Narrative:

We were doing a practice single engine approach and were instructed to circle west of runway 36 and that tower would call our base. Later our instructions were changed to 'follow the single engine aircraft; right downwind abeam the numbers; report traffic in sight.' the student I was working with was struggling with his single engine aircraft control and while we were working together to fix that we believed that we saw the traffic turn final and we turned to follow the traffic; forgetting to inform tower that we had the traffic in sight. There were 6-8 aircraft that the tower was working with in the air; as well as a single controller working both air and ground frequencies. Nobody realized what had happened until the other aircraft we were supposed to be following reported that we had turned onto final approximately 400 feet below him at the same time he turned on final. At this point with tower's help we sped up and the other aircraft slowed down and we were able to resolve the event.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: GA flight instructor pilot reported a NMAC after misidentifying the aircraft to follow and turning final prematurely.

Narrative: We were doing a practice single engine approach and were instructed to circle west of Runway 36 and that tower would call our base. Later our instructions were changed to 'Follow the single engine aircraft; right downwind abeam the numbers; report traffic in sight.' The student I was working with was struggling with his single engine aircraft control and while we were working together to fix that we believed that we saw the traffic turn final and we turned to follow the traffic; forgetting to inform tower that we had the traffic in sight. There were 6-8 aircraft that the tower was working with in the air; as well as a single controller working both air and ground frequencies. Nobody realized what had happened until the other aircraft we were supposed to be following reported that we had turned onto final approximately 400 feet below him at the same time he turned on final. At this point with tower's help we sped up and the other aircraft slowed down and we were able to resolve the event.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.