In the last seven years, there have been 473 reported airborne conflict events at unattended aerodromes in New Zealand. In 2022, there were 13 reports of near collisions noted as critical. That means just one. Final, last second action by one pilot turned catastrophe into a heart stopping near miss.

Since 2008, seven of our pilots at Paraparaumu, Fielding and Masterton have not been so lucky. Conflict event stats are increasing, so as part of the CAA's Work Together, Stay Apart campaign, several users of unattended aerodromes spoke to Vector Online about what they want other users to know about the way they operate.

I'm Penn McKay, and you're listening to Know Your Neighbour.

Taupo Airport is arguably one of the busiest and most diverse of the country's unattended aerodromes. We've got RPT operations both Air New Zealand and Sounds Air. We've got a lot of private jets. We've got training organisations who use it. We've got local training, helicopter operations and of course parachute operations.

Steve Peterson has been in various aviation roles for 50 years. Currently, he's Taupo Airport Safety Manager. He says occurrences at Taupo are largely down to three causes. Poor communication, a lack of communication, airmanship, lack of. And the last one of the top three would be awareness. That's situational awareness, traffic awareness, airspace.

in multiple ops. A pilot coming in, are they aware, are they listening, and are they aware of where the traffic is, what it's doing, how it's doing. They're the main generators of the incidents that we have. Dean Clisby, the audit and investigation manager with Air Chathams, agrees that pilot airmanship, that combination of professionalism, Good decision making and courtesy is a mixed bag, and one of the things that I hear from operators that some unattended aerodromes is that some people are very good with the airmanship and their radio calls.

Other people are not so good and will not comply with. the requirements of the aerodrome, cut corners and generally do things that would be considered illegal under the rules. Steve Peterson says HIAU's pilots are not immune to poor flying practice as with this example. Didn't make the right radio, didn't make any radio calls entering the runway and just blasted off on his Piper Cub to an inbound aircraft 200 feet.

So you go Right, so there was a lack of communication and awareness and there was a total lack of airmanship. What saved the air company, it was good luck. Along with airmanship, situational awareness is of course another fundamental for safe flying at unattended aerodromes. And at the core of good situational awareness is good.

Lookout at privately owned Rangi, Tata Island, aerodrome south of Ash. Burton, owner and microlight instructor Russell Brody says Tech has had unintended consequences for lookout a D sbs, glass cockpits, you know, full moving maps, all of that kind of stuff, which is fine. But, as an instructor, for just on 3, 000 hours and 60 plus different aircraft types, it's getting people looking outside, as I tell my students, that, uh, keep that look at going.

The only thing that's going to do you any harm is outside, and the only way you're going to see it is by looking out there, that ADS B is fine, but I've yet to find anybody who's never had an electronic, um, appliance, piece of equipment, avionic, never give trouble. And if it only takes one to be a slight glitch, and we know where that goes.

Russell, 50 years in aviation, says Tiger Moth pilots based at Harewood during the Second World War had only an excellent lookout to prevent collisions. No radio, there's probably nothing more difficult to see out of with a good lookout than a Tiger. There's a nose and there's wings and all sorts of things in your way.

And yet they operated there for a good number of years. They had a brilliant safety run and it was no electronic equipment. They knew they had to look outside. Jason Hobday, formerly Chief Flying Instructor of Christchurch based International Aviation Academy of New Zealand, or IANS, has returned to line instructing, including in twin engine IFR flying.

He's also not a fan of Pilots trying to build a picture using only technology. He says they have, for free, all they need for a good lookout. You've got to use your, you know, the mark one eyeball, your ears and your head to have the mental picture. If you've got the technology in the aircraft to give you, you know, aircraft awareness, and, you know, we've got our phone so we can look at flight radar, but there's limitations to that.

doesn't mean just because you can see someone on a screen doesn't mean you've seen and understood that everyone is being shown on that screen. The fact that you planned your flight properly before leaving the ground is never going to be a bad thing when you arrive at your destination unattended aerodrome.

Your awareness of what operations might be going on there, what radio frequency they use, The layout of the airfield, its standard procedures and what the surrounding geography is like can all be researched ahead of time, leaving you more brain space for here and now lookout, as Taupo's Steve Peterson explains.

Read the AIP and have it with you. Some of the incidents have been, well I didn't have an AIP, I don't have an AIP. Or I wasn't aware that that that was in the IOP. So it's having a very good understanding of the fancy charts, the airspace, and the IOP so that they're fully briefed. So it's do your homework, do your preparation before you go anywhere.

It doesn't matter whether it's Tao matter, matter what, whatever it is, the pilot's gotta be, ensure that he knows the area and the air space that he's flying into, or sheep.

The big thing for us is, is our takeoff from the airport and then over to the drop zone, the drop and then our descent back over Wanaka Airport to join. Hamish Brown is chief pilot of Skydive Wānaka. He says the most important thing for itinerant pilots to know about that operation is where it is. The big thing for us is awareness of where our chutes are and for transiting aircraft, um, and just transiting, you know, west of our drop zone when we have got chutes in the air.

Once they're in the air, they're, um, pretty limited, uh, and they're only moving it. 25 knots forward speed on a calm day. So aircraft coming at them. Um, there's not a lot of time to move. Yeah, big thing is just being aware of where we are and and just give them a bit of room when you're transiting past for drop zones.

that are not that close to other airports or are, you know, sort of in the middle of nowhere is to protect. If you're going to go past one, at least give it two miles from the parachute symbol. If all else fails, if you give it two miles, you're not going to hit a parachute. But you have to know they're there.

So for operations like Skydive Wanaka, safe flying around them starts with robust on the ground preparation. Look on the charts and then, and find the parachute symbol, and then if they're going to go close to one of those symbols, dig into the AIP and do a bit of research on the Wanaka Airport, and we've got some information there on where we are.

and the Skydive area. So that's the big thing, is actually knowing we're there in their flight planning. Jeremy Booth is Quality and Safety Manager for Skydive Wanaka. He says many pilots fly past their operation pretty seamlessly. It's just the occasional itinerant and transiting pilot who hasn't prepared so well.

All Skydive operations want everybody to know where they are. So, as Hamish was saying, flight planning is a critical phase for, um, for anyone doing a flight and that's where you'll discover, um, where a skydive operation is and, you know, if you've got that information under your belt, then you're going to have a much, um, more successful flight and be able to work with a SCARTAV operator when you get near them to make sure you can transit past them successfully.

At Rangitata Island, Russell Brodie also has good reason for itinerant pilots to do their homework. Aeroplanes have been coming and going here since the early 1930s at least. Um, it's a 1000 metre one vector, 550 the other, it's been registered for 20 something years now. Um, and we registered it so that it was put on the map, that we used to have an issue with, still have a little bit of aircraft, once they get south of Christchurch, they figure as long as they stay away from Queenstown, there's nobody else there.

We still have issues with people, um, transiting through. I did a grump at a helicopter who tracked through across the middle of the circuit. A couple of weeks ago, I had a student who's just on, just pre solo, very close and this helicopter tracked right through us. If people still look at the map where they're going, say, gee, look, you know, there's a bit of activity that can go on there.

You know, it's just that awareness. There are about 70 unattended aerodromes in New Zealand where VFR and IFR aircraft can operate together. Dean Clisby explains what Air Chatham's crews want VFR traffic to understand. Quite often we're coming in on instrument approaches and, and if they could be aware where those instrument approaches would be coming from, be aware that the speed of our aircraft is such that mixing in with, with light aircraft in a circuit pattern is not that desirable.

So we try to avoid entering into the circuit. We'll generally try and do a straight and visual approach or the instrument approach. Jason Hobday, IFR instructor at IANS, says while it's up to the IFR pilot to work out how to integrate, the VFR pilot needs to help. So the VFR pilot needs to understand that they're operating in an IFR, you know, their airfield has IFR approaches, or this airfield they're going to has IFR approaches, and actually get an understanding of what that's going to mean, where these aircraft are going to actually appear from, because we just suddenly appear.

Potentially from out of the cloud. You know, we're communicating well out. We are suddenly going to be, you know, we're there. And again, we don't necessarily have the flexibility to move around. And before we really integrate into the circuit, we have to know where everyone is because we might be operating against the duty runway.

Dean Clisby says that for everyone's safety, VFR pilots should familiarise themselves with the IFR operations at their destination airfield. If they're operating at an aerodrome often, then they could talk to instructors and say, where would this aircraft doing this instrument approach, for example, approaching from the north, where would that aircraft be going?

Looking at a map, an instructor would, would be able to show them an instrument approach and say, well, this, this is where the aircraft would be. So it'll be coming down through here on the map and going to this point here, which is that far from the eardrum and. in association with visual reporting points, and then they'd get an understanding of the approach pattern for an IFR aircraft coming in.

While lookout is the paramount skill for safe flying at unattended aerodromes, communications come a close second, but only if they're done well.

Their New Zealand Stacey Cunningham flies Q300s around the country, including to the unattended aerodromes of Whangarei, Kerikeri, Taupo, Timaru and Hokitika. For Stacey and her crew, clear, concise, accurate radio calls from other traffic are gold. When we're approaching an unintended aerodrome, when we make our first radio call, we're hoping to get back information on where other traffic is in that airspace and what are their intentions.

From that information, I can then try and, um, work out how we're going to safely fly the approach and integrate into the circuit traffic. And also, if I'm going to go around, where can I go that is a safe place? Stacey says position reporting by other traffic is fundamental for the awareness of an IFR crew flying a predictive track.

That is what we're going to use to sequence our way into the circuit and to separate ourselves accordingly. Uh, we may recognize that. This isn't the appropriate time to fly an approach so I may elect to hold in my current position until that traffic moves through or they land for whatever reason.

That's going to drive our decision making from there. Jason Hobday says the workload on both student and instructor in twin engine IFR can be massive. He says clear communication eases some of the stress associated with that. Not only do we have to maintain our own situational awareness. We have to maintain the student's situational awareness, and they're working to their capacity, certainly initially in the early phases, and hopefully their capacity increases as they gain more experience.

But we're managing our own essay, listening to the radios, making sure that the student is understanding what. Um, the calls are happening and building their mental picture of what's going on. We've got to maintain our own. We've got to maintain theirs. We've got to continue to instruct them and monitor them and make sure that they're not missing parts of their procedures and they're getting prepared for what's going to happen.

They often are behind the aircraft. So we have to sort of stay aware of what the student's doing, stay aware of our own. situational awareness in the own environment we're going into. And then we go and pile on a whole bunch of asymmetric engine failures in amongst all of that as part of the requirement.

Um, yeah, so the workload can be horrendous. Contract agricultural pilot Jimbo Burgess flies all over New Zealand. He says accurate position reporting is particularly important to ag operators because they're flying predominantly in a low level environment. He says sharing the unattended airspace with insufficiently prepared pilots who aren't fully aware of where they are only adds to his stress when he already has a high workload.

I caught up with Jimbo at the Aviation New Zealand conference in August. And they just, for whatever reason, have lost some form of situational awareness and they might think they're in one place but they're not and, and they may make a call. In good faith thinking they're in one place, but they're actually not in that.

For us, being in that, we're quite in a, a very dynamic environment for top dressing. We've got a lot going on and we're in, in the low level sphere of our work. So we're, we're hearing the radio calls and we're putting that into our own situational awareness. So we've got an expectation on. What's going to happen when we come back to land in the case of an unattended aerodrome.

When it's not what we are expecting, it throws us out quite a bit because there's, there's no one where someone's saying they are. So I guess the communication side of it is really what it boils down to and pilots having a full understanding and grasp on where they are. Knowing where they are at that time and where they're going to be going and just communicating that clearly.

I'm assuming that some of these people who are reporting that they're where they're not are itinerant pilots who perhaps haven't planned their flight sufficiently and maybe the others are locals who are used to, you know, overhead water tower and you're wondering where the water tower is. An aerodrome that you're not particularly familiar with.

Actually, that is a good point. So I've, I've done quite a bit of flying all around the country. So I'll quite often be in a, in an area that's new to me. And I will hear people say things like that. I'm at the watchtower and, and all that does from my perspective is lowers my situational awareness. Cause I've got to focus on where's the watchtower now and, and then go through my map.

So I can figure out exactly what that means. As Air New Zealand Stacey Cunningham pilots her Q300 towards an unattended aerodrome with up to 50 passengers aboard, she too needs accuracy in other pilots position reports. Accurate position reports are fundamental for maintaining separation for us and making those reports in relation to visual reporting points or, um, prominent geographical locations, Uh, labelled on the visual navigation charts.

Uh, if we deviate and use more local terminology or smaller areas that perhaps are not listed on the VNC or are not visual reporting points, we may not be aware of where that is, so it can make it a little bit more challenging to separate ourselves from that. It's not just your position in the airspace that everybody else flying nearby needs to know.

Dean Clisby says Air Chatham's pilots want to know what other traffic are going to do next. We had a recent incident out of Whakatane where a light aircraft lined up, called Rolling. on whatever vector it was, but the crew weren't actually aware of what that aircraft was going to do. Was it vacating the aerodrome environment?

Was it staying in the circuit? And it's those sort of things that giving us a clear picture of what they're actually going to be doing, makes it a lot easier for us, prevents us having to go back to them and ask these questions. Ag pilot Jimbo Burgess says that a simple, This is where I am. This is my altitude, and I'm heading in this direction is the most helpful to his situational awareness.

He describes here what hasn't been particularly helpful. Transiting pilots may say they're at 10 miles west, or whatever the case may be, tracking to Alexandra, but we might be in the North Island, so it's giving me more work to do in an environment where I need Little work. Little extra work. For her part, Stacey Cunningham makes her position and intentions clear to VFR traffic by being a bit bilingual.

When we give our intentions, we include both our IFR procedure intentions, and then we also include a VFR statement. So for example, I intend to fly to RNP runway 2. one approach and for VFR traffic they may not be aware of what that procedure is and where it is so then we would back it up with a VFR position report to say trafficking via a 10 mile final for runway 21.

So it does become a little bit longer with the radio call but we do tailor our calls so that local users in VFR traffic will be aware of what we intend to do.

As to the delivery of radio calls, opinions on its general quality seem mixed. Taupo Airport Safety Manager, Steve Peterson for instance, says delivery continues to be quite poor. Communication can be clipped, too fast communication, coming over the top of another one, or English as a second language. Now, when you refer to English as a second language, I suppose we're talking about students.

Yes. Who've come to New Zealand to train. What would you advise them? I can advise them to speak slower and clearer, because students tend to talk very fast and very hard to understand. But student pilots have their own issues. Matt Earle, now with a CCAT rating, says listening to the radio calls of experienced pilots could be quite the ordeal when he was training.

People jump onto the radios and try and push their calls through almost too quickly. Not necessarily considering that perhaps a slightly slower but more concise radio call would actually be more effective. And so When you're juggling training areas, training exercises, as a student, and lots of different joining traffic, especially when you're starting to consider joining back in with the airfield as well, having radio calls like bam bam bam bam bam, it can get a little bit overwhelming at times.

Or having other traffic joining in circuit with downwind calls, with tracking to this place calls, all that kind of stuff, just all sort of adds up, really, and it becomes just a big and awful Stressful kind of experience.

Mark Finnell is CEO and Chief Pilot of commercial rotary operations company Helicopter Services based at Taupo. He's also Chief Pilot of skydiving companies at Taupo and Kerikeri. He has 10, 000 hours flying fixed wing and 2, 000 flying rotary. He believes radio calls have improved over the years. The days of a mumble transmission are pretty rare these days.

The radio quality's been improved significantly. Mark says that's just as well, because helicopters can and may choose to land away from the circuit, or join it to land. So lookout from both types of pilots needs to be vigilant, and they need to have great communication. The big thing with um, the helicopters is they can fit in with an aeroplane and they can join a circuit like an aeroplane does and, and come in with everyone, but they've also got that unique ability just to fly to any part on the airport and also stop short and hold short of, of movement areas so, uh, quite often here at Taupo pilots will come in and out from the eastern side or, uh, and um, hold short of the runway until it's clear and then come across.

So generally a helicopter pilot will more often prefer to be down a little bit lower below the circuit traffic and direct into the helicopter landing area or refueling point or wherever they're aiming for on the airport. The thing is that they can move into unexpected areas and it's probably more the departures where they can take off and head out in the direction they want to go and it takes them across the traffic pattern sometimes.

And that's where the radio calls are important. If you hear a helicopter guy taking off and it could be a conflict, his departure and your arrival or, or what your activities are, make that radio call again, because he may not have heard your first one when he didn't have his radios on after start. An aircraft that's already warmed up, ready to go.

The time from being started turning the radios on to you're ready to take off can be quite short. And if the other person's radio call was in the gap before you had had your radios on, they may not be aware of what you're doing. While Mark believes radio calls have improved, he doesn't believe courtesy at unattended aerodromes is what it once was.

The courtesy that used to be there 10 years ago is now somewhat being replaced by, I've read the rules, I've got right of way, and I'm pushing through. Whereas, going back 10 years, everybody just fitted in with everybody else and, and I remember when I was a young Skydive pilot, you didn't worry about the helicopter pilots, they just stayed out of your way.

And, and that's generally, a good helicopter pilot will do that, but you can't speak for everybody. Mark recently took his belief in the importance of courtesy, particularly as an itinerant pilot, to Fox Glacier. He describes his experience there as the tourism operator suddenly, and all at once, got very busy.

There's a lot of them there taking a small window of weather to transport a lot of people from buses. So a lot of them get up and get moving at the same time. They're heading up to the glass area, they're doing their loop and they've got their circuit. If you're the outsider coming in, it was a good chance just to try and find a way to stay clear of them.

And I managed to just find myself a little spot to go and line up on the runway and come in without annoying anyone. I was the new boy in town. And it was easier just to stay out of everybody's way than go charging through the guts of it. And I think that's the same for anyone who's new somewhere or doesn't know where they're going.

If, rather than charge through the middle and make it an example of yourself, just find that easy way to fit in with everybody. Finally, most operators speaking to Vector Online advised, if you're unsure of what's happening, where everyone is, and what's about to happen, get on the radio.

If someone is confused with a radio call that we were making, I would hope that plain language would resolve that and sometimes plain language is needed to help resolve any sort of ambiguity or confusion.

If you're a pilot and you don't know where you are, but you're talking to someone like myself who's trying to get a grasp of the situation and understand where you are. If you don't know, it's nothing to say. You don't know where you are. And if anything, we're all pilots, we all want to help out each other.

We'll give you a hand and help you find your way. Skydive Wanaka's Hamish Brown. What I always tell people, uh, as they're approaching a parachute drop area, 15 minutes before they get there, just give the local area a call. And just say any skydiving. It's as simple as that. And then if you get in contact with the plane, everyone knows where everyone else is.

And Jason Hobday, IFR instructor from IANCE. Good comms and good understanding of each other's procedures and limitations. helps build a solution, because that's what you're looking for. You're trying to find a solution to how can you continue doing what you're doing and how can we continue to do what we're doing and ultimately not meet.

You've been listening to the Vector Online audio story, Know Your Neighbour, a presentation of the Work Together, Stay Apart campaign. I'm Penn McKay. Thanks for listening.

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