Some airlines resort to clever gimmicks to get frequent fliers to pay attention to the routine passenger safety briefings before each flight. Southwest Airlines flight attendants are famous for rapping and joking. Air New Zealand played a “Bare Essentials of Safety” video featuring staff wearing nothing but body paint. Cebu Pacific Air flight attendants dance to Lady Gaga music for their safety demos—video of their routine has gone viral on YouTube.

Why do the flight attendants go to all this effort? Because the Federal Aviation Regulations for large and turbine-powered multiengine airplanes require those safety briefings. 14 CFR 91.519 says:

Before each takeoff the pilot in command of an airplane carrying passengers shall ensure that all passengers have been orally briefed on—
(1) Smoking…
(2) Use of safety belts and shoulder harnesses…
(3) Location and means for opening the passenger entry door and emergency exits;
(4) Location of survival equipment;
(5) Ditching procedures and the use of flotation equipment…
(6) The normal and emergency use of oxygen equipment installed on the airplane.

What about us flying smaller airplanes? There are passenger safety briefing requirements for General Aviation pilots too. 14 CFR 91.107 says:

(1) No pilot may take off a U.S.-registered civil aircraft… unless the pilot in command of that aircraft ensures that each person on board is briefed on how to fasten and unfasten that person’s safety belt and, if installed, shoulder harness.
(2) No pilot may cause to be moved on the surface, take off, or land a U.S.-registered civil aircraft… unless the pilot in command of that aircraft ensures that each person on board has been notified to fasten his or her safety belt and, if installed, his or her shoulder harness.

The FAA Practical Test Standards for Sport, Private, and Commercial pilots take it a step further. The examiner will expect you to deliver a more thorough airline-style passenger safety briefing before your checkride. One of the objectives listed under the Cockpit Management task is “To determine that the applicant… briefs occupant(s) on the use of safety belts, shoulder harnesses, and any other required safety equipment, doors, and emergency procedures.”

If you’re taking a passenger for a ride in an Experimental aircraft, you’re also required to “advise each person carried of the experimental nature of the aircraft” (14 CFR 91.319.) Some pilots take care of that with a placard in front of the passenger seat, but otherwise it should be part of your verbal passenger briefing. Pilots of Special Light Sport Aircraft have a similar requirement, and “must advise each person carried of the special nature of the aircraft and that the aircraft does not meet the airworthiness requirements for an aircraft issued a standard airworthiness certificate” (14 CFR 91.327.)

So how do you conduct a passenger safety briefing? You don’t have to choreograph it to music. Reading from a short checklist will suffice. A January 2007 article in FAA Aviation News suggests organizing your safety briefing with the mnemonic SAFETY:

S: Seatbelts and Seat adjustment
A: Air vents and Action to prevent airsickness
F: Fire extinguisher
E: Exits, Emergencies, and Equipment
T: Traffic and Talking
Y: Your questions?

Our flying club used that SAFETY scheme to write a passenger safety briefing card for our Special Light Sport Aircraft: Clear Skies Flying Club passenger safety briefing. We took nothing for granted—some of our passengers have never ridden in a small plane before, and even basics like our seatbelts and door latches are different from automotive standards. Our Flight Design CTLS also has some safety features that even experienced small plane passengers might find unfamiliar, such as the emergency airframe parachute. Our non-pilot spouses are reassured by the emergency parachute, but if the pilot were incapacitated, the passenger needs to know how to turn off the ignition key to stop the propeller before pulling the parachute handle, and how to activate the emergency locator transmitter after landing. So our safety briefing covers those in detail.

We thought carefully about the wording to satisfy the S-LSA passenger advisory requirement. The regulation verbiage “does not meet the airworthiness requirements for an aircraft issued a standard airworthiness certificate” might give nervous passengers cause for concern. We provide a softer, but accurate, disclosure: “This Flight Design CTLS light sport airplane has a special airworthiness certificate. Unlike standard-category airplanes, the CTLS was designed and manufactured under industry consensus standards.”

Have you ever frightened a passenger when the stall warning horn suddenly blared during your landing flare? Our passenger safety briefing card also mentions routine occurrences that might unnerve a first-time passenger, such as verbal warning announcements from our GPS sounding in the headphones, pitch changes when the flaps extend or retract, and side-slipping for a crosswind landing.

Write a passenger safety briefing checklist for your aircraft, and use it to brief your passengers before starting the engine. Not just because the regulations require it, but because as pilot in command, you have a responsibility to ensure your passengers’ safety. Entertaining them with a clever safety briefing song and dance—that’s optional.

…about learning to fly.

Our local newspaper is running a weekly feature titled “Five things you should know…” featuring local businesspeople giving tips about their specialities, such as investing, events management, or even biking to work. Following that theme, and in recognition of International Learn to Fly Day on May 21, here’s my list of five things you should know about learning to fly:

1. You’re never too old

You don’t need Top Gun reflexes and perfect eyesight. With the new Sport Pilot license, you don’t even need an FAA medical exam—if your health and vision are good enough for a driver’s license, you’re good to fly. The other flight instructor in our flying club is in her 70s. There are amputee pilots, deaf pilots, and one-eyed pilots.

2. It costs less than you think

My hourly rate for individual lessons is on par with a golf pro or riding instructor. And like riding lessons, you don’t have to buy your own horse first—you can rent by the hour. Small planes rent for around $100 per hour at flight schools or flying clubs. But it’s a buyer’s market now for used planes, and a small plane can cost less than a midlife-crisis Harley, sports car, or fishing boat. Or a horse. If you’ve always dreamed of becoming a pilot, the question is not “What does it cost?” but “What does it cost not to learn to fly?”

3. It takes less time than you think

The Sport Pilot license requires only 20 hours of training and practice (although most pilots average a little longer.) Devote two weeks of vacation time to flight lessons, and you can become a pilot.

4. Flying motivates students

Ask your kids or grandkids to help you with your pilot homework. Math becomes real-world relevant with wind correction angles for aerial navigation, or calculating groundspeed and fuel consumption. Every flight with a child can be an exciting science lesson: weather, geology, botany, ornithology (“Is that a bald eagle off our right wing?”). Young pilots can solo at age 16 and earn a license at 17.

5. Women fly

Flying doesn’t require upper-body strength or mechanical aptitude. It’s more about good judgement and a sense of humor than macho self-confidence. Some of the best pilots I know are women—they fly with a lighter touch on the controls, and handle their planes with more finesse. Gender doesn’t matter in the air—knowledge, attitude, and skill make a good, safe pilot.

If you’re used to other airplanes, a challenge for your first few landings in a Flight Design CTLS is recalibrating your sight picture for “straight ahead.”

It’s not a big deal, just something to be aware of until you get a few hours in the plane. I’m glad my first few hours in a CTLS were in another flight school’s rental plane, because I sure landed it crooked at first, rather than aligned with the runway centerline. 

 Because the fuselage tapers out to make the cockpit wide and roomy at your shoulders, the CTLS seats angle in toward the centerline. Just slightly. Your feet on the rudder pedals aren’t quite straight out in front of your hips and shoulders, like in other planes. But you probably wouldn’t notice this unless somebody points it out. When you’re sitting in the pilot’s seat, straight ahead for the airplane isn’t the direction your body is facing, but actually slightly to the left.

Photo from the manual: "View from the pilot's seat, looking straight ahead."

This optical illusion is so common for new CTLS pilots that Flight Design mentions it in the airplane manual: ”The pilot’s view straight ahead is very much to the left. At first this appears to be too far to the left, but it is indeed correct.” There’s even a photo showing what it looks like.

Other pilots on the CT pilot Internet forums have made the brilliant suggestion of actually marking that visual reference line on the inside of the windshield with tape.

So the other day we lined up the nosewheel straight ahead on a taxiway center stripe. Then we stuck a strip of white Post-it correction tape on the windshield in front of the pilot’s seat, right over the taxiway centerline. That’s straight ahead, although you’d swear the airplane was pointed off to one side—because your body is.

After you’ve done a few touch & goes, you’ll have  the CTLS “straight ahead” sight picture burned in, and you can peel off the tape.

White alignment tape on the inside of the windshield (just to the left of the prop blade.) The nosewheel is straight on the centerline. Looks like the nose is aimed off to the right, though, doesn't it?

Sighting down the windshield tape. You can see from this angle how that tape is not straight up and down.

I wish more pilots would say their altitude when giving self-announce position reports near airports.

Say altitude: "Two thousand one hundred, descending."

The FAA Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM Section 4-1-9 Traffic Advisory Practices at Airports Without Operating Control Towers) recommends that inbound pilots broadcast their position and intentions at 10 miles out, entering downwind, base, and final, and leaving the runway. If another airplane and I are both approaching the airport, it’s extremely helpful to know where to look for it: “10 miles northeast.” But I also want to know the other airplane’s altitude: it is above me, below me, or a collision risk at the same altitude? Everyone’s situational awareness and safety is improved by knowing both the position and altitude of nearby airplanes.

The self-announce phraseology examples in the AIM do include altitude:

Inbound
“Strawn traffic, Apache Two Two Five Zulu, (position), (altitude), descending or entering downwind/base/final (as appropriate), runway one seven, full stop/touch-and-go, Strawn.”

Outbound
“Strawn traffic, Queen Air Seven One Five Five Bravo departing runway two six. Departing the pattern to the (direction), climbing to (altitude), Strawn.”

If you’re talking with air traffic control, you’re also supposed to say altitude on initial contact. This applies whether you’re calling approach control at an airport, or checking in with one facility after another as you fly cross-country with VFR flight following or on an IFR flight plan. AIM Section 5-3-1 b.2.(a) spells it out:

“When operating in a radar environment: On initial contact, the pilot should inform the controller of the aircraft’s assigned altitude preceded by the words “level,” or “climbing to,” or “descending to” as appropriate; and the aircraft’s present vacating altitude, if applicable.
Example 1: (Name) CENTER, (aircraft identification), LEVEL (altitude or flight level).
Example 2: (Name) CENTER, (aircraft identification), LEAVING (exact altitude or flight level), CLIMBING TO OR DESCENDING TO (altitude or flight level).
Note: Exact altitude or flight level means to the nearest 100 foot increment. Exact altitude or flight level reports on initial contact provide ATC with information required prior to using Mode C altitude information for separation purposes.”

Say altitude so the controller can verify your transponder's Mode C altitude readout on her radar screen.

Note that last sentence. The controller is required to verify that the altimeter display in your cockpit matches the altitude readout from your transponder on her radar screen before she can trust the number she sees. Make her job easier and do your part to reduce frequency congestion by telling her your altitude up front. Otherwise, she has to come back to you and ask: “Say altitude.”

I take my responsibilities as a flight instructor seriously, and try to act as a paragon of safety-first professionalism. I’m well aware that CFIs set examples for other pilots, whether intentionally or not. You will never, for example, catch me doing a preflight inspection without a printed checklist in my hand—even when it’s my own very familiar airplane and nobody is watching.  But I occasionally feel a guilty twinge of conscience in a “do as I say, not as I do” moment.

I’ve been preaching personal minimums, but I’ll confess I’ve procrastinated about writing my own. 

A personal minimums checklist is a simple, effective safety tool. By thinking in advance about your own comfort levels for risk factors such as your recent flight time, weather conditions, and fuel reserves, you can make preflight go/no-go decisions (or even inflight continue/land/turn back decisions) more objectively. With written personal minimums, you give yourself an excuse to say “no, I’m not comfortable with these conditions” and make the safer decision to fly another day.

Finally practicing what I preach: my personal minimums checklist

So I quit making excuses and took 30 minutes to type out my own personal minimums. Small investment of time for big safety dividends.

The FAA has a short worksheet and article to walk you through developing your checklist:
Personal Minimums Worksheet
Personal Minimums Development Guide

For example, the regulations define “Visual Flight Rules” (VFR) conditions as a ceiling greater than 3,000 feet above ground level and visibility greater than 5 miles. “Marginal VFR” is a ceiling of 1,000 to 3,000 feet and/or visibility of 3 to 5 miles. I’ve flown in marginal VFR, and I don’t like it—higher clouds and better visibility make me more comfortable. But I’m used to flying low and slow with only 65 horsepower, so my personal minimum is “in-between” VFR: a 2,000 foot ceiling and 5 miles visibility. And remaining within the airport traffic pattern, practicing touch-and-goes, I feel safe with slightly lower personal minimums: a 1,500 foot ceiling and 3 miles visibility.

The regulations also require a 30 minute fuel reserve for day VFR flights. Probably adequate for most situations, but I don’t need the stress of sweating low fuel, agonizing over a headwind and the distance to the next airport, hoping the fuel gauges are calibrated accurately. So my personal minimum is a 60 minute fuel reserve, not 30 minutes.

What about crosswinds? The airplane’s Pilot’s Operating Handbook (POH) may list a “demonstrated crosswind velocity” of 15 knots, but that edge of the envelope was set by a professional test pilot. I’m not that good. Well, maybe not on every crosswind landing. So my personal maximum is a crosswind component 75% of that POH number. Any more crosswind than that, and I’ll be looking for another runway more aligned with the wind. In a taildragger, I’m going to be even more conservative: no more than 10 knots of crosswind component. I can do without the adrenaline rush.

Your personal minimums checklist can be short and sweet, or longer and more detailed. One useful way to organize it is the “PAVE” mnemonic for risk factors:
Pilot
Aircraft
enVironment
External pressures

This older, but still useful, FAA brochure expands on the PAVE structure for fill-in-the-blanks personal minimums: FAA-P-8740-56. I liked the way it’s organized, so I based my own checklist on it.

I’ve given you good reasons to develop personal minimums, and links to two templates for writing your own. So do as I did—develop, and then adhere to, your own personal minimums checklist. No procrastinating.

See also:
FAA Safety Team Safety Tip: “Select and use conventional and unconventional personal minimums”

NORDO: aviation shorthand for “No Radio”

A while back, I was practicing touch-and-go landings at my home airport, Ankeny. The only other plane in the traffic pattern was the FBO’s Cessna 947SP, also shooting touch-and-goes. I recognized Rachel’s voice on the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF), making radio calls for the new student pilot with her. She no doubt recognized my Taylorcraft. She’s the only female instructor at the airport, and mine is the only Taylorcraft, so Ankeny regulars know who’s who.

My radio equipment, such as it is: battery-powered intercom box, battery-powered handheld radio, spare battery pack, tangle of cables

Ankeny pilots can also recognize me just by my radio static. My airplane has no electrical system, so no powerful panel-mounted radio. I use a battery-powered handheld radio wired to an internal antenna mounted in my plane’s fuselage. The strength of my radio’s signal depends on how fresh its 8 AA batteries are. The static comes from my unshielded ignition system, with electromagnetic interference from my magnetos and old-fashioned ignition wires. No easy way to fix that. I’ve gotten used to the continuous background hiss in my headphones. Other pilots assure me they can hear me clearly enough, although it’s obvious from the static that I don’t have a standard radio.

At least I have a radio. The Ankeny airport doesn’t have a control tower, so a radio isn’t actually required there. There’s a no-radio Aeronca Champ at Ankeny that sometimes silently taxis out and flies around the traffic pattern, as is his right. Some alert local pilot usually makes a position call about him, warning everyone else to watch out for the NORDO Champ. You’d think there was an enemy fighter in the pattern trying to shoot people down, judging by the alarmed indignation of pilots unused to sharing airspace with no-radio antiques.

As I followed Rachel’s student around the traffic pattern, we fell into a regular pattern of position reports on the CTAF: “Ankeny traffic, Cessna niner four seven sierra papa downwind runway one eight, Ankeny.” “Ankeny traffic, Taylorcraft niner six one three zero downwind one eight, Ankeny.” We were both diligently following the recommended procedure for operations at airports without a control tower, self-announcing our position on each leg of the traffic pattern.

We had done several rounds of touch-and-goes when a twin arrived. He made radio calls on the CTAF too, and entered downwind ahead of me. I turned final behind him, announcing “number two behind the twin.”  The twin touched down… and then did a U-turn on the runway to back-taxi to the turnoff it missed. I aborted my landing from short final, pushed full throttle to climb back to pattern altitude, and radioed, indignantly, “Ankeny traffic, Taylorcraft is going around, runway one eight, Ankeny.” How rude, back-taxiing when he knew I was right behind him on final. Arrogant twin-engine pilots think they own the runway…

The next voice on the radio was the alarmed pilot of the twin. “Ankeny traffic, watch out for an airplane on final that’s not on the frequency!”

My head snapped around, frantically scanning for an airplane behind me. Then I realized he was talking about me. Doh.

“Ah, Cessna seven sierra papa, how do you read Taylorcraft one three zero?” No response from Rachel.

I continued around the pattern as I fumbled in the glovebox for the spare battery pack and snapped fresh batteries onto the radio. “Taylorcraft one three zero calling Cessna seven sierra papa.” Nothing.

I checked the antenna cable attachment and jiggled each of the microphone and headset plugs. I tried calling Rachel again. “You’re a little weak, but we hear you,” she replied. Whew.

There's the problem: loose microphone plug

After landing uneventfully, I found the culprit. The microphone plug wasn’t pushed into the radio quite all the way, so I hadn’t been transmitting at all. And Rachel is enough of a pro that she wasn’t fazed by me being NORDO behind her in the traffic pattern, so she hadn’t said anything about it. She could see and avoid me without me talking on the radio.

I reflected later on lessons learned:

Pilots assume at their peril that all other pilots are on the same frequency. The FAA’s Aeronautical Information Manual warns against a common practice: “Pilots stating ‘Traffic in the area, please advise’ is not a recognized Self-Announce Position and/or Intention phrase and should not be used under any condition.”  Most airspace does not require a radio. I go to some antique airplane fly-ins where the preferred safety procedure is not to use the radio if you have one, because many of the antiques don’t. The safety principle of “see and avoid” always applies—pilots should be looking, not merely listening, for other aircraft.

I should have flown away from the traffic pattern to trouble-shoot my radio problem. Following another airplane in the pattern, when you should be focused on your pre-landing checklist, is not the time to be distracted with your head down in the cockpit. That’s how accidents happen.

I was reminded of the old saying “Don’t drop the airplane to fly the microphone.” Your priorities are aviate, navigate, communicate—in that order. If your hands are full, flying the plane is always more important than talking on the radio.

And I’m more suspicious of my radio now. Even if I can hear myself talking and the little “TX” transmission indication lights up on the radio’s display screen when I press the push-to-talk switch, I don’t assume I’m transmitting for sure. If nobody else is obviously responding to my radio transmissions, I’ll double check before takeoff: “King Air on the taxiway at Ankeny, how do you read the Taylorcraft behind you?” “Read you loud and clear.” “Roger, thanks.”

One of these days, I hope to have an airplane with a real radio.

See also:
FAA Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) 4-1-9: “Traffic Advisory Practices at Airports Without Operating Control Towers”
AIM 6-4-1: “Two-Way Radio Communications Failure“

View from the back seat on short final. Agony, if you usually sit up front.

As a CFI, it’s hard to keep my mouth shut. Clients hire me for instruction, after all, expecting me to speak aeronautical wisdom from the right seat. But sometimes it’s better to say nothing, letting the client (safely) recognize, recover, and learn from his own mistakes. That’s the subtle distinction between merely teaching and more effectively facilitating learning.

It’s even harder to keep my mouth shut in the back seat of an airplane. Four of us recently flew cross-country in a flying club Piper. The two club member pilots sat in front, and another CFI and I squeezed in back. She agreed, sotto voce on the intercom, that it felt strange to sit out of reach of the controls and out of the loop.

I tried to be a good passenger. You can always learn something from observing another pilot’s technique—a more efficient checklist flow, a different method for tracking flight progress, smoother radio phraseology. (And sometimes you observe what not to do, grateful it wasn’t your faux pas.)

But on the return leg, with discretion fatigue setting in, I slipped into instructor mode. “What runway are you planning to use at our fuel stop?” (It was about time to tune in that airport’s Automated Weather Observation System frequency and get the current wind direction.) Come twilight, “Can you see the wingtip strobes from the front seats in this plane?” (The pilot took the hint and switched them on to improve our visibility to other planes.)

I tried to be subtle. “What’s that blinking message light on the GPS?” The pilot pushed the “MSG” button. “SET COURSE TO 257″ was the cryptic message on the GPS. “Oh, it must want you to set the GPS course on the OBS too,” I said nonchalantly.  

Course deviation indicator: the yellow needle shows whether you're on or off course

The pilot reached up to twist the Omni Bearing Selector knob on the Course Deviation Indicator, rotating the bezel to set 257 degrees at the course index on the top of the dial. The CDI needle centered on 257, giving a more sensitive display of our course line than the tiny screen on the GPS.

“I always wondered what that message meant,” said the copilot. Yesss! Teachable moment! CFIs live for those, even from the back seat.

I couldn’t resist. After remarking to my instructor (who would prefer to remain nameless) that the knee-height cabin air vents in a Citabria would blow a lovely wee breeze up a pilot’s kilt… I had to wear my old bagpiping kilt to my next lesson.

Transient pilot in the FBO lobby: “Are you from Scotland?”

Me: “No, Des Moines. Why do you ask?”

I learned a few things about flight instructing in yoga class the other day.

Our city parks department offers free Saturday morning yoga. Different teachers from various yoga studios volunteer to lead the class each week. I’ve been practicing with the same instructor for about ten years now, so “Yoga in the Park” is exposing me to some different teaching styles.

Like an aerobics instructor, a square dance caller, or a flight instructor, yoga teachers do a lot of verbal cueing. A yoga class looks like a game of “Yogi Says” as rows of people simultaneously twist, lunge, bend over, or stand on one foot in response to pose-by-pose instructions from the front of the room.

Aviation has its share of arcane jargon, but some yoga terminology is in Sanskrit! My teacher calls the common stretching-canine pose “Downward-Facing Dog” or sometimes just “Down Dog”. The first time I heard another teacher say “Adho Mukha Svanasana” I froze on my mat. I had to sneak a peek at the woman next to me. Oh. “Down Dog.”

After years in the cockpit, we forget that some aviation jargon might as well be Sanskrit to new pilots. After a few puzzled looks from new students, I’ve learned to start with “Push the right rudder pedal to keep the inclinometer ball centered,” rather than “Counteract the P-factor on climb-out with right rudder” or the classic “Step on the ball.”

But over-simplification can be just as puzzling or frustrating. One recent Saturday, the yoga teacher sensibly asked for a show of hands from people taking their first-ever yoga class. Hands went up from about a fourth of the mats. So she adjusted her cueing for the beginners, using the English names for the poses rather than the Sanskrit. Just like a good flight instructor will adjust vocabulary to the student’s level of experience.

My teachable moment came with my impatience at her step-by-step cueing for the beginners. (Not a very yoga-like attitude, I know, but I’m still working on cultivating detachment.) I awkwardly tottered through a slow-motion “Let’s step wide… now point your left toes forward and your right toes out ninety degrees… raise your arms straight out at your shoulders… now bend your left leg, keeping your knee directly over your heel… look out over your left hand.” Oh. Warrior Two pose. Why didn’t she just say so at the beginning? “Warrior Two: let’s step wide…”

Standing there on my mat, feeling my left quadriceps start to cramp in Warrior Two, I made the conceptual leap to flight instructing. It helps, I realized, to always name the maneuver up front, so the student learns the shorthand (or the Sanskrit) and knows where we’re ultimately going with the individual steps.

Before getting to How, explain What. As in: “Rectangular Course. The FAA Airplane Flying Handbook defines this as ‘a training maneuver in which the ground track of the airplane is equidistant from all sides of a selected rectangular area on the ground.’ Basically, we’re going to simulate flying the traffic pattern around an imaginary runway, flying straight legs while correcting for the wind so we’re staying a consistent distance from the runway.”

And then it occurred to me that a yoga mat would be a handy teaching aid for rectangular courses. Stand to one side of the mat in Warrior Two, pivot your arms to crab into the wind…

Several of us from our new Light Sport flying club flew from Des Moines to Oshkosh, Wisconsin last weekend for demo flights in an LSA we’re considering for the club. Beautiful day for flying—blue skies, few clouds, tailwind eastbound. It was a treat to fly to Oshkosh in a Piper Archer in half the time and at twice the altitude as my usual low and slow annual pilgrimage to EAA AirVenture in my 65 hp Taylorcraft.

Our pilot filed a VFR flight plan, and requested flight following. Des Moines Clearance Delivery assigned us a transponder code for the entire route and put our N-number and destination into the system. Every 15 or 20 minutes, the controllers would hand us off to the next facility as we flew across their radar coverage sectors: Des Moines Departure, Waterloo Approach, Chicago Center, Madison Approach. Most of our radio discussion with Air Traffic Control (ATC) was routine: controllers telling us to switch to the next frequency, then us checking in with the next controller.

Westbound over Wisconsin at 4500 feet on the flight home, one traffic advisory caught our attention even more than usual. ATC called, “Piper Seven Four November, traffic your twelve o’clock, one five miles, four thousand five hundred feet, eastbound… targets will converge.” Then we heard the controller call the other airplane in front of us, telling the other pilot our position directly in front of him, also ending with “targets will converge.” Being told you’re on a collision course with another airplane you can’t see does focus a pilot’s attention.

Other airplanes can be difficult to spot, even when ATC tells you where to look

There it is

I’ve since learned that controllers have a feature on their radar scopes that can project a course line out in front of a target they select, predicting the track of that airplane a minute into the future. They can also click on two targets, and the radar software will display a prediction of how close the two airplanes will come to each other. That’s how they can tell if two aircraft are converging.

Our controller wasn’t being coy with his “targets will converge” phrase—that was a very deliberate choice of words. He was matter-of-factly telling both airplanes what would happen unless somebody changed course. But he was not about to tell either pilot what to do, unless asked. Both airplanes were VFR in uncontrolled airspace, not being “controlled” by ATC. If one of us had been IFR, maybe the controller would have automatically issued a heading change for traffic separation.

Chapter 5, Section 5 of the FAA Aeronautical Information Manual, “Pilot/Controller Roles and Responsibilities”, explains what was going on. Section 5-5-10 “Traffic Advisories (Traffic Information)” spells out who’s responsible for what:

“Pilot:
1. Acknowledges receipt of traffic advisories.
2. Informs controller if traffic in sight.
3. Advises ATC if a vector to avoid traffic is desired. [my italics]
4. Does not expect to receive radar traffic advisories on all traffic. Some aircraft may not appear on the radar display. Be aware that the controller may be occupied with higher priority duties and unable to issue traffic information for a variety of reasons…

Controller:
1. Issues radar traffic to the maximum extent consistent with higher priority duties except in Class A airspace.
2. Provides vectors to assist aircraft to avoid observed traffic when requested by the pilot.” [my italics]

The controller was following the script. He wasn’t responsible for telling either airplane which way to turn unless a pilot requested vectors. In the end, we decided to just descend 1000 feet while maintaining our heading, and the other airplane apparently flew right over us. Despite several pairs of eyes straining out the windshield looking for it, we never did see the other airplane that was coming at us head-on. When the controller radioed, “Piper Seven Four November, traffic no longer a factor,” we climbed back up to our original altitude. 

“And that,” said our pilot, “is the value of flight following.”

See also: FAA Advisory Circular 90-48C “Pilot’s Role in Collision Avoidance”