midair collision over Tacoma...none dead.

A woman I work with is very good friends with the pilot of the aircraft
that ended up in the water. What basically happened is that the 182 ran
over this aircraft, tearing the vertical tail off the aircraft. He said
next thing I know I am spinning. Every rotation of the spin makes a
bigger and bigger arc in the sky due to his inputs. Finally he can
basically get it right side up and with power and aileron he stalls it
into the water. Plane floats a while before sinking. After he gets his
wife out of the plane he notices missing tail. Both spend minimal time
at hospital. Meanwhile 182 jockey is all over the news saying..."That
other aircraft came out of nowhere." NTSB will most likely fault both
pilots for not seeing and avoiding.





Gatt wrote:
http://www.katu.com/news/11655946.html

TACOMA, Wash. -- Two small planes have collided over Tacoma and one of them
with two people on board crashed into Commencement Bay near Tacoma.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer says the other
plane with two people on board landed at Thun Field in Puyallup.

A Tacoma police boat and a privately-owned boat picked up the two people
from the bay and took them to shore. Both people from the plane were loaded
into a waiting ambulance and transported to a hospital, but a Tacoma Fire
Department spokesman said both were expected to survive.

Officials at Thun Field said the aircraft there landed with "minimal damage"
and no one on board was seriously injured.

The circumstances of the crash were not immediately known.

On Nov 20, 8:13 pm, "Gatt" wrote:
"Jim Logajan" wrote in message

.. .

Here's a more recent story:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...collision.html

"The pilot of the single-engine Cessna that ditched in Commencement Bay flew
out of a downward spiral and made a soft landing on the water."

That guy's a stallion.

Mid-air collision, downward spiral recovery and ditching. That's a lot of
action for a log-book entry. "How did your flight go, dear?"

-c

I suppose he wanted to impress his 70 yo passenger mom.

Wil

On Nov 21, 11:25 pm, Newps wrote:
A woman I work with is very good friends with the pilot of the aircraft
that ended up in the water. What basically happened is that the 182 ran
over this aircraft, tearing the vertical tail off the aircraft. He said
next thing I know I am spinning. Every rotation of the spin makes a
bigger and bigger arc in the sky due to his inputs. Finally he can
basically get it right side up and with power and aileron he stalls it
into the water. Plane floats a while before sinking. After he gets his
wife out of the plane he notices missing tail. Both spend minimal time
at hospital. Meanwhile 182 jockey is all over the news saying..."That
other aircraft came out of nowhere." NTSB will most likely fault both
pilots for not seeing and avoiding.



Gatt wrote:
http://www.katu.com/news/11655946.html

TACOMA, Wash. -- Two small planes have collided over Tacoma and one of them
with two people on board crashed into Commencement Bay near Tacoma.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer says the other
plane with two people on board landed at Thun Field in Puyallup.

A Tacoma police boat and a privately-owned boat picked up the two people
from the bay and took them to shore. Both people from the plane were loaded
into a waiting ambulance and transported to a hospital, but a Tacoma Fire
Department spokesman said both were expected to survive.

Officials at Thun Field said the aircraft there landed with "minimal damage"
and no one on board was seriously injured.

The circumstances of the crash were not immediately known.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Wife? I read it was his 70 yo mother.

On a side note, this have been avoided if one or both of these planes
were low winged planes? What are the visibilitiy issues with high vs
low winged planes?

Wil

On 2007-11-21 20:25:12 -0800, Newps said:

A woman I work with is very good friends with the pilot of the aircraft
that ended up in the water. What basically happened is that the 182
ran over this aircraft, tearing the vertical tail off the aircraft. He
said next thing I know I am spinning. Every rotation of the spin makes
a bigger and bigger arc in the sky due to his inputs. Finally he can
basically get it right side up and with power and aileron he stalls it
into the water. Plane floats a while before sinking. After he gets
his wife out of the plane he notices missing tail. Both spend minimal
time at hospital. Meanwhile 182 jockey is all over the news
saying..."That other aircraft came out of nowhere." NTSB will most
likely fault both pilots for not seeing and avoiding.

Yeah, we wouldn't want the NTSB faulting the real culprit there, would
we? This area has been a chamber of horrors for a long time. Near
misses are very common there. The FAA has so balkanized the airspace
that air safety has been severely compromised, just as the AOPA
predicted when the current airspace arrangement was proposed decades
ago.

What you have is a bunch of airplanes traveling a narrow corridor
through a bunch of class D airspace areas while remaining under a low
class B ceiling. Sure, you could call up Tacoma Narrows, and McChord,
or SeaTac, or Boeing Field, or Fort Lewis, or Renton, and transit their
airspace, but doing so requires you to be constantly looking up the
proper radio frequency from a whole list of different ATC frequencies
and figuring out which one is appropriate to use for your location and
direction of flight, all the while trying to fly the airplane and see
and avoid other aircraft.

Some pilots have made little lists of all the frequencies needed in the
area, but these lists always seem to be missing one critical frequency
or another. So everyone drops down to 1000' and tries to navigate a
narrow corridor that runs through a maze of radio towers and along the
freeway, trying to get from one side of Seattle to the other without
talking to anybody.

Aggravating the situation is that all these towers are busy and they do
not necessarily reply very quickly to aircraft trying to contact them,
so trying to avoid the crowded I-5 corridor quickly becomes an exercise
in frustration. It is not at all uncommon for SeaTac to make you wait
20 minutes or more before transiting the class B airspace. I have seen
aircraft circling over Vashon Island for ten minutes or more as they
wait for Boeing Field to respond to their calls -- another good place
for mid-airs while everyone waits their turn.

Aircraft transiting Tacoma Narrows' airspace are usually restricted to
1500 feet, just 200 feet above the traffic pattern, and they often have
to switch frequencies between SeaTac, McChord, Seattle Approach, and
Tacoma Tower. It is not always clear who you are supposed to be talking
to, either. You might be in Tacoma's airspace, but they might have you
call SeaTac or Approach, claiming that they have some sort of LOA
giving them control of their airspace, or vice versa.

So the FAA has basically created a huge wall, 40 miles long and 10,000
feet high, that is inaccessible to GA, but the wall has a tiny hole in
it. And then they wonder why there are so many incidents there at that
hole. It is like cramming a sixteen lane freeway down to a single lane
and then blaming "bad drivers" for all the accidents and congestion
there. But then again, Washington's Department of Transportation is
entirely capable of pulling stunts like that, so maybe they are not so
different from the FAA after all.

The FAA's attempts to make us safe have ended up endangering thousands
of people every day. So, yeah, blame the pilots.


--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:04:47 -0800, C J Campbell
wrote in
2007112207044775249-christophercampbell@hotmailcom:

What you have is a bunch of airplanes traveling a narrow corridor
through a bunch of class D airspace areas while remaining under a low
class B ceiling. Sure, you could call up Tacoma Narrows, and McChord,
or SeaTac, or Boeing Field, or Fort Lewis, or Renton, and transit their
airspace, but doing so requires you to be constantly looking up the
proper radio frequency from a whole list of different ATC frequencies
and figuring out which one is appropriate to use for your location and
direction of flight, all the while trying to fly the airplane and see
and avoid other aircraft.

Or you could request Radar Traffic Advisory Service, and let ATC
coordinate the transitions.

C J Campbell writes:

Yeah, we wouldn't want the NTSB faulting the real culprit there, would
we? This area has been a chamber of horrors for a long time. Near
misses are very common there. The FAA has so balkanized the airspace
that air safety has been severely compromised, just as the AOPA
predicted when the current airspace arrangement was proposed decades
ago.

What you have is a bunch of airplanes traveling a narrow corridor
through a bunch of class D airspace areas while remaining under a low
class B ceiling. Sure, you could call up Tacoma Narrows, and McChord,
or SeaTac, or Boeing Field, or Fort Lewis, or Renton, and transit their
airspace, but doing so requires you to be constantly looking up the
proper radio frequency from a whole list of different ATC frequencies
and figuring out which one is appropriate to use for your location and
direction of flight, all the while trying to fly the airplane and see
and avoid other aircraft.

Some pilots have made little lists of all the frequencies needed in the
area, but these lists always seem to be missing one critical frequency
or another. So everyone drops down to 1000' and tries to navigate a
narrow corridor that runs through a maze of radio towers and along the
freeway, trying to get from one side of Seattle to the other without
talking to anybody.

It sounds like a mess, but why can't you just contact one frequency and
request flight following?

Or for that matter, why can't you just fly IFR?

Or just fly around the complex airspace to the extent possible.

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

C J Campbell writes:

Yeah, we wouldn't want the NTSB faulting the real culprit there,
would
we? This area has been a chamber of horrors for a long time. Near
misses are very common there. The FAA has so balkanized the airspace
that air safety has been severely compromised, just as the AOPA
predicted when the current airspace arrangement was proposed decades
ago.

What you have is a bunch of airplanes traveling a narrow corridor
through a bunch of class D airspace areas while remaining under a low
class B ceiling. Sure, you could call up Tacoma Narrows, and McChord,
or SeaTac, or Boeing Field, or Fort Lewis, or Renton, and transit
their
airspace, but doing so requires you to be constantly looking up the
proper radio frequency from a whole list of different ATC frequencies
and figuring out which one is appropriate to use for your location
and
direction of flight, all the while trying to fly the airplane and see
and avoid other aircraft.

Some pilots have made little lists of all the frequencies needed in
the
area, but these lists always seem to be missing one critical
frequency
or another. So everyone drops down to 1000' and tries to navigate a
narrow corridor that runs through a maze of radio towers and along
the
freeway, trying to get from one side of Seattle to the other without
talking to anybody.

It sounds like a mess, but why can't you just contact one frequency
and
request flight following?

Or for that matter, why can't you just fly IFR?

Or just fly around the complex airspace to the extent possible.


You're an idiot.

Bertie

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:51:32 +0100, Mxsmanic wrote:

It sounds like a mess, but why can't you just contact one frequency and
request flight following?

Because they can't see the sailboats, whales, etc. I'm looking at/for. Besides,
note the earlier posting that says it takes ~15 minutes or so for the local ATC
to deign to notice anyone who calls up in that area.

Or for that matter, why can't you just fly IFR?

Neither the plane nor myself are IFR certified, and in any case, it doesn't make
sense for a 45-minute sightseeing flight. Puget Sound is great in that contact
navigation is very easy due to the distinctive terrain, and if the weather's
VFR, everyone's going VFR. It's one of the curses of Commencement Bay, it's
such a distinctive feature that everyone routes through it.

Or just fly around the complex airspace to the extent possible.

Take a look at the south end of the Sea-Tac Class B airspace. Eliminate the gap
in the Class B/D airspaces where Commencement Bay is, and imagine flying from
Auburn Municipal to Vashon Municipal. Either I have to fly ~25 miles north to
go around the north end of the Class B, or I've got to fly south of the Class D
airspaces for Tacoma Narrows, McChord AFB, Ft. Lewis AAF, and Olympia airport.
Not an insignificant jog in a ~80 knots airplane.

I once flew as passenger in a plane that departed Renton Airport IFR to fly
south. I couldn't believe how far around ATC routed us.

Ron Wanttaja

Ron Wanttaja writes:

Because they can't see the sailboats, whales, etc. I'm looking at/for.

I was just thinking that with flight following you'd only have to tune to one
frequency and then ATC would hand you off thereafter (?).

Besides, note the earlier posting that says it takes ~15 minutes or
so for the local ATC to deign to notice anyone who calls up in that area.

They don't answer at all, or they tell you to stand by, or what? Fifteen
minutes is an unacceptably long time.

Take a look at the south end of the Sea-Tac Class B airspace. Eliminate the gap
in the Class B/D airspaces where Commencement Bay is, and imagine flying from
Auburn Municipal to Vashon Municipal. Either I have to fly ~25 miles north to
go around the north end of the Class B, or I've got to fly south of the Class D
airspaces for Tacoma Narrows, McChord AFB, Ft. Lewis AAF, and Olympia airport.
Not an insignificant jog in a ~80 knots airplane.

I see your point.

Presumably, though, the airspace configuration is a function of the airports
in the area. What changes could you make to improve the situation without
moving any of the airports?

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Ron Wanttaja writes:

Because they can't see the sailboats, whales, etc. I'm looking
at/for.

I was just thinking


No, yuo weren't


Bertie