No more "Left Downwind"?
In article .com,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:
We attended a safety seminar on Tuesday during which the FAA presenter
(who was otherwise outstanding) went over a list of unapproved radio
calls. (Number one being, of course, the despised and now-specifically
prohibited "Any other traffic please advise...")
To our surprise, he claimed that the common phraseology "Iowa City
Traffic, N56993 entering left downwind for Runway 25, Iowa City" is
incorrect. In short, he stated that you should say "Iowa City
Traffic, N56993 entering downwind for Runway 25, Iowa City", omitting
the word "left".
In his opinion (and, apparently, the FAA's), saying "left downwind" is
redundant, since everyone should know that the pattern is left (or
right, if appropriate) hand traffic. In high traffic areas, the FAA
thinks that omitting this single word will open the over-crowded unicom
frequencies so that other pilots can squeeze a word in.
Mary and I (and several other pilots) kept quiet during the
presentation, but strongly disagree with him on this topic. IMHO,
saying "left downwind" is clear, concise, and -- most importantly --
clarifies which side of the airport you're on. To assume that everyone
knows whether the pattern is left (or right) is, in my experience,
naive.
What do you guys think?
It's a terrible idea.
Some airports have both left and right patterns operating simultaneously
for the same runway as part of their normal operations.
Even if the standard pattern is always either left or right, that's no
guarantee that everyone will be flying the standard pattern. Someone
might not know what the standard pattern is, or they might forget, or
they might decide not to fly it because of prevailing conditions.
Also, even if it is redundant, redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing
in aviation.
Finally, I think that the idea that omitting "left" and "right" will
free up significant time on the comm. frequency is questionable at best.
rg
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