midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

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smoss
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midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

Post by smoss »

There was a midair collision today at my home field with 4 fatalities. A Piper PA-46 collided with a Cessna 172 in the pattern, with very limited details released. Upon trying to pull up the LiveATC feed archive, I am surprised that all of the communications leading up to the incident have been removed, with a single relevant tower communication around 1908 Z asking how many souls on board. Is this typical that the LiveATC will delete/bleep out crash related communications?
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Steve
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Re: midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

Post by Steve »

I listened to that too. Very strange - lots of dead air interspersed with a couple of taxi instructions to other aircraft, and the aforementioned query about souls on board. Maybe one of the accident aircraft had an open mike on the way down, and they wanted to spare the listening public hearing screams leading up to the impact?
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Re: midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

Post by Boatguy »

A mid-air in the pattern at a towered airport is very bad. Could be pilot error, could be controller error. Just shouldn't happen.

If there was time to ask "how many souls onboard" they had to be higher than pattern altitude.
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Re: midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

Post by waynemcc999 »

Here are the ground tracks of the two aircraft...
(the 30 parallels have staggered thresholds)

PA46, N97CX, cleared to 30L
screenshot108.png
C172, N160RA, cleared short approach to 30R
screenshot107.png
Last edited by waynemcc999 on Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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smoss
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Re: midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

Post by smoss »

Thanks Wayne. Where did you get that the PA46 was cleared to 30L? If that was the case, it was obviously pilot error.
Last edited by smoss on Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

Post by Rich »

This is the second mid-air in two years that occurred in broad daylight, Class D within ADS-B/Mode C required airspace.

The two other things in common were simultaneous approaches to parallel runways and one aircraft overshot a turn to the cleared runway. In this case it looks like the PA46 misunderstood or misidentified the proper runway.

It will be interesting to see if ADS-B misuse, disuse, or absence might have been in play.
Last edited by Rich on Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

Post by waynemcc999 »

smoss wrote: Mon Jul 18, 2022 1:18 pm Thanks Wayne. Where did you get that the PA46 was cleared to 30L?
LiveATC... the 1830Z-1900Z segment (~5 minutes from the end)
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Re: midair collision at KVGT, LiveATC feed censored

Post by mfdutra »

This accident is very similar to the one in KAPA with an SR22 and the Metroliner. The main thing in common is the speed the offending aircraft entered the pattern, way north of standard for the type.

The turn radius increases by the square of the speed. If you bomb the pattern at 150 knots, your turns will be enormous. Nobody should ever do that, especially in airports with parallel runways.

The PA46 pilot was well known and very experienced in type (over 40 years). It's shocking to me he decided to fly a short 270 approach (0.63 nm from the runway) at those speeds. Nothing good could come out of that. So tragic.
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