The FAA Called, They Want to Know Why I Busted Airspace

so then i get about five miles to the west airport and i get the most dreaded call that i think any pilot can ever get [Music] all right everybody welcome back to average aviator i'm travis and today we're going to talk about a time that i had a wonderful little chat with the faa if you're new here i'm just an average guy trying to make it in aviation and i share some of my experiences and a lot of the things that i've learned over the years so if that's something that interests you please consider subscribing so i know as pilots we're typically supposed to act like we never do anything wrong or we're expected to be perfect all the time but today i want to talk about a an issue that i had where i wasn't necessarily perfect and i want to share it because even though it's very difficult to share i think that a lot of people can learn from this and i want people to learn from my mistakes as well as be open and honest and and the fact that i'm not a perfect pilot and i'm constantly learning and it's okay if you are too so about two years ago i was flying from six papa seven mcville airport in pennsylvania to india 19 which is over by dayton ohio because i had something i had to do for work it was a beautiful day it was going to be beautiful day for the next next couple days i could have drove but i said hey you know i can't i can't resist so i i chose to fly i'm vfr i'm not ifr rated and i typically fly in and out of non-towered airports i tend to avoid airspace altogether but today that route took me underneath the class bravo of pittsburgh and then it went directly through essentially the class charlie of columbus so i took off i flew about 2 000 to 3 500 feet underneath the shelves of the pittsburgh class bravo and as i got closer to columbus i climbed up to 4 500 feet so as i neared columbus's class charlie about 20 miles out i was at 4 500 feet i thought well hey i could either climb up above the charlie but that would take time i could also divert to the south of the charlie but that would take even more time so why don't i just call them up and try to get clearance through the charlie and it'd be a good practice for me as well so i called them up at 20 miles out and i got no answer so i had had some problems before with the radio but it was only at you know it was at 25 miles or so that people couldn't hear me so i thought okay maybe i'm 20 miles maybe they can't hear me i should i'll just get a little closer i'll call them again so 18 miles i call them again columbus approach mooney 6670 uniform no answer i can hear them no problem 17 miles i call them again columbus approach mooney 6704 nothing i can hear them talking to other other airplanes i can hear other airplanes i just figured maybe they're busy maybe they're just waiting to contact me so 16 miles i make the decision i'm going to call them one more time if not i'm just i don't have enough room to climb so i'm just going to divert to the south climb and then go above so 16 miles i called them again columbus approached rooney 6670 uniform again there was not an answer at first but i was thinking it was a couple seconds after i had called them they didn't answer i'm going to divert to the south and climb up like my plan was but then right as soon as i was going to do that i heard moonie6670 uniform we have you identified 15 miles to the east 2000 feet or something like that i'm not entirely sure what the altitude was and i thought well that's weird i'm at 4500 but that was my call sign and maybe it's just my altitude encoder maybe they just have a different out you know altitude so i answered them um i answered them and i heard something along the lines of you know of uniform change your squawk to four six six four or something like that so i answered them back seven zero to four is changing squawk four six six four so i say okay well i've they gave me a squawk i've gotten contact with them i am clear to the charlie so i i actually turned slightly this out so then i went right back and um went it into the charlie and i was putting along all fine and happy and everything was fine and about 10 miles in or you know maybe five minutes after that i heard a call mooney 667 is a uniform chain squawk 4665 or something similar and i thought that's weird why would they want me to change one thing okay four six six five times the uniform change my transponder so then i'm two miles south of the columbus airport heading west 4 500 feet all fat dumb and happy thinking that everything's great i'm talking to atc and i hear this weird transmission aircraft two miles south of columbus airport 4 500 feet identify yourself you are not cleared to the charlie or something similar it's been two years so i'm not entirely sure and i thought wait a minute that's odd that's exactly where i am and then my heart sank i'll never forget that feeling after that my heart sank because i think internally i had known that something wasn't quite right but i had been convincing myself that the other thing was fine and dandy so i called them back and i said hey this is 6670 uniform you've been talking to me the entire time and then they could hear me and they say no this is the first time that we've heard of you uh we we have no idea who you are um you know change your squawk code to this uh where are you headed i tell them where i'm headed and they said okay proceed on course and uh and you know i said well hey i'm sorry like i you know i thought you were talking to me they said no we have a 570 uniform on frequency so just be aware of that so then i get about five miles to the west airport and i get the most dreaded call that i think any pilot can ever get mooney 6670 uniform possible pilot deviation let me know when you're ready to copy i didn't i didn't know what to do i just scrounged around for a pen and pasted paper and i said ready to copy and as they gave me the number and then i tried to read it back i was maybe six miles or so they couldn't understand me six miles out they couldn't understand me i could hear them no problem i got the number um i tried to tell them hey you know i i got it but they couldn't hear me so i eventually just hit the ident button because i didn't know what else to do and they got the ident and they called back say hey we saw that you're identic i'm we're assuming that means that you got it so now i'm shaking and you know i didn't know what to do my mind is racing but i continue on to indy 19 and i land and the most embarrassing part about this i think was that the line guy they had called they called the airport ahead and said hey you know when this plane lands you make sure you get him this number because i guess they didn't trust that i hit the ident button for that and so the line guy needs to see the airplane he said hey we got a call you're supposed to call this number when you get on the ground and so that was pretty embarrassing so what's ironic is i've taken an aviation law class and in that class they make it very clear that you do not have to call the number you don't have to incriminate yourself you do not have to give them your information it is the faa's job to prove that you are the pilot flying and that you did something wrong do you think i listened to that to that advice of course not i get on the ground instead of doing any you know doing anything else doing research i call the number because it my head is going a million miles an hour so i call the number the controller was obviously very upset and he was not empathetic at all and then he asked for my information and me trying to be compliant and say hey i didn't mean to do anything wrong i give them the information so i get that airplane tied up i still had to do this thing for work so i go to the hotel for the night and i call a bunch of my mentors uh two specifically and asked them what i should do and they pretty much said just file a nasa report and um just you just have to wait so file nasa report with all the information that i've told you i submitted that within hours so the next night it was very difficult to sleep it was very difficult to focus on work the next day i was just so insanely paranoid i thought the faa might just bust through the door at any moment of course that's not how it works but i was just so shaken up by this so it's debating on even whether to fly home but i figured you know this is really the only way i can get home so i took off but i avoided columbus like the plague i went way to the south to avoid it all took way longer to get home i landed fine and i put the plane away and i pretty much hung up the plane for the next two and a half months or maybe more like three months because i was so shaken up by the mistake that i had made part of it was i wanted to make sure that i was doing everything right before i got back into it but the other part was that i was just so afraid of messing up and that um i was just waiting on the faa to just come crashing through the door for about three months that that i just decided was better not to fly in those three months i sent the radio out to see if there was something wrong with it because obviously the range wasn't working so i sent it out and they they sent it back to me and they said well pretty much you know we didn't really find anything wrong with it we replaced a couple capacitors but there was nothing that was really wrong with it and i was like that's that's weird what the heck is the issue and it wasn't until i did the annual during those three months that i found there's an antenna on the bottom of the moonie that is kind of like a whip antenna and it was cracked but you really couldn't see it i mean you could if you looked really really close you could see it it was cracked and the only way that i found it was i was actually dropping that panel to see if the connection was still on on the antenna and as i dropped the panel the thing just kind of fell apart and i'm not entirely sure how the antenna got broken i don't know if it was a rock from some of the airports that i go to which are essentially just gravel and came up and got flung by the prop and hit it or if um you know me just being a ham-fisted idiot client crawling around underneath the plane had hit it the wrong way and it just cracked and came loose but the antenna part itself was loose in its housing from the cable and that's what i think caused the the decay in range as it worked loose and after i replaced that antenna it worked beautifully the radio and everything worked wonderfully so one of the other things that i did while waiting for the faa to call me is i contacted aopa's pilot protection services this is not sponsored at all i have no affiliation but if you're not a part of aopa's pilot protection services i highly suggest to become a member and that you subscribe to the the pilot protection services because in an event like this and you think oh you know it never happened to me but that's the way i thought as well it was an absolute amazing resource i called them i told them exactly what happened and they couldn't really do anything to to help necessarily my situation because it'd already been done i've already given them all the information i called them after the fact retrospect i should have called them the moment i landed so that i got some good advice on what to do but i had already kind of set my path and there was something that the legal team there could really do about that but even in that situation they gave me a huge peace of mind knowing what was you know what could happen what my best options were and not to worry about it necessarily so definitely if you're not a part of that definitely consider it it's an awesome resource and and i can't speak highly about it so the incident happened in february but it wasn't until may that the faa finally contacted me and i think the delay actually helped because it let me figure out exactly what had happened i did some retrospective looking in to see exactly how i contributed to the incident and what i could change from future and then i was able to present that to the faa when when they called i was expecting a guy that would just hammer me and say how stupid could you be you know this is all the things that you did wrong you understand you know this is the judgment that we make against you and this is your punishment but it didn't go like that at all that's not at all what happened it was i was a woman who called me and she was insanely nice she was like put me at ease she just asked me to explain what happened and i explained the situation and just i explained all the stuff that i had learned you know hey this was some of the stuff that i maybe could have done better and this is kind of why i was thinking and and she just listened and she asked a couple things you know a couple questions at the end about fatigue ultimately she said it was really due to a mechanical failure that you didn't know about and uh so i'm gonna mark this as you know something like compliance uh action no further action necessary i think you did all that you needed to and you learned a lesson you weren't actively trying to disregard the rules and that was just so astonishing to me because i was expecting the hammer to be dropped at any given moment for about three months and and that's not at all what happened and and so it was such a relief so there's three main things that i took away from this incident and i'm gonna share with you guys because hopefully you or at least one person can learn this uh the easy way because i learned it the hard way and i'll tell you if you can use learn it the easy way it's so much better than learning it the way that i did so the first thing that i want you guys to take away is set yourself up for success and what i mean by that is try to follow the regs as best as possible not cut corners not intentionally forget about certain regulations just because it's convenient it'll set you up way better for when you do get into that situation that you make an honest mistake if you're cutting corners and you're getting away with it it might not even be your fault that you get discovered but if you do get discovered it's gonna be way worse for you than if you had set yourself up for success the second thing that i learned that i really took away was a lesson on confirmation bias confirmation bias i think was one of the biggest players in my specific incident and it's something that i didn't really think about until after it happened a confirmation bias is essentially hearing what you want to hear or or perceiving something based on what you want to perceive so when i was hearing the radio calls i was wanting it to be my end number and it was close enough that my brain or myself just kind of put it together and heard it as my end number even though i think internally i knew that wasn't necessarily mine i just kept going as if it was because that's what i wanted it to be and that that's a really big thing to keep in check because you know even it could be perceiving radio calls it could be doing actions it could be making a turn it could be doing anything based on what you're expecting can lead you into a lot more issues than than if you just take the time to realize exactly what that radio call was or exactly what that direction was instead of what you think it is so confirmation bias is something that we definitely need to be better about i i think i definitely needed to be better about if i was more conscious about it i think i might not have made um the same decision so definitely keep your confirmation bias in check and the third takeaway from this was that everybody makes his mistakes and to try to be a little bit more i don't know if lenient sorry word but just understanding towards people that mess up and towards situations like accents or whatever because you're not in that situation you don't know what's going on and and you never know when you're gonna find yourself in a similar situation so definitely have some empathy towards um towards people that mess up and then also you know just keep yourself in check you know if you if you haven't made a mistake it's either because you you're not trying hard enough or you just haven't been caught yet and so because nobody's perfect even though us as pilots kind of have to you know think that we have to have this aura about us that is perfection and it's great to strive for that but also you know don't expect everybody to be perfect all the time and don't get yourself so down when you make a mistake just take the mistakes as lessons try to limit them as much as you can but when you do make mistakes learn as much as you can from it as possible and that will be uh be the key to continuing to grow in your aviation career so this story is kind of difficult for me to talk about and put out to the whole world for them to see because maybe it looks makes me look like a crappy pilot but honestly it's way more important for me to be actively sharing my story and trying to prevent incidents in the future than to not share my story and act like i'm this perfect pilot who never makes mistakes but that's my story you can do with it what you will if you have any questions you can leave them in the comments below or you can message me directly averagespaceaviator on instagram and then if you think that i've earned earned it you can leave a thumbs up but that's all i got thank you for watching and i'll see you you

Channel: Average Aviator

Views: 106,372

Rating: 4.9171743 out of 5

Keywords: pilot, aviation, general aviation, FAA, federal aviation administration, Regulations, federal aviation regulations, busted, airspace, mooney, become a pilot, violation, airline pilot, pilot life

Id: 4HzTa-qOPZo

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020