Veritastech Pilot Academy

Pattern Problems: Why Sloppy Entries Can Lead to Close Calls

When you fly, do you practice difficult things that you don’t do well? Or do you focus on the easy stuff, leaving harder skills to rust until you need them most?

 Pilots tend to focus on takeoffs and landings, which make sense, since they’re critical phases of flight. By comparison, the approach to landing, or even the entry into a traffic pattern, garners less attention, probably because it seems trivial compared to landing a plane. 

Sadly, a lot of bad landings, even fatal ones, are rooted in poorly thought-out approaches to landing. Two recent events—a fatal accident in North Carolina that I’ll write about in the future and a poorly flown pattern entry by a pilot I flew with—brought this to mind. I feel great empathy for both pilots, as those events reminded me of my wake-up call, early in my flying career, about the importance of planning approaches to airports.

This Article First Appeared in FLYING Magazine

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I was lucky to have taken flying lessons in high school and finished my private certificate while in college. For the next eight years, I didn’t fly a lot, as I was working and starting a family. I still remember my primary instructor saying, “Max, you don’t fly enough,” a phrase I’ve since used with a few of my clients in similar situations.

I passed my private in 1976 with a whopping 52 hours spread over the prior four years. Eight years later, I still only had 122 hours, when I decided to venture off to a new airport I’d never been to before. I rented a Cessna 150 (N5491Q) at the Hackettstown, New Jersey, airport (N05) and headed south to the Trenton-Mercer Airport (KTTN). Most of my flying had been at single runway, nontowered airports, so I didn’t realize the challenge I’d have entering the pattern of a towered airport with intersecting runways.

I called the tower and was told to enter a left base for Runway 24. But I was having trouble identifying the runways and orienting myself to them. Ultimately, I found myself crossing the 24 numbers from north to south at pattern altitude. At that point, I realized that I’d messed up but didn’t know how to fix it.

Fortunately, I was the only one at the airport, and the controller tried to save me by calmly issuing a new instruction for another runway. But I botched that up as well. Finally, I heard the words from the controller that I still remember 41 years later: “N5491Q, you’re cleared to land on any runway.” The traffic pattern had defeated me, because of my lack of planning. Until then, I truly thought I could just show up and figure out how to enter a traffic pattern when I got there, as that’s what I’d done on previous flights. 

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Just a week ago, I was giving a 200-hour private pilot a phase check, after he’d received transition training from another CFI in a Cirrus SR20. Ostensibly, I was there to check his ability to fly a Cirrus, but what I found instead was a deficiency in some basic pilot skills.

We briefed that we would do a simulated engine failure over California’s Frazier Lake Airpark (1C9) from 5,500 feet, do a go-around, and then enter the traffic pattern at the nearby Hollister Municipal Airport (KCVH), where he would demonstrate various types of landings. The simulated engine failure went well, and he showed good judgment by initially turning away from KCVH so that he could figure out the traffic pattern altitude.

But rather than turn away as he told me he would, he announced on the CTAF that he’d be making a left 360 and then proceeded to make a right 360.

Earlier, a Pilatus PC-12 announced that it was on a 10-mile final for Runway 24, which the winds favored. Later, I had a phone call with my friend Rob Lober of AirTahoe saying he was in the Pilatus and his copilot commented, “Why is he making a 360?” My pilot then announced that he was on a downwind for Runway 24. However, he had rolled out on a left downwind for Runway 31. 

Later the Pilatus called that it was on a 4-mile final for Runway 24, and I asked my pilot what he planned to do. Ironically, just minutes earlier, he mentioned the midair collision that occurred at the nearby Watsonville Municipal Airport (KWVI) in which an aircraft in the pattern turned base in front of a twin Cessna that was doing a fast, straight-in approach to the same runway. My pilot said he was planning to turn inside the Pilatus. He then turned onto the base for Runway 31, while announcing he was on base for 24. Soon after, I announced that we would be going around and departing the pattern. 

Later, I measured the ground tracks and found that had my pilot actually been in the pattern for Runway 24, he would have turned less than half a mile in front of the Pilatus. When Lober called me later, he said he was about to initiate a go-around when I announced we’d be departing the airport. Although he could see our airplane, it wasn’t apparent to him that we were in the pattern for Runway 31 and not 24. 

I gave the pilot a second chance by having him enter the traffic pattern at nearby San Martin Airport (E16). But while on downwind, before reaching the numbers, we were 250 feet below pattern altitude and descending, so I ended the flight, and we went home.

During the debrief, I talked with the pilot about various ways to orient himself to the traffic pattern and runways. The Cirrus had a glass cockpit with a horizontal situation indicator (HSI), and I showed him how to place a pen over it, and turn the pen to the runway number, which helps with orientation when looking out the window to identify the runways. 

The MFD’s airport information page is also helpful, though it has a north-up orientation. To get around that, while flying to an airport, I look at the number at the bottom of the HSI to see the direction we’re flying from.

For example, if I see the No. 9, I know we’re approaching from the east. Then I place a pen or even my finger to show that we’ll be arriving from the right side of the map, or the east. That makes it easy to see the runway orientation and choose an entry to the traffic pattern. 

Later, the pilot told me that his instructors avoided nontowered airports because they were busy, and that when he flew, he avoided them as well. Next time you fly, spend less time polishing what you already do well and more on the skills that could one day save your life. 


This column first appeared in the January Issue 966 of the FLYING print edition.

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