Training Tip: Operation beehive

And it’s no better to discover that someone else operating in the buzzing beehive of a busy nontowered airport’s airspace possesses bad traffic-pattern manners, but it only takes one rude occurrence to make you permanently more alert.

The go-around checklist in your aircraft’s pilot’s operating handbook provides steps for initiating a basic balked landing. But here’s the question: After you are safely situated in the climb, what will you do next?

That’s when you’ll either be glad you paid attention to what’s been going on around you, or you’ll vow to do better next time. The twin landing ahead of you, the student pilot inbound for landing behind you, the airplane somewhere out there flying a practice instrument approach, and the turboprop that’s antsy to depart may not have concerned you much when all you expected to do was land.

But now the twin is down, and the turboprop starts its roll, right in front of you.

The well-trained student pilot that you are, you start a go-around, carefully performing all the steps in proper order while maneuvering to avoid the rude departure’s wake. Then what?

During most training sessions of “closed traffic” takeoffs and landings, a go-around is followed by typical turns to the crosswind and downwind legs. This time your planning depends on the turboprop’s departure track, the inbound flight-school airplane’s position, and whatever the airplane on the instrument approach is doing; in the excitement you think you heard him announce that he would break off the procedure and “join the pattern.”

Now’s a good time to light up your aircraft for maximum visibility. Don’t leave your collision avoidance to guesswork or assumptions of other pilots’ positions or intentions. For example, if an aircraft is flying a practice instrument approach to the active runway—or another runway, including the reciprocal of the active runway—it may show up in your vicinity at an altitude above or below pattern altitude. Or it might “join the pattern” in an unfamiliar position, or with an unexpected maneuver (it shouldn’t, but practice isn’t always perfect).

If you’re still unsure of its whereabouts, request another position report—but under no circumstances let the uncertainty distract you from your primary responsibility to keep your own aircraft under control while you sort things out.