Last week while flying into Fredericton, the Jazz flight I was on did an abrupt manoeuvre because the planes Traffic Collision Avoidance System sounded an alarm due to the proximity of a trainer somewhere in the circuit.
I found out this week that this actually made the news
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/09/30/nb-near-collision.html
But maybe there's a good point to this being in the news, now that I can read the flight school's response, and Mike Dorion, the CEO of Moncton Flight School that was involved with this, sure seemed blasé in his response and IMO he has no right to be.
The Jazz flight had already swung well North of Fredericton before approaching the zone for that airport, which is unusual for a flight coming from Toronto, and though it is an uncontrolled airport all aircraft coming into that zone (I think its 5 nautical miles) should be telling the flight service specialist there what their intentions are, it is evident the pilot of the trainer was not very clear about what they were going to do, if they broadcast what their intentions were at all; there was plenty of time to clearly do so.
Besides that when the Jazz flight did land, after a go around, on the roll out, it looked like a goat rodeo on the apron in front of the terminal, with at least 3 of the Moncton School's "Eclipse" trainers booting around. Two looked like they were racing each other to the Bravo taxiway, and one was doing a run up right beside the other taxiway the Jazz flight was most likely going to use. As the Jazz flight taxied in on Alpha the three could be seen lined up on Bravo taxiway, the last one blocking the Echo taxiway. All in all maybe not against any regulations, but what looked to me like very poor airmanship.
In any case there will be manned tower phased in starting 17 Dec, and from the looks of things not a minute too soon, hopefully that will include some form of ground control as well.
I found out this week that this actually made the news
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/09/30/nb-near-collision.html
But maybe there's a good point to this being in the news, now that I can read the flight school's response, and Mike Dorion, the CEO of Moncton Flight School that was involved with this, sure seemed blasé in his response and IMO he has no right to be.
The Jazz flight had already swung well North of Fredericton before approaching the zone for that airport, which is unusual for a flight coming from Toronto, and though it is an uncontrolled airport all aircraft coming into that zone (I think its 5 nautical miles) should be telling the flight service specialist there what their intentions are, it is evident the pilot of the trainer was not very clear about what they were going to do, if they broadcast what their intentions were at all; there was plenty of time to clearly do so.
Besides that when the Jazz flight did land, after a go around, on the roll out, it looked like a goat rodeo on the apron in front of the terminal, with at least 3 of the Moncton School's "Eclipse" trainers booting around. Two looked like they were racing each other to the Bravo taxiway, and one was doing a run up right beside the other taxiway the Jazz flight was most likely going to use. As the Jazz flight taxied in on Alpha the three could be seen lined up on Bravo taxiway, the last one blocking the Echo taxiway. All in all maybe not against any regulations, but what looked to me like very poor airmanship.
In any case there will be manned tower phased in starting 17 Dec, and from the looks of things not a minute too soon, hopefully that will include some form of ground control as well.