Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
I justifiably commented that some flyers don't seem to know the rules of the air because if they HAD seen us, they had taken absolutely no effort to avoid a collision when the rules of the air required THEM to give way to an aircraft converging from the right. I had one such incident recently and was forced to take very positive avoiding action on an aircraft that got extremely close, where he should have given right of way. I filed an AIRPROX (don't usually, but this was very close to a mid-air hit). During the ATC follow up the pilot completely and aggressively denied it could have been him because he saw no other aircraft. We were a little surprised he hadn't seen us....... we nearly chewed his starboard wing off with our rotors as he descended across our nose.
Shytorque
I think you are right about the general lack of knowledge of the rules of the air. I assume that even if I have right of way, I'm still going to take early avoiding action, just in case they haven't seen me. In an aircraft the size of mine, I know I'm coming off worst, so I'm not risking my safety by relying on the Rules of the Air.
I do wonder though why it is that some pilots aren't looking out or even thinking about their routing.
An example - flying VFR along a major line feature, I am following the rule that keeps it on my left. I then encounter someone who is obviously following a straight line course between 2 VRPs which takes them on the wrong side of the line feature. My guess is that this person is following a GPS track and is concentrating hard on not deviating from the 'line'.
He might well say that he is flying on instruments OCAS, so he is perfectly entitled to fly the wrong side, but that doesn't help me if I don't take the avoiding action, as he probably isn't looking out that much - if he was, would he not bend his course to the correct side of the line feature?