..

In another story from about the same era, I landed on the wrong parallel runway, the one I was accustomed to landing on. During the approach I was wondering why we were sequenced so tight. After taxiing off the tower said, "you know you landed on the wrong runway." Oops. I apologized and they said, "Don't worry, we'll take care of you". And they did. I never heard another word about it. This was at least 20-25 years ago and probably would not be as easily forgiven now.
 
I was working as tower controller at KABI in the late 70’s. A Bonanza was on a 1 mile final for 17R being followed by a King Air 200. The King Air had the Bonanza in sight trying to go slow, but was catching up. I advised the King Air to be prepared to go around. Shortly after the Bonanza touched down, I instructed him to, if able, turn right at the first taxiway. The Bonanza did not acknowledge my instructions, nor did he make the turn. I had to send the King Air around. The Bonanza is still on the runway, taxing slowly and not answering my radio calls, nor Ground Control’s. The King Air had made a short circuit of the field was again on final. I still could not communicate with the Bonanza and he did not respond to light signals. He was still on the runway, so I had to send the King Air around again. He was not happy!


The Bonanza finally exits the runway, about 7000 feet from the approach end and taxies onto an FBO’s ramp, still at slow speed. The King Air has made another short circuit, lands long on the 7200 foot runway and at a fast pace taxies to the same FBO’s ramp.


The Bonanza pilot has been slow in making his way to the FBO’s building. I have the FBO on the phone, waiting for the pilot to get inside so I can explain some things to him. The FBO is just below the tower so I have a good view of what is transpiring.


He is so slow that the King Air’s pilot catches up with him at door to the FBO. The voice of the King Air pilot could be heard over the phone in the FBO as he screamed and raved at the Bonanza pilot. The Bonanza pilot has found a high gear and is backing up just as fast as he can as the King Air Pilot follows him, step by step yelling things about the Bonanza’ lack of education, birth circumstances and piloting skills.


After watching a few minutes of the lecture being delivered to the Bonanza Pilot, I told the FBO that I no longer needed to talk to him.
 
This is a great thread. I always thought calling the tower was like waiving your 5th amendment right and admitting to guilt on a recorded line. I was taught never to call the tower and to speak an attorney first, even if you have to wait for the weekend and even if it was something minor. Just out of curiosity, for the other pilots on here, how do you decide when to, and when not to call the tower/tracon?
 
At the end of my Multi check ride, we were taxiing off the runway when tower said, "Taxi to the ramp with me, and call tower when you get in." Me and my DPE looked at each other. We couldn't figure out anything that we could have done wrong. He completed all the paperwork and told me to let him know what Tower had to say.

After he left, I walked over to the tower, picked up the courtesy phone, told them I was the pilot of Nxxx and asked if I could come up. They let me up and we did some small talk. After a couple minutes of this, I finally asked them what I did to **** them off. The three of them gave me a blank stare. They had no idea what I was talking about. So I mentioned that I landed about 15 minutes ago, I was asked to give them a call and was wondering what I did wrong. I also told him that I just passed my Multi checkride. The guy working local control finally burst out laughing. Apparently he thought his buddy was instructing and THAT'S who he wanted to call.
 
I got a phone number after landing on my PPL checkride.

Everything had gone pretty smoothly for the whole ride, so it was quite a surprise to me, as well as the DPE. When we got to parking I called them up. The issue they had was that on our first takeoff we had told them we'd be doing an "Alpha North" departure, which is the CRQ code for straight to the shoreline, then turn right. When I took off we drifted south of centerline a bit before turning north and crossing it again. Apparently they had departed a faster aircraft behind us and they had to change course to deconflict. The controller said it had happened several times in the last couple days with that aircraft (which was a rental), and just to take note of it for the future.

The reality of the situation was that there was a bit of breeze from the north drifting us south. I was in a cherokee with no back window, so no real great way to see since pretty much all you get out the front on climbout is sky and ocean. When I hung up the DPE told me that I hadn't really done anything wrong and that he had watched my heading on the climb and I was right on. Really the controller should have either called us up on the radio and asked us to start our turn early, or simply told the other aircraft to offset.

The guy I talked to on the phone was not the same controller, and was super friendly and polite. He didn't act angry or scold me, just asked me to keep it in mind for the future. I was polite and said thank you, and that was it. I've since met most of the controllers in the tower, and actually become close friends with one. They are all just regular people. I assume the one who made the note was just having a bad day and I did the thing that everyone was doing to annoy him. It happens.
 
JC150 said:
This is a great thread. I always thought calling the tower was like waiving your 5th amendment right and admitting to guilt on a recorded line. I was taught never to call the tower and to speak an attorney first, even if you have to wait for the weekend and even if it was something minor. Just out of curiosity, for the other pilots on here, how do you decide when to, and when not to call the tower/tracon?
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The call to ATC has never been intended to have the pilot admit guilt over a recorded line. It's to inform the pilot what they observed from their end and how they'll take it from that point on. If you call you can tell them that you don't even want to make a statement. There's a block on the form for such a case. You can even call them on an unrecorded line. We had both types of lines at our facility.

ATC doesn't care about being traffic police either. The whole PD thing is just a formality that they have to deal with. Out of maybe a dozen or so PDs I witnessed, I wrote up only one pilot. Only reason why I wrote him up was that he (F-18) busted IFR separation with a Bonanza. Much easier to sweep it under the rug but in that case, he didn't give me much choice.
 
JC150 said:
This is a great thread. I always thought calling the tower was like waiving your 5th amendment right and admitting to guilt on a recorded line. I was taught never to call the tower and to speak an attorney first, even if you have to wait for the weekend and even if it was something minor. Just out of curiosity, for the other pilots on here, how do you decide when to, and when not to call the tower/tracon?
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As someone who's been asked to call Tower/Tracon a few times over the years, I have never lawyered up and always called as soon as I was in my parking spot (all of those were in the cell phone era :)).
In all cases there was a misunderstanding/miscommunication of some kind, and we were able to sort things out quickly and amicably to our mutual satisfaction.
As others have said, ATC is not out there to get you (and neither is FAA in general). I look at things from their perspective, and try to be as nice and cooperative as possible, appreciative of the hard and high quality work they are doing, and they always reciprocate in kind.
I had a few "reverse" cases recently, where I was the one initiating the call. One of them I unfortunately had to escalate a bit, since the controller at first refused to admit any fault, so apparently was sent for "retraining".
In another such case, I was able to do it very discreetly via an ATC contact, and was assured it was being handled properly.
In a fairly recent case, which happened while on a low IMC approach to my local airport, involving the local Tracon, my ATC contact got me directly in touch with the FAA quality assurance person, who was extremely nice and helpful, and we were able to sort it out.
So as bottom line, if you are a caring and conscientious pilot, and try your very best to fly by the book at all times, and something does happen where either you or ATC seem to drop the ball, it's a good idea to contact them directly and sort it out together. As I see it, ATC and I are on the same team, we are not adversaries in any way, we both want my flights and their workday to complete safely and successfully and both want to understand any communication or procedural breakdowns and fix them ASAP.
BTW, I have only once filed an ASRS, and that was when I was out of my home region. I might write a separate thread about it at some point.
 
MAKG1 said:
I got a "possible PD" at KRHV during taxi. I was told to contact Ground during the rollout, then given an instruction to follow another aircraft, by Tower (still finishing the rollout). I thought it was an instruction to taxi with Tower, so I never switched to Ground. The instructor in the right seat made the same mistake. Ground was not happy and Tower gave us the number.

We called after securing the aircraft, and Tower said the instruction had been "ambiguous" and the supervisor would call in a few days to resolve. When he did, we were told a review of the recordings had shown we did exactly as we were told, and it would be resolved with controller training.

In retrospect, I should have asked, but it didn't cross my mind. Now, it does.
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Similar, but I didn't get a number at Tulsa Intl about a month ago.


On roll out, I got NO instructions at all. I was now under power to taxi, so I turned out at the first intersection towards TulsaAir. I crossed the hold short line, cleaned up and waited for tower. After about 30 seconds, I asked Tower what they wanted. They told me in a gruff voice to Taxi to the GA Ramp and thats it. So I did. About half way to Tulsa Air, they called me on Tower because i was not on ground.

I told them you never told me to contact ground so I remained on Tower. He then said Contact ground but by this point I was pulling on to TulsaAirs ramp. He was clearly miffed.

I think its also important to note I was the ONLY aircraft that landed within a 10 min period and that includes the big iron flights too. They were no busy AT ALL.

I was tempted to give him MY NUMBER to call for being lazy.
 
JC150 said:
This is a great thread. I always thought calling the tower was like waiving your 5th amendment right and admitting to guilt on a recorded line. I was taught never to call the tower and to speak an attorney first, even if you have to wait for the weekend and even if it was something minor. Just out of curiosity, for the other pilots on here, how do you decide when to, and when not to call the tower/tracon?
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You'll have to come to one of my presentations ;)

It's not an easy decision. You were taught the typical "lawyer" answer when giving presentations. It's the typical lawyer answer because it's the safest and easiest one to give in a group setting.

But, as you can see from some of these stories (my reason for asking for them) it's really not that straightforward. Even before the new "compliance philosophy" so many of these resulted in nothing or mild administrative action. OTOH, there is always the operative, whether Tower or later on, who is going to try to "make a point" about something or another. The best I have come up with as a general principle is, you can call the tower and find out what they want without having to admit anything and hang yourself. That's something some folks can do and other folks can't. If you feel you can't do that and stop the conversation if it becomes accusatory, it may be a safer bet not to call at all. We're all different and one size does not fit all.

BTW, BTDT myself. I've got good personal ones about speaking with the tower and TRACON and Inspectors about an event (and having the proverbial "fool for a client" since I did stuff that violated every piece of advice I've given to clients), but I really wanted to get a broader sample. So thanks again, all.
 
I was flying IFR to KIWS (West Houston), a non-towered field, in the summer or fall of 2014 as a relative IFR noob. It was a clear sunny day and the airport was busy. I was busy too and I didn't cancel IFR, not least because I wanted traffic advisories until the last moment.

As I neared the field I was cleared for the visual, told to change to advisory frequency, which I did. I did not cancel and I didn't change codes. I should have in hindsight. I entered and flew a normal pattern until very short final when some @#$%^ decided he needed to takeoff RIGHT THEN. Runway incursion. I executed an immediate go-around from maybe 200 feet and side-stepped to the outside of the pattern, climbed back to TPA, watching Captain A-hat the whole way. He never heard nor uttered a single word on CTAF the whole time and flew off to the NW.

Several pilots heard the frustration in my voice and commented that they saw exactly what happened.

On the ground I called to close my IFR flight plan and was given a number to call for "possible pilot deviation". WTF, I thought. I was the one who got cut off by that moron. Turned out it was only tangentially related to that. The number was to TRACON. So I called and was unable to speak to the actual controller but his supervisor relayed the question... what happened? I looked like you were doing touch and goes?

I remember laughing out loud a bit. I relayed the runway incursion event and told them that I had to execute a go-around. Since I hadn't canceled, they had to hold out other inbound IFR aircraft. That was my mistake. I really should have just air-canceled. In any case, he understood that I had to think of safety first, that I never left the traffic pattern and had airport in sight and thus had no reason to call approach back, and said that was all I'd hear about it. I apologized and admitted I should have just canceled with approach in the air - which is what I do now unless there is a compelling reason not to.

I really should have filed an ASRS for that incursion event, and maybe for the PPD, but I took the guy at his word that that was all I'd hear about it. And it was.
 
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Sounds like it went from possible pilot deviation to no deviation from the phone call alone. We sometimes have some folks around that don't use the radio, unfortunately...
 
Years ago, on my way to a CAF meeting, I landed at OAK at night in a rental plane with an INOP landing light. When I had slowed to taxi speed, I did as I was taught and watched for parallel rows of taxiway lights leading away from the runway. Unfortunately, that didn't work at OAK, because the spacing between exits was comparable to the width of the exits. I ended up taxiing into the grass between exits and getting stuck there! After informing the tower what happened, they sent an airport guy out to help me push it back onto the pavement. They also gave me a number to call, which I did after I got parked.

During the course of the phone conversation, the controller said that due to the INOP landing light, I should wait until morning before flying home. I pointed out that a landing light is not required for operations that are not for hire, but he insisted that in view of what had happened, it would be best to wait. I told him I would consider it.

Since I had figured out what to do differently while I was taxing to parking, I knew I could get home without incident, but I figured it was better to avoid ruffling any feathers, so after the meeting I got a ride back to Palo Alto Airport from another CAF member who was based there. The next day, I used a couple of rapid transit trains to go back to OAK to pick up the airplane (which was actually kind of fun). I never heard any more about the incident.
 
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