Near Miss With Ground Vehicles at KCRS

[LANCECASPER]

5 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

Is this your first interaction with @chriscalandro? That’s kind of what he does. Maybe we should all pitch in to buy him a lavender bath bomb so he can take a nice warm bath,  listen to Enya and align his chakras. 

I chose to ignore him a long time ago and Mooneyspace is much more pleasant since I did that.

[LANCECASPER]

2 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

A friend of mine told me about some Mooney guy on Pilots of America who keeps bragging about crashing his plane into an orange grove after running out of fuel and seems to have no insight into his contribution to the “accident.”. I think I would have a lot more critical feedback for that pilot than I would for someone who overall made the right choices but was probably a little distracted because he was concerned about the safety of his passenger.

Is that this one?

 

[jaylw314]

In regards to the idiot driving on the airport grounds, I'd include that in the ASRS and also advise the airport manager about it (and that you filed an ASRS).

[ilovecornfields]

18 minutes ago, LANCECASPER said:

Is that this one?

 

It certainly sounds like it. Unless there is a flurry of Mooney pilots running out of gas and crashing near orange groves recently. I'm not on the other site but what I'm told is that this pilot keeps talking about his "accident" like something "happened" and is completely oblivious to the fact that the only thing wrong with the plane was the knucklehead behind the yoke. I'm sure he'll collect insurance money, find another plane to crash and let us all pay for his stupidity with increased rates. 

 

Edit: I think it is that one. Followed the link in that thread and found it on Kathryn's Report:

Kathryn's Report: Mooney M20C Ranger, N79396: Accident occurred January 01, 2022 in Southeast Arcadia, DeSoto County, Florida (kathrynsreport.com)

Location: Southeast Arcadia, Florida

Accident Number: ERA22LA099

Date and Time: January 1, 2022, 12:11 Local

Registration: N79396

Aircraft: Mooney M20C 

Injuries: 2 None

Flight Conducted Under: Part 91: General aviation - Personal

 

On January 1, 2022, about 1211 eastern daylight time, a Mooney M20C, N79396, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Arcadia, Florida. The private pilot and passenger were not injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight.

 

According to the pilot, he performed a preflight and verified he had sufficient fuel onboard for his flight. After an uneventful flight he entered the traffic pattern for runway 24. While on final approach about 300 to 400 ft, he reported the airplane “experienced some sink.” He added power and when the engine did not respond he pumped the throttle to no avail. He verified 4 gallons of fuel was in the right tank, and the boost pump was ON. Unable to make the runway he performed a forced landing in a field adjacent the runway. During touchdown the right wing clipped a tree and was substantially damaged.

 

The airplane and engine were recovered for further examination.

Edited January 29, 2022 by ilovecornfields

[LANCECASPER]

@alextstone Thanks for sharing what happened. Very easy to understand how that could happen under the circumstances. Back in November coming back from NJ I landed at KNQA for fuel and was fully lined up to land on a closed runway when the tower told me to look to the left and see the runway they were landing on. As I got closer I would have noticed but even though I looked through the notams I missed that one.

[Bolter]

3 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

Did you read the original post?

"Upon nearing KCRS, I checked weather on ATIS and NOTAM's on ForeFlight.  That's where I went wrong, because when I Packed for my flight in ForeFlight, the area covered did not include the diversion airport, (location marked in the image below)"

He did not file for KCRS and it was not a waypoint on his Foreflight plan.  He did not "pack" for KCRS....no TAF, no NOTAMS, zilch for KCRS.  Why do call this a fail of Foreflight?  It did exactly what the pilot planned for it to do.  Do you expect Foreflight to pack for every possible deviation airport on a direct cross country?  I suppose at some point in the future with faster processors and bigger memories on iPads that one day Foreflight will pack everything on every airport in the country for pilots regardless if it is planned or not.

With FlyQ (therefore I would expect the same for ForeFlight), I see updated weather and notam's through ADS-B all around me.  This is regardless of what I may have filed and downloaded on the ground by internet.  At any point in time, I can select an airport in my region and see updated weather.  I believe the NOTAM's are also updated, but that is more difficult to test as they are not time stamped with an update every hour.  

Some caveat, the updated weather seems to be only within 200 miles or so.  As a practical example, on a long flight of 600 nm, for example, I will see the last internet loaded weather for my destination until I am about 200 miles from my destination airport.  I can get ADS-B updated weather for the airports right around me pretty much instantly.    This may be a limit of what is uploaded from any given ADS-B station. 

Therefore I would expect that if I had the diversion of the OP but with FlyQ and my ADS-B feed, that I would have recent NOTAMS for an KCRS, as I was near it for some time, even though I did not load NOTAMS about it explicitly by internet before takeoff.  That he did not, suggests a Foreflight or ADS-B update issue.  

[Jim Peace]

5 hours ago, 201er said:

Am I understanding this correctly? So your ForeFlight is NOT connected to ADSB. You did NOT download NOTAMs for the diversion airport. Therefore Foreflight did not present recently published NOTAMs for your diversion? So is the issue here relying on expired data?

Good question.  

I fly with FF on my iPad at all times and it is connected to my flightstream 510 which is in my GTN getting ADS in.  In this case would I be getting updated notams all the time?  I would think so....

 

[HXG]

Thanks for sharing. We can all learn a lot from our own and others mistakes. Bad luck with the diversion Airport choice. Definitely file a NASA report. Some of my takeaways to avoid a similar occurrence:

- Carefully choose and study possible diversion and alternate airports. I often download a separate alternates plates folder in ForeFlight for all possible airports and procedures I may use (NOTAMs will appear red at top of plate) and will often call FBOs to make sure there are no surprises like self serve fuel out of service. 
 

- Remember to hit pack &  check ForeFlight right before takeoff

- Also check Airport NOTAMS on the GTN650/750

-  Ask ATC for airport NOTAMS if unsure about diversion airport 

- Listen carefully to the AWOS, ASOS and ATIS which may only subtly report significant airport information including runway closure quickly at the end in the same monotone voice 

- Look carefully for anything strange on the airport grounds  including vehicles 

- Consider using larger towered airports with greater services 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by HXG

[David Lloyd]

5 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

A friend of mine told me about some Mooney guy on Pilots of America who keeps bragging about crashing his plane into an orange grove after running out of fuel and seems to have no insight into his contribution to the “accident.”. I think I would have a lot more critical feedback for that pilot than I would for someone who overall made the right choices but was probably a little distracted because he was concerned about the safety of his passenger.

 

I read the posts on POA and never saw anything that would be considered bragging.  There was little comment from the pilot about the cause due to the ongoing investigation.  Be careful flying. Be careful writing. The feds look at both.

[hais]

OP: why did the oxygen fail?

[Flash]

I may be missing something, but was the airport closed, or was the paved runway closed? The airport diagram appears to show a grass runway in addition to the paved runway. The controller may have concluded that if the pilot had the NOTAMs the pilot intended to land on the grass runway. 3200 feet of turf seems like it could be enough, although I've never flown an M20M.

[alextstone]

Here's where it gets interesting:  I am reasonably certain my ForeFlight was connected to ADSB because I was viewing weather data too.  Also, my wife, who is a pilot, had her own iPad with ForeFlight connected to a DIFFERENT ADSB source (her Sentry) and she checked NOTAMS too and did not see anything. 

I'm not necessarily saying that ForeFlight has an issue but the evidence seems to suggest that might be the case.  Also, consider this: In the most recent ForeFlight update, one of the "feature enhancements" is a switch to the Jeppesen NOTAM reporting system, ostensibly to give international pilots better NOTAM data (see screenshot below). It has been my experience with various softwares that switching data sources or adding features can cause unintended problems...could that have happened here?  

[alextstone]

No one has as of yet addressed my question over why I cannot find the runway closure NOTAM for KCRS on the the FAA's NOTAM website.  Here is my screenshot for the date range of the entire month of January and as you can see, there is no runway closure NOTAM.  Please try for yourself to find the NOTAM.  It should be active for Friday Jan 28th (the day of the trip) until 7 pm...If you can search for it, please let me know how you found it:

[alextstone]

8 hours ago, hais said:

OP: why did the oxygen fail?

Fortunately, my side of the delivery did not fail, her's did.  There is some malfunction of the Mountain High O2D2 unit itself.  We checked and reattached the tubing, checked the batteries, cycled the unit on and off to no avail.  We carry two emergency backup sources of O2 and two pulse oximeters.  

[alextstone]

7 hours ago, Flash said:

I may be missing something, but was the airport closed, or was the paved runway closed? The airport diagram appears to show a grass runway in addition to the paved runway. The controller may have concluded that if the pilot had the NOTAMs the pilot intended to land on the grass runway. 3200 feet of turf seems like it could be enough, although I've never flown an M20M.

Actually there were two NOTAM's issued, one for each runway.  

[alextstone]

13 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

FAA site says NOTAM-D is a Distant NOTAM. I don’t see the word “unverified”. 
https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/pilot/

“Distant Notice to Airmen: Information requires widedissemination: en route navigational aids, civil public use landingareas & aeronauticaldata.”

I discovered that my screenshot I previously entered into the post disappeared...here's the reference I found on an FAA website:

[alextstone]

12 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

I think you are right. That means there is a communication problem between the Flightstream and the Foreflight app. The problem could be the Flightstream hardware (system or Bluetooth transmitter/antenna) or software) or the iPad Bluetooth or the Foreflight app. Or it could be as simple as not telling the iPad to recognize the Flightstream and connect.

Please read my recent post about this.  My wife and I were running two independent iPad/ForeFlight/ADSB data sources and we both did not see the NOTAM's We both were seeing live traffic so the systems were working

[tgardnerh]

All noise aside, file that NASA report asap. Specifics aside, having that receipt will go a long way if you have an uncomfortable conversation with the FAA, both convincing them to use their discretion to be kind, and protecting you from license action if they choose otherwise.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[alextstone]

Yes my wife was receiving data from Stratus

Sent from my Pixel 5a using Tapatalk

[EricJ]

+1 on filing an ASRS.   This is the sort of thing it's there for, I think.

Just as an anecdotal similarity, I occassionaly fly to P13, a small, remote, airport that has very, very little traffic, but has a nice GPS approach.   I go just to practice the approach and maybe do a landing if the wind is favorable.   The field is not always well maintained, and once when I landed the vegetation on the sides of the taxiway was overgrown enough that it was slapping the wingtips on both sides.

I always get my briefings online at 1800wxbrief.com, which includes long listings of NOTAMs, etc., and I got the usual list of NOTAMs for that field about the wx bot being inop, the approach lights on both ends inop, etc.   A new, but not unusual NOTAM for that field said the fuel pumps were inop again.   No other issues.

When I got there and made the approach the wind was favorable to land the same direction, but there was a LOT of smoke coming from mid-field like somebody had crashed there or something, although a C-172 had just landed, taxied back, and took off again.   On final a bit below DA it was obvious something was up next to the runway, and when I went around I side stepped and could see a bunch of vehicles and people *immediately* adjacent to the runway doing some controlled burns on the vegetation.   The fire was spotty and along about 1000 ft or so of the middle of the runway.

There was no NOTAM.   A C172 had just landed, taxied back, and took off while those guys were there burning off the weeds next to the runway.   There were probably a half-dozen trucks immediately adjacent to the runway pavement.

Maybe that sort of thing isn't sufficient to close a runway or generate a NOTAM, but I wasn't comfortable making a completely optional landing under those circumstances.

 

[alextstone]

OK, I filed the ASRS report. 

Here is the text of the ASRS report:

Our IFR flight in VMC departed at 12:30 pm from KAEG in route to KPIB.  There were two occupants, both of whom are pilots.  After approximately an hour in flight at a cruising altitude of FL210, the right seat passenger complained that she felt hypoxic.  She checked her O2 saturation and found that it had dropped to 78%.  I, (the pilot), initiated an expedited descent and supplied the passenger with a backup oxygen source.  As I began my descent, I informed the controller of my situation and intention to descend to 9K ft MSL.  He approved the descent and asked if I wished to declare an emergency.  Seeing that my passenger was improving, I declined.  

Upon reaching our new cruising altitude, it became apparent that we would need to divert for fuel due to our decreased ground speed.  I selected KCRS, requested and received the routing change.  Upon nearing the airport, approximately 30 miles out, I listened to ASOS and both I an my passenger, fellow pilot checked for on our individual iPads.  My iPad was connected to the ship's GDL88 and her's was connected to a Sentry portable device.  Both iPads were displaying live traffic, thus indicated that the ADSB data connection was active on both at the time.  Neither of us observed NOTAMS on either the Jeppesen plates for the airport or on the information dialog box for the airport when selected on ForeFlight.  I was asked and I informed the Waco Approach controller that I had the current weather and NOTAM's for the airport.  I then cancelled IFR and continued to the field with a squawk code of 1200 and with own navigation.  I entered the left downwind for runway 35 at a 45 degree angle and called each leg of the pattern on CTAF 122.80.  On final approach, I did not observe any visual indication that the runway was closed. Upon final flare for my touchdown, I observed a service vehicle with flashing yellow and blue lights driving on the parallel taxiway to my right.  I landed without incident and taxied to the self serve fuel pumps.  During taxiing, I noticed a second service vehicle parked on a grassy area adjacent to the ramp.  

After parking at the fuel pump and exiting the airplane, I noticed that the second service vehicle was approaching my aircraft.  The driver parked in front of the aircraft and exited the vehicle.  He informed me that the runway had been NOTAM'ed closed for "striping work".
I responded that we were surprised by this as we had checked in flight and we had not seen a NOTAM to that effect.  He then commented that another pilot earlier in the week had landed and stated the same.  He then informed us that the workers were finished for the day and that the runway was safe and open for departure.  I fueled the airplane and we both used the restroom.  I filed a new IFR flight plan from KCRS to KPIB and then we taxied at approximately 17:30 pm local for departure.  

Upon lining up on the runway for departure, as I was conducting my final instrument checks, I looked down the runway and observed an automobile with headlights on traveling directly toward me on the runway itself.  I remained stationary as the auto accelerated and eventually passed me on my left side traveling approximately 40 MPH.  The auto appeared to be a black early 200's model import coupe with tinted windows like a Honda Accord or something similar.  The auto disappeared from view and I observed that the runway was clear so I accelerated for departure.  As I began to reach approximately 30kts, I observed the same automobile accelerating on the parallel taxiway in an apparent attempt to race me. I also noticed that the auto had a magnetic company sign on the door that may have been for a Real Estate company, according to the right seat passenger.  

I departed the  airport, activated my IFR flight plan with the appropriate controller and I reported the confusion over NOTAMS and the runway closure to them.  

My passenger / fellow pilot and I then both re-checked our ForeFlight applications for the NOTAMS and we did not find them.  I then checked the NOTAMS on my Garmin GTN 750, which receives ADSB data from the same GDL88 data source.  It did show the NOTAMS referencing runway closure.

When I returned home, I accessed the FAA NOTAM website and I did a search for KCRS for the entire month of January and I did not find any NOTAM there referencing runway closure.

I have learned the following:  

1.  I should check ALL available data sources in flight for NOTAMS.
2.  I should ask the controller for verification of information.
3.  I cannot depend on a runway to be marked as closed in all instanced when it is.
4.  I should remain vigilant as to any unsafe conditions during flight and upon arrival and departure.

My phone number is:  xxx-xxx-xxxx Please contact me should you wish to discuss these events further.  

 

[alextstone]

Upon the wise advice of a fellow MS'er, I just found and set the ignore feature for @chriscalandro and I removed some personal information from my previous post.  Ahh, what a lovely feature and solid advice.  You know who you are...thank you! 

[chriscalandro]

Good job announcing.  You put more work into that than looking at notams. 
 

nobody cares.

[FlyingCanuck]

On 1/29/2022 at 11:12 AM, chriscalandro said:

Hey did. He asked if you had the NOTAMs. That isn’t a usual question and should have prompted you to look further. 
 

it’s not the controllers job to tell you the NOTAMs and it sounds like they were trying to do you a favor by double checking you had them because one or many things were different. 
 

im sure if you had said know they would have told you, but you said yes.   Did you listen to the aris before landing?  I bet I know the answer. 

Respectfully I disagree. Fly IFR all the time. I would say 50% or more of the time, controllers in many states and sectors all say to me: “do you have the weather and NOTAMs? Advise approach request.”

being asked if you have the Notam is not an unusual question in many places.

i agree with the OP: the sector responsible for that airport should have known about a runway closure at a single runway airport. That’s an ASRS report for sure. 

[cwaters]

On 1/29/2022 at 1:31 PM, alextstone said:

No, my ForeFlight IS connected to ADSB, however I DID NOT download any data for the diversion airport before the flight.  I am curious to understand how ForeFlight works in these instances... If ForeFlight updates NOTAMS from the ADSB feed, there is cause for concern.  That's one of the things I am trying to understand...not to lay blame elsewhere as some would presume rather to know what is reliable and what is not...

I'll be honest I didn't read all 3 pages of this post, I'm pretty sure that ForeFlight will show you enroute NOTAMS if you put the route in the "flights" page and go through the briefing its one of the final pages and honestly a bear to read through them all for long trips like this  but runway notams is a subsection of the NOTAMS section at the end of the briefing. 

Thats where you would find info like this