Pilots, engineers, safety professionals, aviation enthusiasts, and the STEM inclined, I seek your help.
Last week I sat through a webinar hosted by the New England Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Safety Team (FAAST) comprised from representation from the three New England Flight Standards Duty Offices (FSDOs) being Boston (Burlington, MA), Portland, ME, and Bradley (Enfield, CT).
During this presentation, they discussed airport traffic patterns with a focus on Bar Harbor, ME. Apparently Bar Harbor has experienced lots of aircraft arriving from the southwest entering right-handed traffic patterns for their prevalent landing runway 22. The airport manager there had grown frustrated by such seeing as they potentially have traffic conflict concerns with helicopters, ultralights, and gliders. He or she tracked the arrivals for a period of time noting the greatest number of offenders were corporate and commuter jets.
The FAAST anchored for some time on this subject of right-hand traffic pointing out that FAA Circular 90-66B clearly states
9.1 Left Traffic. Use of standard traffic patterns (left turns) for all aircraft and CTAF procedures by radio-equipped aircraft are required at all airports without operating control towers unless indicated otherwise by visual markings, light gun signals, airport publications, or published approach procedure. It is recognized that other traffic patterns (right turns) may already be in common use at some airports or that special circumstances or conditions exist that may prevent use of the standard traffic pattern. Right-hand patterns are noted at airports on an aeronautical chart with an “RP” designator and the applicable runway next to the airport symbol.
- emphasis added by FAAST to their slide, not in original FAA Circular document.
The FAAST also showed a snapshot of the sectional chart for the Bar Harbor area. While looking at this and considering a landing for Runway 22, if arriving from the southwest, making right traffic makes a lot of sense to me. The FAA doesn’t see it this way. So, I asked
What is dangerous about mixing right-hand traffic patterns with standard left-handed patterns?
They didn’t directly answer this question. Granted, it was a webinar in which most the audience was muted while my question was typed into a chat stream that may have been unmonitored at that time. Instead, they continued with the presentation with the above near-miss video as if it explained everything. I didn’t get it. So I’m asking you.
I’ve thought for quite a while on this subject. I’ll share my thoughts in a subsequent post. First, however, I wanted to get your assessment, thoughts, and opinions prior to mine influencing yours. I plan to put this line of questioning and my thoughts hopefully enhanced by yours to the FSDO. And I may be submitting an article to one of the aviation minded magazines from this. Fishing for expertise, I’ve tried putting the questions to both the US Navy’s Landing Signals Officer (LSO) school and their Aviation Safety School. The LSO school has not responded while the Safety School merely quoted the FAA regulations.
Questions for you:
1. Why is a mixed right-handed traffic pattern dangerous with a left pattern?
1A. What makes it so dangerous? How so?
2. Are there dangers associated with same side patterns?
3. Balancing one and two, which is more dangerous?
4. Best you can tell from the video, how did this near midair occur?
4A. What can we conclude from the video?
Something to consider after initially answering which may inspire further depth to answers is The Atlantic’s recent article The Deadly Myth That Human Error Causes Most Car Crashes.