Veritastech Pilot Academy

Don’t Allow the Aircraft Radio to Fly the Pilot

Aviate, navigate, communicate. In that order. Every time. This is one of the first things fledgling pilots learn. Yet it is still common to drop the airplane to fly the radio—and sometimes it appears the radio is flying the pilot.

I have been an earwitness to ATC trying to help a lost pilot get flight following for a daytime VFR flight. This was before ADS-B was the law of the land. When the controller asked the pilot for the type of aircraft, the pilot replied, “I’m not sure. They gave it to me at the flight school and told me to take it.”

I was on an instructional flight with an instrument client who peered up from beneath the hood and gave me a look of pure horror as we listened to the controller trying to help the other pilot. When asked for the tail number, the pilot said he wasn’t sure as he couldn’t see it from inside the cockpit. Then another voice—not the controller—jumped on and said, “Look for a placard on the instrument panel.” 

The pilot presumably found the placard as he read off the tail number, but he still wasn’t sure what kind of Cessna he was flying. I was reaching for my smartphone to Google the number and get the make when yet another voice jumped in with, “He’s a Cessna Skyhawk,” letting me know I wasn’t the only pilot who had that idea. 

The conversation continued. The pilot had taken off from a local airport but somehow lost his way in VFR conditions. He wasn’t sure what altitude he was at or how to ident with the transponder. From his description to ATC of what he saw out his windscreen, he was south of me and my learner. 

Although it wasn’t our circus or our monkeys, the exchange between the confused pilot and ATC became a teachable moment for my learner, who had CFI aspirations. “Let’s go find him!” he said.

I agreed. 

The learner jumped on the radio and gave a position report, letting ATC know we were looking for that traffic. ATC was giving the other pilot vectors to the nearest nontowered airport. The destination airport was at our 1 o’clock. We didn’t see the other pilot, but we heard the controller guiding him to an airport slightly to the west and instructing him to call a telephone number when he got on the ground. 

“Do you think he’s in trouble?” my learner asked.

“Doesn’t matter as long as he’s safe,” I replied, although I wondered if he was having a medical episode or was a student pilot let out of the pattern too soon. I was glad the system worked and that particular controller had the skill and experience to help that pilot. 

It was a good thing that particular pilot wasn’t afraid of the radio. So many pilots are afraid they will say the wrong thing, so they clam up, not talking on the radio at all, even when it would be a good idea to do position reports for safety—such as when flying in the pattern at a nontowered airport on a busy sunny day or at a towered airport when advised to do so by ATC. 

According to a colleague who is a controller, if the controller repeatedly has to call an aircraft because the pilot doesn’t answer, and if the controller gets the sense this is a training flight, it is not uncommon for ATC to inquire if there is a CFI on board and to “key up” or fly the radio while the learner flies the airplane. Don’t be afraid to do this.

Sometimes you miss a radio call.  You may have been distracted by something in the cockpit or had to change frequency to get the weather. And let’s face it, at first learning what the controller wants you to do can be confusing, especially when the instructions don’t make sense, as they often won’t when the controller is talking to another aircraft with a similar tail number. Say again is the magic phrase here.

Controllers can get confused too.

It was a busy winter day at Boeing Field, and we heard Four Alpha Mike request landing on the larger runway. The tower came back and granted Four Mike Alpha—the airplane I was in—permission to land. The problem was that Four Mike Alpha was at the hold short line for the runway. I exchanged a look with my copilot and quickly asked for a clarification—we had requested takeoff. The controller chuckled a bit and quickly reissued the clearance for Alpha Mike and asked us to make all our radio calls using our full call sign to avoid further confusion—which we gladly did.

Controllers often request you to use your full call sign when there are similar tail numbers on the frequency. 

When the pilots and controllers are all working together, it can be kind of fun.

One of my mentors shared a story about working at a flight school in the Midwest where all the aircraft had tail numbers that all ended in Sierra Kilo.  The pattern was full of student pilots, and the controller was getting a bit overwhelmed.  He asked each pilot to report when they were wings up in the turn from crosswind to downwind using their full call sign and tell him what color the airplane was. It was the latter that gave some of the students a challenge because they didn’t really notice the color of the aircraft, although one of the students reported the interior was sort of a faded red. 

This story stuck with me, and when I was the student pilot, I made a point to note the color of the aircraft I was renting.

One day I was at the end of a solo cross-country flight in a crowded pattern, and the controller asked for the aircraft color and model as we went wings up in the turns—this was well before ADS-B, and we were all squawking 1200. As I turned onto downwind, I reported the color as “pumpkin orange.” I spent the rest of the flight with the tower controller referring to me as “pumpkin.”

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