C-172S pilot reported an near midair collision event on final approach caused by an unknown 'pop up'...

Attributes
ACN	1759535
Time
Date	202009
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Skyhawk 172/Cutlass 172
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Final Approach
Route In Use	Visual Approach
Flight Plan	IFR
Aircraft 2
Make Model Name	Any Unknown or Unlisted Aircraft Manufacturer
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Final Approach Landing
Flight Plan	None
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying Single Pilot
Qualification	Flight Crew Instrument Flight Crew Private
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 63.8 Flight Crew Total 131.4 Flight Crew Type 131.4
Events
Anomaly	Conflict NMAC Deviation - Altitude Excursion From Assigned Altitude Deviation - Procedural Clearance Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Miss Distance	Horizontal 0 Vertical 100

Narrative:

Returning from an IFR cross country. I was cleared for the visual approach at a busy class delta airport. After contacting tower I was given vectors to join traffic pattern. Tower told me I was following traffic off my left wing and I was second to land runway xx. I followed what I thought was my traffic a cessna off my left wing. I followed them from base to final. On final; I saw an airplane pop up in front and then I envaded to the right and executed a go around to avoid the traffic. What caused this incident was I identified different traffic then tower was communicating. There was only one controller working tower and ground frequencies. Having an additional controller would help relieve some of the workload that tower was experiencing.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: C-172S pilot reported an NMAC event on final approach caused by an unknown 'pop up' aircraft.

Narrative: Returning from an IFR cross country. I was cleared for the visual approach at a busy class Delta airport. After contacting Tower I was given vectors to join traffic pattern. Tower told me I was following traffic off my left wing and I was second to land RWY XX. I followed what I thought was my traffic a cessna off my left wing. I followed them from base to final. On final; I saw an airplane pop up in front and then I envaded to the right and executed a go around to avoid the traffic. What caused this incident was I identified different traffic then Tower was communicating. There was only one controller working Tower and Ground frequencies. Having an additional controller would help relieve some of the workload that Tower was experiencing.

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.

C-172S pilot reported an near midair collision event on final approach caused by an unknown 'pop up' aircraft.