Too close, high risk: conflict on final approach causes late go-around
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- LFEB Dinan is an untowered airfield, so safe separation of traffic is dependent on air crew making accurate position reports and keeping a good lookout.
Flying into Dinan in our Robin DR401 155CDI, after an initial call we make four position reports (I apologise for the poor quality of the recordings of the radio calls: we were still experimenting with methods of recording cockpit audio and I certainly hadn't nailed it for this one!). A departing aircraft then taxis off the grass onto the runway when we are less than 500 metres from the threshold and less than 250 feet high, forcing us into a late go around.
Aircraft accelerate and climb slowly with full flap, and we had to gain some speed on full power to allow the flaps to be retracted but, even at final approach speed, we were still travelling faster than the aircraft on the ground so separation was reducing.
I don't know if the pilot of the other aircraft didn't listen or didn't look or just chanced it. In any case this was a potentially dangerous conflict that would have been avoided if the departing aircraft had delayed by only one minute.
Shot on GoPro Hero10 and GoPro Max. Telemetry data from the Garmin G500 TXi overlaid using Telemetry Overlay.
This happened to me at an uncontrolled field. I was in a Cessna 305 Bird dog, he was in a Cherokee. I was a half mile out on final and in radio contact. He was at the end of the runway, just outside the hold line. Then he taxied onto the active and started his take off roll. I pulled the flaps up to the first notch and ended up right over the top of him, my left main wheel went about five feet over his right wing tank. I held my speed at about 60 kts and paced him until he pulled back his throttle, but too late: he overran the end of the runway and collapsed his training wheel strut in the ditch. I flew on, announcing on the radio my departure and the "obstacle" at the end of the runway.
The hardest won lessons are the best learned. I later learned that the Cherokee was three years out of annual, her driver hadn't had a medical exam nor BFR in over a decade, and others claimed I'd done the world a favor: it didn't make me feel better.
Ouch…it just shows how interdependent we are on each other as pilots and that there are some things that you just cannot guard against; only react to as quickly as possible!
Maybe the other pilot was just being French