From an outsider's perspective it seems like the ATC was too impatient with this pilot who *seemed* like she was complying with his instructions. What are your thoughts about the "possible deviation" and also forcing her to land at that airport? Would it have been acceptable for him to have been more patient with her instead? Once on the ground she was definitely lost and should have just parked it and gotten further instruction on where to go.. that much I see.
Pilots thoughts on this ATC/pilot interaction
- Thread starter The_Eric
- Start date
She was slow to respond to the initial instruction, and her radio skills and knowledge were sub-par. But I've heard worse pilots than her around Seattle approach and the controllers are more patient and helpful. I agree with Captain Steve's analysis overall. The controller was out of line - if this video captures the entire scenario (we don't know whether it does).
AFAIK, from a regulatory perspective, it's not up to the controller to decide whether a pilot needs remedial instruction. That is the FAA's decision. This was not an emergency situation, loss of separation never happened. In a situation like this the controller should let the pilot fly back to wherever she wants and call the tower on the phone after landing. Then depending on how that conversation goes, report the pilot and incident to the FAA (or not).
When the tower instructed her to land at his airport, he escalated the situation by forcing her to land and taxi at an unfamiliar airport. The regs require pilots to gather all available information about their planned flight. If she didn't plan to land at this airport, she didn't have to gather all the information about its runways, taxiways and frequencies. So the controller added to her confusion. He should have been happy to let her fly back to Falcon on her own.
Just my $0.02 as a non-professional pilot who flies little airplanes. But I do fly in busy airspace. Take it FWIW.
AFAIK, from a regulatory perspective, it's not up to the controller to decide whether a pilot needs remedial instruction. That is the FAA's decision. This was not an emergency situation, loss of separation never happened. In a situation like this the controller should let the pilot fly back to wherever she wants and call the tower on the phone after landing. Then depending on how that conversation goes, report the pilot and incident to the FAA (or not).
When the tower instructed her to land at his airport, he escalated the situation by forcing her to land and taxi at an unfamiliar airport. The regs require pilots to gather all available information about their planned flight. If she didn't plan to land at this airport, she didn't have to gather all the information about its runways, taxiways and frequencies. So the controller added to her confusion. He should have been happy to let her fly back to Falcon on her own.
Just my $0.02 as a non-professional pilot who flies little airplanes. But I do fly in busy airspace. Take it FWIW.
Interesting situation. I have flown with many crew members who don't respond all that quickly either. Sometimes they get a friendly reminder. I tend to be immediate unless the call says something like "descend at pilots discretion", as most of the time I like to remain at cruising altitude as long as possible.
He’s already filed the deviation. She’s already going to get violated. Her license is in jeopardy the moment he gave her a phone number to copy.
The FAA is already going to investigate, I’m not sure if it’s worse if she were to say simply, “unable“ and proceed back to falcon field.
I’ve flown out of Falcon Field, to the northeast of the field are mountains and to the south and west are a multitude of airports in a big city. It’s busy airspace. I don’t know who signed her off as a private pilot, she knows how to dial the correct frequency, but she doesn’t know how to talk professionally on the radio. Complete read back of clearances, particularly clearances to land at an airport with multiple runways, is a requirement. She failed to meet several requirements when it comes to communication and when it comes to complying with controller clearance.
What’s missing from the discussion is the geography.
I don’t know where she was in relation to this controller’s class B airspace. Others have said that no loss of separation occurred, well when a controller says climb immediately, a loss of separation has either occurred or is about to occur, so we can’t know that there was “no loss of separation”.
I have never seen a controller react that strongly, but we only know about his instructions, her poor skills, and his telling her to land.
We don’t know where she was, we don’t know what preceded this conversation, and so that makes it impossible to judge whether the controller was out of line or not. The fact that I’ve never heard a controller tell somebody “I’m going to make you land at this airport”, before doesn’t mean he was incorrect, it means the situation was extreme.
Whether he reacted appropriately or not requires more information to determine.
Only once was I asked to 'call this number'. It was due to what I said on the radio not being believed.
I claimed to have more than 5 hours fuel remaining in my Cessna 177RG. SAV had storms move in and I deviated to Charlotte, which was 220 miles away. Somehow behind the scenes they decided I was pushing my luck as I had already been flying 3 hours. I called the number and got someone on the line who knew nothing about the complaint. Eventually they figured it out and sent someone from the tower to 'dip' my tanks to see if I had sufficient fuel. I had plenty and that was the end of it. Very strange all the way around. I still scratch my head on that one.
Just an FYI, at 13,000 feet, my plane burns about 5.5 to 6gph. I took off with 54 gal and burned about 20 of that in the first 3 hours. I had a great tailwind and was flying as economically as possible. So ground speed was superb.
NOTE: It's called a Brasher Warning when pilots are told to call a number. In years past a good percentage of the Brasher Warnings resulted in some form of enforcement action. Today around 6.5% of "call this number" situations result in escalation to enforcement action. A good fact for pilots to file away.
I claimed to have more than 5 hours fuel remaining in my Cessna 177RG. SAV had storms move in and I deviated to Charlotte, which was 220 miles away. Somehow behind the scenes they decided I was pushing my luck as I had already been flying 3 hours. I called the number and got someone on the line who knew nothing about the complaint. Eventually they figured it out and sent someone from the tower to 'dip' my tanks to see if I had sufficient fuel. I had plenty and that was the end of it. Very strange all the way around. I still scratch my head on that one.
Just an FYI, at 13,000 feet, my plane burns about 5.5 to 6gph. I took off with 54 gal and burned about 20 of that in the first 3 hours. I had a great tailwind and was flying as economically as possible. So ground speed was superb.
NOTE: It's called a Brasher Warning when pilots are told to call a number. In years past a good percentage of the Brasher Warnings resulted in some form of enforcement action. Today around 6.5% of "call this number" situations result in escalation to enforcement action. A good fact for pilots to file away.
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That is quite the overreach. ATC are not regulatory enforcers nor do they have the authority to determine whether or not any pilot is within compliance.
