Even if it wasn't a student, an overloaded pilot in a state of panic can do strange things
Thank God! Until I read this, and then the comments by alexpeterflynn and Mike Cross, I was utterly appalled by the lack of understanding and condemnation of someone they don't know by some of the people reading this thread. Don't some of you know
anything about human factors, overload, the effects of anxiety? Didn't you ever experience those kinds of things when you were low hours?
As a solo student, I got lost, called Shawbury, and when asked to squawk ident, had to tell them I was sorry but I didn't know how to do that. I'd been shown how to squawk a code, but not ident, and in my tired and overloaded situation (I'd been flying for about two hours), I couldn't work it out. Did that make me an awful person who should have been banned from the skies?
People
do still learn to fly in aircraft without transponders. And has it ever occurred to you that maybe the pilot didn't understand the term VMC because he didn't hear it properly? It's bloody hard to understand radio transmissions when you start flying. Don't any of you have memories? Or maybe in his overloaded state he actually
forgot the term! Dear me, a hanging offence of course. One can't fly without knowing every acronym, can one?
Full marks to this guy for calling D & D and coping. Now he needs a little more training, which is no big deal. We all have things to learn.
No marks whatsoever to some of the critical, unsympathetic people on this thread...and if any of you are instructors, I really feel for your poor students if this is the level of your understanding of human nature.
(Grrrrrrr.....what have they done with the smilie for really, really mad?)
Incidentally, Mono, I found your takeoff very, very funny.