PilotEdge Forums

HRutila wrote:Tower doesn't provide separation in the pattern. .

I just thought this warranted emphasis.

Kyle.Sanders wrote:

HRutila wrote:Tower doesn't provide separation in the pattern. .

I just thought this warranted emphasis.

Uhhh, I totally disagree with this. When I'm working traffic (in real life), I separate aircraft all the time in the pattern. It's our job to extend downwinds, extend upwinds, (or 360's usually as a last resort or 270's to final etc). If I see an aircraft gaining on another it's my job to DO SOMETHING!

BE ADVISED: you should never make a 360 in the pattern out of the blue, unless like I wrote earlier tower totally effed up and you're about to hit someone! There's a reason it's CONTROLLED airspace... you can't just do things on your own! If people fly in real life at towers and the controllers don't fix a sequence, or you're gaining on someone ahead and they don't give you a course of action THEY AREN'T DOING THEIR JOB!

Obviously in this case the tower should have done something to ensure proper spacing in the pattern. If you want to privately pass me details of the flight I can look into it to see what happened.

The other posters have 100% covered the "what you should have done" question so I won't rehash that.

I think the discussion between the controllers (real world and PE) has to do with the technical definition of separation.

ATC is required to provide separation on the runway (normally 3000' for small aircraft but up to 6000' {or 3 minutes} in some cases), that's not at debate here.

Within the pattern ATC is not required to provide "separation" as formally defined in the ATC manual.

SEPARATION− In air traffic control, the spacing of
aircraft to achieve their safe and orderly movement in
flight and while landing and taking off

There are no separation minimums defined for pattern operations so ATC can't formally separate aircraft. However what the .65 does state is:

Establish the sequence of arriving and departing
aircraft by requiring them to adjust flight or ground
operation, as necessary, to achieve proper spacing

So while technically not separation, functionally ATC should modify the pattern of aircraft in order to ensure proper spacing on the runway, the book calls this "sequencing". Ryan details a bunch of ways ATC can (and should) do this.

Normally ATC will point out the traffic to you, and either have you maintain spacing from that aircraft ("Follow that aircraft") or modify your pattern to make sure you do. If ATC didn't do this on your flight I'd like to know about it so I can address it with the controller.

Hopefully this clarifies what ATC should be doing in this case.

I knew you'd come PG

Bah I'll just ease up a bit now. In the real world, by changing someone's pattern, I'm separating them from another so you guys don't hit. "Don't hit" is the keyword haha.

Bah I'll just ease up a bit now. In the real world, by changing someone's pattern, I'm separating them from another so you guys don't hit. "Don't hit" is the keyword haha.

I agree "spacing" "separation" and "sequencing" are really different words for the same thing. I just wanted to kill the semantic wording argument before it derailed the point of the thread.

The overall goal of ATC is noise abatement, specifically avoiding the noise that happens when 2 planes hit.

Peter Grey wrote:Obviously in this case the tower should have done something to ensure proper spacing in the pattern. If you want to privately pass me details of the flight I can look into it to see what happened.

The other posters have 100% covered the "what you should have done" question so I won't rehash that.

Normally ATC will point out the traffic to you, and either have you maintain spacing from that aircraft ("Follow that aircraft") or modify your pattern to make sure you do. If ATC didn't do this on your flight I'd like to know about it so I can address it with the controller.

Hopefully this clarifies what ATC should be doing in this case.

I believe ATC did this (I don't honestly remember, I've slept and eaten quite a bit of turkey since then.) I would fall more on the side with the pilot (me) getting impatient and frustrated without letting the controller know. I then took my own action and informed ATC after I had initiated the short base turn.

I came here to post to find out about other (legal) options I could have pursued in this scenario.

TJ

The main point behind stating "Tower doesn't provide separation in the pattern" is to emphasize the duty of the pilot to see and avoid. I have had a within-50-feet, same-altitude near midair collision in a tower-controlled traffic pattern because of another pilot's mistake. Had we collided in the pattern it would simply not have been the tower's responsibility because the expectation was for the pilot to do something else.

That is absurd! That is the controller's responsibility to ensure airplanes don't hit

I mean yes, I agree the PIC has responsibility for the operation of the aircraft - I get that. But sheesh, someone wasn't doing their job - I'm sorry you had to go through that!

I would have called the tower and told them what was going on. They probably would have made some changes to either one of you or both to fix the issue.

If I remember correctly from my PPL training, the tower only provides sequencing to VFR aircraft. It is up to the pilot to maintain separation. Also most class D airports have no radar so everything is visual. The tower however could tell the slow aircraft to extend his downwind and allow you to turn base, etc.