Situational Awareness and the Lookout
I have a question to all you civil trained pilots.
I am a military trained pilot who was always taught that the lookout and situational awareness is one of the most important aspect of flying. How much of your early training involved emphasis on situational awareness and looking out?
Yesterday afternoon I had a potentially dangerous experience at Blackbushe which could have ruined an otherwise uneventful flight. Whilst on final to land on runway 25 I noticed some light flickering in my periferal vision. Looking out to my left was an aircraft, literally feet away heading straight for us at right angles. He then passed just behind us after ATC told him that he was number 2 to land and to go around, then at 2-300 feet flew over Yately noise abatement area!
On explanation the pilot said he had not seen us having been told to follow us into landing by ATC and had turned far too early on to base which conflicted with our standard approach path (he thought we had already landed). It seems that he was totally unaware of the busy circuit traffic, lost situational awareness and was totally unaware of the Blackbushe circuit layout. This showed a severe lack of airmanship and in my view stems back to his training!!
The purpose of my little rant is that we have all got to keep safe up there otherwise an avoidable accident will happen which will further destroy the reputation and increase the legislation to our beloved hobby. So this is a plea to all PPL holders, to keep a better lookout and to be more aware of your situation, otherwise one day someone is going to get hurt.