No.... it wasn't me.
It seems that last Monday a small Cessna from the local flight school landed long on the runway and missed its intended taxiway. It had to back track in order to exit the runway, as a result a Regional Jet CRJ-200 had to perform a "go-around". There was no close call, no miscommunication, drama or anything amiss, no one at any time was in danger. The local flight service specialist saw that the Cessna had landed long and simple told (suggested) that the commercial do an overshoot to give the Cessna a chance to clear the runway.
While this is not common, it happens all the time and it's not a big deal. I personally have been asked to extend my downwind or land short and take the first taxiway many times, and I have been happy to accommodate the commercial traffic. The commercial pilots have also thanked me over the radio on numerous occasions for letting them jump the queue.
This one time it didn't work out. It was probably a low time student or a infrequent renter that thought he could get down and out of the way in time for the Regional, but it didn't work out that way. No close call, not a safety issue, only a simple inconvinence.
The next day the local paper then ran this headline on the front page, "Commercial aircraft aborts P.E.I. landing". While technically it's true, it is very misleading to the general non aviation public. Everyone that read the paper and knew me then asked if it was me (it wasn't), like the Cessna had done something wrong. I take the time to explain that it was the Cessna pilot that had the right of way and that this wasn't considered an incident but simply an inconvience. No TSB investigation.
In the story the reporter asked the airport spokesperson if this incident could have been avoided if an air traffic controller was in the tower instead of a flight service specialist. I couldn't help but laugh when I read that part. I don't know how an air traffic controller could have helped the pilot land short unless they have type on magical powers that I don't know about.
posted by Rob @ 9:07 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Its sickening how sensationalistic the media can be at times.
This smacks of one of two things:
1/ Some junior reporter with absolutely zero understanding of aviation trying to make a story out of nothing based around fears of the uneducated public.
2/ A disgruntled local pilot, making an attempt to gain a tower controller, called the media and "informed" them (with nefarious intents) of the overshoot, putting it in terms that makes it sound like the process was abnormal or dangerous, and then suggesting that a controller could have caused this "Extremely dangerous" situation never to happen to begin with.
(Sigh)
A great illustration of how the general public is misinformed by an uneducated media. This happens so often it's scary. I'm in the space program and see the media doing things like this all the time. I think their mentality is that they don't have much grasp of what is going on, yet they still have to submit a story, so the easiest way to do that is to sensationalize it. The result is a general public who has a skewed view of reality.
Yer I agree with you. It just sounds ridiculous. Anyway I was just going to say that you have a great blog and well done for noting down your experiences for others to read.
I'm a pilot as well and a couple of months ago I decided to do the same thing with a blog. Keep up the blogging and good luck with your flying.
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