Pilot Behavior at AOPA Frederick Fly-in
After flying in to the AOPA event I feel compelled to make an addition to this thread, reinforcing several comments made in earlier posts. Certainly, the issues surrounding the arrival traffic problems at OSH have many facets, and this post is only addressed to one of those. Admittedly the Frederick event is very small compared to AirVenture, but the issue I am about to discuss applies to both situations.
As background information, this event had been well publicized for months in advance, and an arrival publication was readily available outlining in great detail the arrival and departure procedures. A few minutes study of this document should have been sufficient to get everyone briefed and ready to comply with the published procedures. The weather was good VFR, not perfect but perfectly safe.
Allow me to relate just a few of the incidents I observed, all related to pilot behavior.
While inbound on the published arrival route, and listening to FDK tower, it was obvious that there were several airplanes already in the pattern, and a gaggle of them coming down the published leg to the turn-in point at Fort Detric. Despite this, a call came in from an RV-8 flight of two requesting a 360-degree overhead approach. The tower ignored the first request. A minute later the second request came in and the controller responded, keeping his tone only slightly irritated, that there was heavy traffic in the area, and he would try to accommodate the request if possible.
After I turned in towards the airport and was about to enter downwind for runway 5 I heard the tower repeatedly calling out traffic to another airplane, and not getting any response. I figured out pretty quickly that that traffic was me! Soon after I picked up the traffic visually on a collision course and took evasive action.
After the noontime STOL demonstration a whole lot of airplanes decided to leave, resulting in a long lineup for the one departure runway. The published departure procedure was to follow the flagmen, and only contact tower when number one for takeoff. The trip to the runway took an hour. While the vast majority of the pilots in line were correctly and politely following procedures, a few were not, and those guys contributed to a long and frustrating process. Some pilots were calling in for takeoff clearance while they were several slots back from number one, causing confusion with the tower. One pilot apparently was not hearing the tower and kept calling for clearance. Finally, a good Samaritan in a Cirrus taxied up bedside him and gave him hand signals. Many pilots had filed IFR, even though the weather was good VFR, and that slowed up the whole line while they received their releases. One almost humorous radio call was from someone about 20 airplanes back asking for an intersection departure. One could almost hear everyone else thinking, ?nice try, buddy.?
Sorry for the long rant. I?m just trying to make the point that while we can blame the FAA, EAA, and everyone else for the problems at OSH, we need to accept our share of the blame as pilots. Perhaps a wider education campaign would help. Maybe there should be a required online training course before flying into OSH? More (gasp) enforcement of willful violators? I think we need to be open to some of these ideas if we are to keep OSH safe. Just sayin. OK, have at me!