Originally Posted by
Old Akro
Which bit?
AEM was not on its flightplanned route - correct. Look at Flight Aware. It looks like ATC did its normal trick of routing IFR traffic around Melbourne above the Visual Route. Typically they will keep you on vectors until the a/c exits the control step then do the "resume own navigation" trick.
AEM descended from 6000 ft about co-incident with the 145.7 / 122.4 boundary. How many times have you (as an IFR pilot?) have requested a descent only to have the response to ask the next controller? My guess is that traffic for descent was requested and responded on the same frequency as JQM. We'll soon know.
AEM descended to 4,000 ft which would be the rational selection for a direct entry to the VOR approach. Why would you go 20nm further and deal with more traffic to do an RNAV at MNG compared with YLTV??
JQM had an IFR plan filed for YMEN - look at flight aware - its there. Lacey / Colds / Monty is the setup for the RWY 27 RNAV or ILS. They are IFR waypoints. That points to an IFR plan.
I'm suggesting that a call on area frequency requesting IFR traffic and requesting an airways clearance for an instrument approach to Essendon less than 20 min flying time away would be common practice. Are you really suggesting that its not prudent?? With an Instructor onboard??? With area frequency available on the ground?? When you are taking off expecting IMC???
AKRO - a couple of points.
You
never get a clearance out of MNG with your IFR taxi call - just your code and traffic. Yes they would have been given as traffic to each other. (Don’t get me started about asking for ‘code and traffic’ with an IFR call.. sure , even though ATC do this all day everyday, they somehow don’t know what you need to go flying !!) it is not
procedure to get your cta clearance on the ground at MNG or any other class G CTAF unless you are taking off straight into CTA (that little joint near Avalon for example- can’t recall its name.) even if your plan is straight into the flight levels, you will generally start with centre (no clearance ) and then be passed to someone that gives you the clearance.
next - who cares where AEM was tracking - they were within their rights to request traffic to wherever they wanted.. and ATC would have told them what was there - JQF may not have been identified until very late in the piece and the Swiss cheese holes lined up.. You are right to say they would have been vectored in CTA but after that who knows, but they were
not being vectored at the point the accident occurred - maybe they decided to go to SHT first or another waypoint?
next the separation issue, and this is really up to the pilots and ATC to give extra traffic or proximity warnings but again only if both aircraft were identified at the time . Did they make contact with each other, did they give clear concise and accurate calls about their alt and position etc etc. both these aircraft knew the area well, and I’m going to assume that their PICs did too. This will be the crux of the investigation I assume?
perhaps someone more current with the area can remind me of when you get identified out there but from memory it wasn’t til 3500 or so?