NASA · Aviation Safety Reporting System
General aviation pilot reported on short final approach a non-communicating aircraft took off from the opposite end runway resulting in an NMAC.
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.
My partner was flying my personal aircraft and I was in the copilot seat. At around XA00 local time, we were coming in to land at ZZZ for the air show event. The traffic pattern was busy. A vintage biplane had just landed ahead of us on runway XX grass, a King Air had just departed XY, and a Piper Comanche was circling behind us for spacing before coming in to land. Having made all appropriate position calls, we were on short final to land runway XX pavement when an aircraft departed runway XY directly in front of us, rotating prior to the runway intersection and having made no radio calls whatsoever. It was one of at least three fleet aircraft we'd later discover was owned by Company X. It was either a Cessna 206 or 207. It caused us to panic and I did not record their tail number. I did contact this company and provide my tail number and time of landing so they could identify the pilot, but as of the time of writing they have not returned my message. As far as I remember, we were required to be on flight following with ZZZ per NOTAM on the approach to ZZZ, due to the elevated number of flights expected ahead of the air show TFR beginning at XB00 that day. We were able to maintain our descent path and continued to land normally, as the other aircraft had passed ahead of us and continued on, but the experience was terrifying and infuriating, as the offending aircraft represented an allegedly professional air charter organization.
NASA classification — Anomalies
- Conflict
- Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural
NASA classification — Assessments
- Contributing Factors / Situations
- Airspace Structure · 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 ↗.