The closest to that I got to fly was a PT-19. That was fun.
The NTSB determined the probable cause of the accident was “the Cirrus pilot’s failure to maintain the final approach course for the assigned runway, which resulted in a collision with the Swearingen [Metroliner] which was on final approach to the parallel runway. Contributing to the accident was the failure of the controller to issue a traffic advisory to the Swearingen pilot regarding the location of Cirrus, and the Cirrus pilot’s decision to fly [at a] higher than recommended approach speed which resulted in a larger turn radius and contributed to his overshoot of the final approach course.”
Wow. It is a miracle that Metroliner stayed flyable for 3 seconds, much less ~3 minutes to landing.
The actual NTSB final report is
https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/103073/pdf
and the relevant airfield diagram is
As with most GA accidents, the NTSB report is long on easy facts and short on difficult root cause analysis. Which ensures these kinds of events will keep happening.
This was a tower-controlled field with airplanes operating under VFR. One of the basic things we / ATC manage with parallel runways in our pure IFR world is you don’t aim two airplanes at the same point on adjacent finals at the same altitude at the same time. Because if there is an overshoot, shit gets real bad real fast. Instead ATC ensures each stream joins final at a different altitude and hence distance way from the runway so two airplanes are never co-altitude side by side or co-altitude with one aimed at the other.
Under VFR the controller is only partially responsible to deconflict these two arrival streams. “Warn the pilots and hope for the best” is the most minimal legitimate interpretation of the controller’s duties. Would better workmanship have suggested being more proactive? Perhaps. I honestly don’t know how far that’s commonly pushed any more. I do know years ago I’ve flown lightplanes VFR into busy VFR-only airports and still had both me & my surrounding traffic being very proactively managed by the controllers.
It’s also evident the Cirrus pilot was real high on energy and real low on situational awareness. Said another way, he was way behind his airplane.
He didn’t just overshoot it by 700 ft laterally he hit another plane on approach so he was really farther than that off the turn to final. That’s beyond a massive screw up.
Yeah. He got 700 feet past the desired final approach path before his off-course travel was interrupted by a passing airplane. Had there been nobody there to run into he’d have probably been 1000 or 1100 feet past his own desired final track before he was heading-aligned. Much less track-aligned.
Which greatly sets him up for a wrong-surface landing. Of course his extremely high energy also sets him up for flap and/or gear overspeeds, a nose-gear first touchdown, a dangerously long landing and possible runway overrun, or if he finally got his brain caught up to the airplane, a go-around before most/all of those bad things happened.
Ok, people, I’m puzzled.
I was looking at the ADSB Exchange website and saw a jet passing close overhead of my house. So I checked to see where it was coming from and going to. I do that. What can I say?
So, just right now, I identified it as UAL 1801, Fort Myers, FL, to Newark. NJ.
Why would it fly north from Florida and go over northwestern Pennsylvania and then turn sharp right and head southeast back to Newark? I have never seen that happen before.
Any ideas?
Sometimes pilots fly the wrong direction. Did you ever hear of “Wrong Way” Corrigan?
Of course. He died in Santa Ana while I was living in L.A. I believe the character of ‘Wrong Way’ Feldman on Gilligan’s Island was based on him.
Cirrus pilot?
Several possibilities, of which weather is the most likely. What’s the weather like between Ft. Myers and your house? Between Ft. Myers and Newark? There could easily be reroutes that large if there was a major blob of weather close to the coast.
Just now (10pm eastern) I looked at the national radar picture. Trying to reverse in time a couple hours to when you posted I see what may have beena solid line from Charlotte NC to NYC. WHich may well have led to routings pretty close to Pittsburgh then a turn southeast to get back to EWR on the other side.
A large issue is the airspace leading into all the NYC & Washington airports is totally full of jets before you add weather. So while any one jet could have gone much closer to the storms and not been detoured as much, when you have a whole herd of them the detours get larger just to have room for everybody whose been displaced.
Thanks for the insight.
That flight got almost to Lake Erie, which is only seven miles from me.
I didn’t check weather (it was nice hear this evening), and never thought of the traffic.
[Edit:
I just played back the weather with Ventusky. A big front moved through. Yeah, I bet that figured into it.]
Given that I don’t know much about where you are …
How low were they to the ground? If going to actually land in EWR I’d expect them to be up at/near cruise altitude when over “NW PA”, so nothing but a dot in your sky, making me wonder how you noticed them.
If the flight was at low altitude, it was probably diverting to an airport nearish to you. FlightAware would have known what airport they originally had filed a flight plan to (i.e. EWR), but probably not where they changed destinations to.
Diversions don’t represent a distress situation. They represent a plan to avoid a distress situation later.
If EWR went down for weather, or if the remaining routes into EWR became saturated, the general approach of the hub carrier (UAL in EWR’s case), is to spread the incoming wave that EWR can’t accommodate across a large number of more minor airports. Better to drop two Boeings into each of 20 small airports that usually see RJs than to drop 20 Boeings into two big airports that commonly see big jets.
The 20 small airports have collectively more spare gate space, ground staff, fueling capacity, etc. than does one or two larger, busier airports. And spare capacity is the measure of merit for quickly resetting the flight(s) for their eventual relaunch into EWR once weather conditions & traffic flow permit.
They were probably at normal operating altitude. I didn’t check that, but I should have.
Of course I didn’t see the aircraft. I had just looked at the ADSB site to see what was happening in the sky my section of the country. That is where I saw the flight had just passed over me and was taking what looked like a 135-degree turn to head toward EWR.
[By the way, in my last post I said “it was nice hear this evening.” I know it should have been “it was nice here . . . .” Ha, and just now when I typed it wrong, it underlined it in red. Dammit! I missed that red underline earlier.]
Tyops neer happen tome. 
I get it now. I never use any sort of flight tracking website but I do spend a lot of time outside looking at the sky. With two major airports, two bizjet / lightplane airports, and a blimp facility nearby there’s nearly always something zooming to or fro at low-ish altitudes. I read what you said, but understood what matched my pre-conceived notion, not your words.
Not quite GA, but nice to see somebody getting caught & punished for doing this shit:
This morning I bought one raffle ticket for a 1975 Grumman AA-1B TR-2.
4173.58 hours total time on the airframe. The Lycoming O-235-C2C engine has 2173.58 hours SMOH. The Avionics include ADSB-Out, Comm MX11 TKM, Narco AT 165 TSO, Genave Alpha 200 Navigation, PS Engineering inc PM series 1000 II, Garmin Aera 660 GPS, and Garmin GDL-50.
This aircraft has been professionally maintained by an IA mechanic. The plane’s value is estimated to be $35,000.
So, yeah. It needs an overhaul. If I win (which I won’t), I might take the 20 kilobucks cash.
For privtate use you can run those engines on condition so long as they hold compression. Also, the O-235 can be certified for a 2400 hour TBO.
That airplane is almost identical to the one we owned except for the GPS. Ours had less airframe and engine time. Great airplanes. They are a hoot to fly, but climb performance sucks. Not a plane to be flown out of short fields on hot days.