This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
Hi, I am a CFI at a local flight school. I was training a client in a Piper PA-28-161. We were doing laps in the pattern working on his takeoff and landings.
On the second lap in the pattern, we cleared base, made a call, then turned. We didn’t see any traffic at this point.
As we were seconds away from turning final, we turned to clear extended final approach when a Cessna 172 came across our flight path, narrowly missing us.
Personally I think he was maybe 150-200 feet in front of us and he was slightly higher (maybe 100, not too positive). He made a straight-in approach, no radio calls, and just about caused a midair collision if we turned final four or five seconds earlier.
Luckily, since we were slightly below him, we flew underneath his flight path (he was ahead of us at this point), continued on base, turned on the depart leg then started a climb to get re-established in the pattern.
He made a touch and go and since we were at pattern altitude at midfield on the departure leg (much higher than he was) and there was no one on upwind, crosswind, or downwind, we just turned a modified crosswind and downwind to get ahead of him.
After a couple of more laps in the pattern with him making no radio calls, he started making radio calls, did maybe one or two more laps, then departed the pattern.
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and thought he didn’t have radios or didn’t have the correct frequency in, but after he made a radio call, I knew these were both false and he just neglected to make calls.
When I looked up the tail number, he is based out of a local towered airport, which means he has operable comms.
I truly think there was nothing more I could have done but I wanted it to be reported to bring awareness to midair collisions at uncontrolled airports since the accident that happened.
While radios aren’t necessary, I think use of them should be required and will make every airspace much much safer.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1933139
