NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
Beechcraft Bonanza pilot reported observing a traffic conflict on ForeFlight. When visual contact was made the pilot reported taking evasive action.
What is ASRS?
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is NASA's voluntary, confidential, non- punitive incident-reporting system, established 1976. Pilots, controllers, dispatchers, and maintenance technicians file reports describing safety- relevant events. NASA de-identifies every report before adding it to the public database. Reports are not investigated by NASA, the FAA, or the NTSB — they represent the reporter's perspective.
Pilot narrative
Verbatim from the de-identified NASA record. First-person account by the
reporter. NASA strips identifying details (names, company, specific time);
anonymization placeholders are ZZZ,
X, Y.
I fly with an iPad running ForeFlight and using an external AHARS/ADSB-In receiver (Sentry). My aircraft is not equipped with ADSB In/Out. While in cruise flight at 4,600 ft MSL on a heading of 180 degrees, my iPad suddenly showed a target less than a mile ahead of me and 500 ft below me. Sometimes a very close target that shows up is a 'ghost' target of my own aircraft which is what I suspected this target was initially. I was looking for traffic out of the windows, and I wanted to turn to avoid the traffic but the target was right on top of my own aircraft on the screen yet below me. I did not know which way to turn so I maintained course until I was able to finally make visual contact with the other aircraft, which was climbing from below and through my altitude at my 2 o'clock position and about 1,000 ft away. Upon visual contact I began an immediate left turn and a few moments later the pilot of the other aircraft saw me and began a right turn and the conflict was resolved. This was the classic high wing aircraft climbing up into a low wing aircraft so both pilots' views were restricted. I think the other aircraft was a parachute jump plane because it appeared their back door was removed. VFR flight following would have helped me in this case by providing traffic advisories and I will be more diligent about using ATC services even when flying VFR.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Conflict
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Human Factors
- Primary Problem
- Human Factors
ASRS reports are voluntarily submitted, de-identified by NASA, and represent the reporter's perspective. The presence of reports on a topic cannot be used to infer prevalence in the National Airspace System. The authoritative source is the NASA ASRS Database Online at asrs.arc.nasa.gov ↗.