Now I know

When mistakes happen in aviation they get a lot of airtime and the general public is fairly unforgiving about the whole affair. We expect pilots to be above that kind of thing.

As a mere low hour PPL wannabe, I can tell you that this learning to fly lark has let me see exactly how the professionals make these kind of mistakes.

I can see exactly how you could potentially end up at the wrong airport, especially if you are on a visual approach. They all look the freakin same from the air. That’s if you can spot them in the first place. Something I seem spectacularly unable to do at this present time. A lot of the high profile “wrong airport” landings in the news recently involve airports in close proximity to each other, with runways of similar orientation (if not length). For a visual approach, they don’t have great big letters helpfully floating above them to help you ID them.

Runway incursions – basically a plane being on a runway when it shouldn’t be. Well yes I do have a bit of a reputation of getting lost on the ground. I mean I’ve visited Seneca’s private apron at Peterborough and even occasionally at City I have to think where the hold short lines are for the non-standard positions (the other day I had to hold short of Bravo and really had to think about that one). While in theory it should be easy to “not cross the solid line” unfamiliar airports have a lot of markings and it is not always as cut and dried as it might first appear. Although I haven’t had to yet, I’m never going to hesitate in asking for “progressive taxi instructions*” at a new airport.

Incidentally I can even see how planes end up landing on the wrong surface. On final approach to Waterloo I briefly found myself contemplating two very long, very parallel, very similar surfaces. A moment of doubt briefly shot through my mind as to which was the runway and which was the taxiway. A brief glance at my airport diagram reminded me that I was expecting to vacate to the left, hence the runway must be the one on the right.  I have a sneaky suspicion that Bob had already anticipated this problem, I think I recall him asking me what side I was expecting to exit on. I probably gave him that “do-you-think-I’m-a-moron” look but it turns out that yet again, this is just one of the tricks of a good flight instructor. His subtle questioning had almost subliminally given me the tools to think myself out of the problem.

But seriously yeah I can totally see how some mistakes happen. It just takes a lapse in concentration, or perversely, over thinking a situation (you’d be amazed at how easily you can talk yourself into believing something is true, I believe it is called “confirmation bias”). Let’s face it everyone makes mistakes, it’s just that some peoples are a LOT more public!

* this is pilot code for “I haven’t a clue how to navigate my way around this place”. It may cause some extra workload for ground control but it is infinitely preferable to ending up on an active runway by mistake.