Flying Safety Tip - Identify Local Hotspots

Accidents occur more frequently in localized hotspots. As pilots, we should identify these areas and increase our vigilance when operating near them. Some of these hotspots are generic and are found everywhere while others are specific to a local area.

Generic hotspots include airports and VORs. For example, mid-air collisions are...

more likely to occur close to airports, so pilots should stay alert when flying within 10 miles of an airport. One strategy for dealing with this issue is to borrow a best practice from the airlines. Below 10,000 feet, they adopt a “sterile cockpit” rule, which means that idle chit chat ceases and any talking is focused on flying the plane. General aviation aircraft often stay below 10,000 feet, so you might choose to enforce your own sterile cockpit whenever you’re within 10 miles of a departure or destination airport.

Another generic hotspot is over VORs. On several occasions, while seemingly flying in the middle of nowhere, I’ve had close encounters with other aircraft at my altitude near a VOR. If you’re flying VFR, you might want to avoid flying directly over a VOR or get flight following from ATC to help identify nearby traffic.

Specific hotspots include local geographic areas where accidents are more likely to occur and specific runway intersections prone to incursions. To determine whether there’s a geographic hotspot of accident-prone areas in the area where you are planning your flight, you may need to review accident data for your area or talk with a FAASTeam member.

Fora 10-year period in the San Francisco Bay area, I analyzed fatal accident data in two ways. First, I identified the crash location of any flight that was going to or departing from a destination in the San Francisco Bay area. I also examined just those crashes that actually occurred in the San Francisco Bay area. I found approximately 100 fatal accidents and an unusually high percentage, or nearly two-thirds, of the accidents occurred at night or were caused by weather-related issues, which is not surprising considering the high mountains and frequent fog in the area.

When I plotted the locations of the nighttime and weather-related accidents, I discovered that one-half of them occurred in the Livermore Valley, east of San Francisco. The valley is surrounded by mountains and the few passes that pilots use to fly through the mountains are the same ones that fog and low clouds move through in the evening. Now my safety seminars include scenarios in which pilots conclude that if they cannot clearly see through the passes, they need to do a 180° turn and land at the Livermore Airport or some other airport short of their destination.

At some airports, the FAA has identified specific intersections where runway incursions occur most frequently. Now chartmakers have begun to publish these runway incursion hotspots on airport layout diagrams. Arm yourself with knowledge of generic hotspots such as airports and VORs and specific hotspots in your local area where accidents and runway incursions are most likely to occur. Then develop strategies for dealing with those hotspots so that you don’t become a statistic. Feel free to post your comments, particularly if you're aware of hotspots in your local area!

Comments

[Julien]

Thanks for the tips! Navaids are real hotspots for VFR flights, I agree, especially without flight following. I had two close encounters of that type when training for my PPL, one at a VOR, one at an NDB.

Another type of hotspots to watch out for are touristy places such as monuments, oddly-shaped mountains, castles (not that we have many of these in Australia anyway), lakes and reefs.

There are a dozen such places in Australia that have prescribed flight procedures for avoiding mid-air collisions, even though they are in Class G airspace. That includes Ayers Rock, the Blue Mountains and a number of national parks, which usually attract a mix of private and commercial sightseeing flights.

Keeping one's eyes outside the cockpit as much as possible is of course the golden rule here. In addition, I've found that passengers are an invaluable resource when it comes to spotting nearby aircraft.

[Matthew Stibbe]

Good idea. I fly out of Denham and we are in very busy airspace (Heathrow, Luton are within a few a miles and the VFR corridor is small, low and serves half a dozen GA airfields). Plus we have a VOR six miles north which is like Piccadilly Circus. A sterile cockpit in the VFR corridor could make a lot of sense. Also, perhaps, a good tip is to encourage passengers to be extra vigilant during flights through known high-traffic areas.

[Vincent, from PlasticPilot.net]

An additional problem is that most of us fly VOR to VOR or to VRPs using GPS. Thanks to this great technology, we fly with greater accuracy. Altimeters are also much better than they used to be, creating potential for more proximity.

With moving maps and advanced GPS it's easy to anticipate turns or fly direct legs avoiding the hotspots.

Visiting the local curiosities is another problem. On nice days, there can be up to 10 aircraft flying around mountains like the Matterhorn, all between 10.000 and 12.000 feet.

[Pat Flannigan]

Great tips.

Sterile cockpit rules do wonders to decrease in flight distractions, and it would be more than prudent for GA pilots to adopt sterile cockpit policies in the vicinity of an airport. That is, so long as it's not regulatory: it's just one more thing to hang yourself on.

Mad props to the identification of taxiway hotspots on airport diagram charts. The powers-that-be are really favoring pre-taxi briefings to include a discussion of applicable taxiway hotspots between airline crewmembers. I've never had any close calls on the taxiway, but the hotspot depictions make me a bit more aware. If your charts show hotspots, make use of this new resource.

I'm not aware of any statistical hotspots near me, but I feel uncomfortable flying a visual approach into 18R in Memphis. There is a small airport that you typically overfly by just 1,500 ft. With a high degree of student activity, I'm always concerned about a solo student going off altitude and setting off a TCAS RA, or worse. It's not such a concern on an instrument approach since those guys are presumably grounded due to weather.

[Sylvia]

It makes a lot of sense to check for these. It's so easy to plug in a set of VORs in the GPS and everyone follow the same route.

When I went to BKP to see a VOR from the ground, there was constant traffic above me, most of it light aircraft.