[real world] "where in God's name are you going?"

[Keith Smith]

I took a personal flight with my daughter last w/end and was treated to this exchange between NY approach and a Challenger that was enroute from White Plains, NY (KHPN) to Teterboro, NJ (KTEB).



The pilot checks in on a 320 heading. The controllers issues a 180 heading, but meant to issue a 280 heading. That's the first link in the incident chain...

The pilot's read back isn't clear (the first digit appears to be clipped, almost as though he started talking and then hit the PTT a fraction of a second too late, perhaps). Clink, another link in the incident chain.

Thankfully the controller notices the aircraft isn't where he expects it to be and corrects the problem.

Notice how clear the pilot read backs are on the subsequent calls?

Interesting stuff!

Edit: here's the flight track. You can see the 180 heading (briefly), pointing them right towards TEB for a little while.

You can see the

[Alex Stjepanovic]

I think I'll adapt that phraseology to my controlling from now on

It snaketh!

[BeechV35Pilot]

The minor quibble I have with this is that the controller used the excuse, "when aircraft are departing runway 6 why would I send you directly into them" or some such words, he assumed the pilots also had the big picture of the airspace. In my experience the only picture pilots have besides the one on TCAS is the mental picture based on the current frequency they are monitoring.

But I do agree that the controller and pilot are a team and pilots need to "trust but verify" all ATC instructions, not blindly assume the instruction is safe and correct. The NTSB accident report database has several cases of pilots blindly accepting an instruction that led to the demise of the flight. One that immediately comes to mind was a flight several years ago somewhere in southern California or Nevada where a pilot was given a vector for an approach by a super busy controller who then failed to provide a follow-up vector and the pilot ended up flying into a mountain (the conditions were night IMC, IIRC).

[TheMadDocMD]

For a second there I was expecting a N5XXXJ.... oh man would I have had fun with pilots at work for that one!!

Going HPN-TEB is second nature to alot of our pilots; while I understand Peter's concept of pilots not seeing the big picture - before you even depart HPN you know what TEB is doing because its such a short hop and in those challengers, the use of D-ATIS is high thus always aware of the current ATIS without needing to leave freq. Not sure what this Challenger pilot crew did to prepare before hand so can't really speak for them.

Nice find Keith - I think I will still end up showing this to our pilots anyways haha

[Keith Smith]

The minor quibble I have with this is that the controller used the excuse, "when aircraft are departing runway 6 why would I send you directly into them" or some such words, he assumed the pilots also had the big picture of the airspace. In my experience the only picture pilots have besides the one on TCAS is the mental picture based on the current frequency they are monitoring.

Peter, I agree with you 99%. Most Part 91 pilots don't know about traffic flows in/out of various airports, however, when it comes to Part 135 guys going in/out of their regular haunts, I think it's not unreasonable that they have an idea of what's going on. This was backed up by the fact that the pilots said, "yeah, we were surprised by the heading." That's exactly what the controller's point was...they were surprised, but said nothing.

Now, I can totally understand why they might opt to say nothing. They're flying in NY airspace and were told to fly a heading. The underlying assumption is that the controller isn't going to make a mistake. So, this was a red flag, but they didn't feel strongly enough to say something. The controller's point that they should verify the info if they think an instruction is suspect, and the pilots conceded that.

Had the pilots not been in the least bit suspicious of the heading, I think there would be less of a case here.

[Keith Smith]

note: added flight track to the original post.

[Ryan B]

Interesting recording...

I know I've issued a control instruction that was wrong, but in my head it was totally correct... this is a perfect example of why pilot readbacks are important to listen to