Losing Situational Awareness While Flying
As well as sharing the positive aspects of my flying, I feel it's only right I share video when I get things wrong. On a recent flight to Shoreham in the PA28 the other week, I lost situational awareness and made a pretty big mistake. I'm sharing this video to help others learn from this mistake.
I have to say this is probably the biggest mistake I've made so far in my flying hobby, and one for which I am not proud. Thankfully, ATC spotted my error, and quickly issued corrective instructions.
This had been a high workload flight on a turbulent day, starting with a Class D zone transit:
(video here: • PA28 Transit of Gatwick Controlled Airspace )
Then shortly before joining for Shoreham I had to take evasive action to avoid a collision risk.
(video here: • See and Avoid - How light aircraft avoid c... )
I was asked to circle overhead Shoreham before being cleared to descend. At the point of arrival, I had checked the airfield plates, and knew which runway I was landing on. Sadly, while circling, I lost this awareness, and in my mind, I was joining downwind for runway 07. In actual fact I was downwind for runway 25.
I apologised, requested instructions, and corrective action was taken. After landing, I rang the tower to apologise again, and to see if they wanted to discuss the incident further with me.