Early Analysis: Midair Collision at North Las Vegas

let's take an early look at the mid-air collision between a piper malibu and a cessna 172 at north las vegas airport earlier this week the cessna 172 took off on the left runway and entered the right pattern for runway 3-0 right at north las vegas airport it did multiple patterns it looks like it was a pattern only sortie and it was on its seventh pattern when it collided with the malibu meanwhile the malibu was flying in from coeur d'alene idaho both airplanes had two occupants in them the malibu was cleared to fly overhead and cleared to land on runway 3-0 left it appears from adsb tracking data that would actually happen is the malibu flew midfield overhead the runway began a constant left-hand turn and set up for landing on the right runway it appears that way just looking at adsb tracks because the malibu and the cessna 172 their collision occurs on the extended center line of the right runway and the wreckage from both airplanes flew landed along the center line of the right runway also so it looks like the cause of this accident will be straightforward a mid-air collision where based on adsb data the malibu attempted to land on the right runway when it was actually cleared to land on the left runway one person aboard the malibu is greeted by a local voice as they enter the the pattern of the communications at north las vegas as you can hear on this audio clip [Music] [Applause] so at least one person in the malibu was familiar with the operations at north las vegas as you can also hear on the audio clip the malibu is given clearance to land on three zero left and acknowledges that two separate times runway three zero left here [Applause] so despite some familiarity with north las vegas airport it appears like the malibu lines up on the wrong runway the tower controller may seem to notice that the malibu is a little bit tight for the left runway because it confirms that they actually gave the malibu landing clearance on the left runway which the malibu then acknowledged so it's unclear why that happened when it's clear transmission between the tower and the malibu twice that the clearance is on the left runway the malibu still lines up on the right runway the ntsb will likely classify this as both a mid-air collision and a wrong surface event so let's talk about wrong surface events for a minute about 85 percent of wrong surface events happen at small to medium airports like north las vegas about 85 percent of wrong surface events are caused by general aviation pilots and there's some 300 plus wrong surface events a year that are reported some 90 of wrong surface events happen in day vfr conditions where the visibility is greater than three miles and all of those elements occurred in this situation the weather was wasn't a factor in this midair winds were light high temperature of 100 degrees around noon in las vegas which is pretty typical this time of year and the sun would have been very high in the sky and really not much of a factor for visibility for either of the airplanes so it seems like this may be a case which illustrates continuation bias so continuation bias comes from two things we as humans tend to see what we want to see and see what we expect to see and so perhaps as the malibu came into that continuous left-hand turn even though it was repeated about the left runway they expected and lined up on the right runway maybe it's too early to determine or maybe some visual cues here on this particular sortie had them thinking they actually were lined up on the left runway if we take a look if we take a look at wrong surface runway operations one of the high causes of them is parallel runways and offset parallel runways like we see at north las vegas airport so one of the lessons that we ga pilots can take from this is understanding that when we come in to visual approaches or visual operations into parallel runways that are offset there's a high potential for wrong surface operations so confirming that we see both runways and that the runway we're lined up on is in fact the runway that we're cleared to land on adding some sort of confirmation in that will be time well spent for sga pilots as far as the mid-air portion goes this looks like a classic low wing coming from on high high wing coming from on low collision and as you can see here a pilot in a high wing airplane has restricted visibility looking up the pide in the low wing restricted visibility looking down and that's where we frequently see the high wing low wing collisions happen and that's likely why neither pilot saw each other both it appears from adsb tracks both were in slight turns so both were focused ahead and forward on the runway with their peripheral vision blocked by their wingspans so what we can learn from that is doing good belly checks before we roll in on a runway our turn on final we're all taught before you turn make that bass to final turn to roll and make sure that finals clear before you go belly up to final in this case in these slight turns such a belly check would have been helpful for both airplanes to make sure that final was clear whether or not it would have prevented it as unknown and when and they may have done that and we don't pick it up on adsb tracks it's just helpful to reinforce the importance of that belly check before you turn on final we'll keep you updated on anything else we learned of this accident thanks for watching and thanks for supporting aopa so we can continue to provide this kind of analysis that helps keep ga safe you

Channel: Air Safety Institute

Views: 196,960

Keywords: institute, aopa, aviation, pilot, fly, flying, flight, plane, airplane, airport, air, safety, asi, air safety, training, aircraft, owners, pilots

Id: wO1-y6Xs7fI

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 19 2022