“Well, in my illustrious 270+ hours of recreational flying as aprivate pilot, I just yesterday had my closest near disaster” starts off thismonth’s Close Calls pilot. He hadn’t flown for a little while so thought he would “shoot a couple circuits before heading out for a local sight-seeingflight.” The first circuit went without anything of note taking place. On ourpilot’s second touch-and-go… well that was another story. 

A recently releasedTransportation Safety Board investigation report detailing a mid-air collisionstated that “A number of international studies have addressed the overall issueof risk of collision effectiveness of the see-and-avoid principle. Allacknowledged the underlying physiological limitations at play and that, whenmid-air collisions occur, “failure to see-and-avoid is due almost entire to thefailure to see.” One study stated that “our data suggest that the relativelylow (though unacceptable) rate of mid-air collisionsin general aviation aircraft not equipped with TCAS is as much a function ofthe ‘big sky’ as it is of effective visual scanning.”