Cornish Jack

To be fair, even on a visual approach, the Metro pilot would probably be looking ahead to watch for possible runway incursions once established on final - not to mention, you know, having to keep your eyes on the runway as you're literally using it to guide your descent. I doubt anyone would be doing a full traffic scan that late in the approach, and he might not have seen him anyway. It's really not easy to spot someone coming towards you at a 90 degree angle. Furthermore, Key Lime is a pretty harsh single pilot IFR operation and there is a good chance the pilot might have been pretty cooked by that time - again, traffic cutting him off from the right would have been the last thing on his mind.

Thank God.

The flying you-know-what might not be the most forgiving of aircraft, but at least it's solid.

Stuka Child

"It's really not easy to spot someone coming towards you at a 90 degree angle"

And correspondingly more difficult when the angle between the relative flightpaths (at the time of impact) was only about 30°, at which point the Cirrus was still travelling about 30 kt faster than the Metro.

cavuman1

No knowledge of the Metroliner, but it's pretty common industry practice to put control cables through the floor structure. The floor is surprisingly strong - one of the strongest part of the aircraft after the center wing box (and notice where the collision damage appears to stop...).

Stuka and DRUK.- thank you. Fully understand the problems, having had two near misses in one flight during a 2 day sequence of 'problems'. The prompt for my question was the particularly stark depiction on the ADS-B readouts.

The standard in the US is 1500ft and some airports have LOIs for 750ft

KDVT, from which I have been flying for over 30 years, has a runway separation of about 700 ft (I measure 695 ft in GE). I have often been on approach parallel to other traffic. I have also sometimes been on head on base with traffic for the other runway. It pays to adjust intercept angle and speed to achieve separation but that requires head outside to know where the traffic is. Tower usually keeps pilots informed of traffic for the other runway.

Metro cables
 

Confirm that all flight control cables on the metro run through below floor structure. I've been unfortunate enough to have changed them all, several times, in a previous life!! Cheers.

thanks. but I continue to wonder if in this case the cargo mod includied heavier load bearing cabin flooring?

EXDAC

Me too. I was only at DVT for about 3 years, but was instructing out of both of the big schools. Plenty of laps around the patterns. I agree that ATC usually gave traffic point-outs for the parallel runway, but sometimes they get task saturated and don't. I preferred to create a little bit of offset with the other aircraft too just because! These are the little nuances of technique that can get lost in translation where foreign students are concerned. Progressing beyond the rote to the well-reasoned is the goal, achievable or not!

I am amazed at the incompetence of the local controller. It must have been obvious to her that the aircraft had suffered damage but she didn't tell the pilot that he had an effin great hole in his fuselage - or close the runway for a FOD inspection until prompted by another pilot.

Still, she can sure speak quickly!

Armed with that information on short final, what would you have done differently as a pilot?

At what point was it clear to the controller that the two planes hit and what the extent of the damage was? Fog of war applies equally to ATC. Even realizing a collision, the Metro pilot reported an engine failure and an intent to continue to land. That would shape my initial view that the pilot was aware of the collision.

I think the Metro pilot would have assumed an engine failure because of he yaw that would have resulted from the collision. the Cirrus hit him on the right side so the airplane would have yawed to the right so the pilot has naturally assumed that the yaw has been created by an engine failure. He would have focused on getting it on the ground rather than trying to analyze what the engine indications are showing him. He might have also been confused why he didn't much rudder to keep it straight. The Metro needs some serious effort to keep straight if you lose an engine so the absence of that effort on short final (look at the photo of it over the threshold) would have been confusing but so close to the ground you are not going to waste time wondering what just happened. I think he has done a good job.

Mogwi, and ATC are now required to have super eyesight? The midair happened about 2 or 3 miles out from the airport so she would have had zero knowledge of the damage done other than the Metro Pilot telling her that he suspected an engine failure. As to closing the runway for a FOD inspection I would have guessed that the Airport would have been closed until everything settled down.

Many of you here are banging on about GA airports with contra circuits.

Here is a video of Bankstown Airport in Sydney Australia. It has 3 runways (L,C & R). The distance between centrelines of L&R is 213m. Centre is only used in liu of either L or R, the 3 runways don;t work at the same time. One runway is for arrivals and departures and the other for circuit training. Different frequencies for each runway. As an instructor with several thousand hr in thi circuit i always trained my students to spot traffic inthe other circuit and make sure they don;t hit you if they overshot the centrline. Contra circuits to work pretty well if everyone brings their A game.

The late great aviation writer Richard Collins wrote an excellent article about Cirrus pilots https://airfactsjournal.com/2012/05/...cirrus-pilots/ nearly ten years ago. I think what he wrote then and updated a few years later still provides some interesting insights. These highly capable aircraft are flown by a lot of pilots that think they are flying a mini airliner, but without two current and experienced pilots. I flew our group SR22T a lot last year but still way less than I would consider even halfway adequate (in hours terms at least) to be current flying an airbus. We don’t yet know much about who was flying here and the accident was clearly not just caused by one thing. Procedures may also have played a role. For example I have flown for many years from Munich, a busy parallel runway airport. Aircraft are vectored onto the approaches at different altitudes. Obviously VFR and IFR are two different things and maybe it really was just chance that the Cirrus appears to have been perfectly on the vertical profile and completely off directionally and speed wise. But it still makes me wonder how the plane was being flown. On the plus side it is a great advertisement for the parachute system.

Bksmithca

"and ATC are now required to have super eyesight? The midair happened about 2 or 3 miles out from the airport"

Yes, the collision happened a tad over 3 nm from the tower.

@Mogwi : Nice for her to read that kind of judgement,:rolleyes:

Back to the applicable US regulations here regarding simultaneous OPS on runways separated by less that 2500ft. I have been looking at the FAA doc but under visual approaches/visual separation below 2500 it always mentions to keep visual to the preceeding traffic on the parallel APP. which would imply the approaches should be staggered as we do in rest of the world. Can someone points me out to the text with the procedure that allows parallel side-by -side approaches in these circumstances.? ( what we call independent parallel approaches in ICAOese)
Just curious.

The guy who questioned the controller is an ex military pilot and to be fair to him would probably be used to controllers looking out for battle damage etc. He is also fairly easily identifiable and well known. We all bring our own bias based on personal experience. You post a lot of sensible stuff ATC Watcher. Whilst I actually agree with your point, I am not so sure about the way you made it. But then again I am sure I often come across differently than I intend.

@ lederhosen.
Thanks! point taken, yes , I removed a few words from my previous post, I am indeed always edgy when I see those kind of comments
Oh yes, I had to laugh when you mentioned controllers looking for battle damage, now I get it .