<< >> NASA ASRS Report 854296, October 2009

A PA28 private pilot on a training flight had a close encounter with another piper low wing aircraft.

Attributes
ACN	854296
Time
Date	200910
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	PA-28 Cherokee/Archer/Dakota/Pillan/Warrior
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Cruise
Flight Plan	VFR
Aircraft 2
Make Model Name	Piper Single Undifferentiated or Other Model
Person 1
Function	Single Pilot
Qualification	Flight Crew Private
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 20 Flight Crew Total 80 Flight Crew Type 20
Events
Anomaly	Conflict Airborne Conflict
Miss Distance	Horizontal 500 Vertical 10

Narrative:

I was flying on a southbound VFR flight. Upon climb out there was a scattered to broken layer of clouds at 3800 ft AGL; so I elected to remain below the cloud layer and cruise at 3000 ft MSL. I was not receiving traffic advisories because I had not yet requested them. I looked out the left window and saw a white piper low wing at my altitude on a westerly heading; approximately 500 ft from my position and closing. I reacted with a shallow dive while the second aircraft passed aft of me. From my detection of the traffic to the aircraft passing aft; the incident took less than two seconds. I did not detect any contact between me and the other aircraft; but I elected to divert to a nearby airport for a precautionary landing. I believe the cause of the incident was the absence of radar traffic advisories in a congested training airspace. A contributing factor was the low cloud layer. In the future I believe the flight program should implement an improved plan for maintaining traffic separation among students and other aircraft in the training airspace.

Related reports:

• C172 student pilot and instructor on a training flight encou...
• A PA32 CFI on a cross country training flight has a close en...
• C-150 training flight has wake turbulence encounter, loss of...
• Cpr twin engine training flight crew encounter a full roll w...
• CFI and student on an INS training flight in IFR conditions ...
• Pilot of C150 doing night training has rotor wash encounter ...

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web www.37000feet.com

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A PA28 private pilot on a training flight had a close encounter with another Piper low wing aircraft.

Narrative: I was flying on a southbound VFR flight. Upon climb out there was a scattered to broken layer of clouds at 3800 FT AGL; so I elected to remain below the cloud layer and cruise at 3000 FT MSL. I was not receiving traffic advisories because I had not yet requested them. I looked out the left window and saw a white Piper low wing at my altitude on a westerly heading; approximately 500 FT from my position and closing. I reacted with a shallow dive while the second aircraft passed aft of me. From my detection of the traffic to the aircraft passing aft; the incident took less than two seconds. I did not detect any contact between me and the other aircraft; but I elected to divert to a nearby airport for a precautionary landing. I believe the cause of the incident was the absence of radar traffic advisories in a congested training airspace. A contributing factor was the low cloud layer. In the future I believe the flight program should implement an improved plan for maintaining traffic separation among students and other aircraft in the training airspace.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.