Air traffic control versus pilots.
N114FA negative, sir.
You can't just walk away from me like that.
I've got more to talk to you about.
Coming up!
Hey, 74 crew! Welcome back!
If you don't know me, my name's Kelsey.
I'm a 747 pilot.
My channel 74 gear is all about aviation.
In this video,
we have a pilot that flew straight into a busy airport's airspace
without permission.
And we have a passenger that is probably very thankful
that he ended up on an Air traffic control versus pilots
and not a Viral debrief.
Let's get into it!
Executive tower, this is 114FA,
holding short of runway 25. Ready for takeoff.
N114FA runway 25 A2 cleared for takeoff.
Fly westbound.
N114FA, fly left bound runway approved.
I'm guessing this pilot is a new pilot,
but even though he's a very new pilot, he did one part exactly like a pro.
And that's this part right here.
Uh.
Okay. Jokes aside.
The pilot is lacking a little bit of confidence
which is fine.
Every new pilot, myself included, lacks confidence on the radio.
It's something that a lot of people are nervous about, myself included.
I don't know why, it doesn't really matter if you're not great on the radio.
You just seem to be able to communicate where you're at,
where you're going and then write down or notate
or repeat back what they tell you to do.
So the one thing that he says is you're cleared to take off from Alpha two,
and I just wanna show you what they're referring to on that.
So it's just something you'll see with the controllers.
When you get clear to take off from the full runway, they'll say runway 25
but if you're getting an intersection takeoff,
they'll tell you the intersection that you're getting to clear to take off from.
It's just a rule that happens.
I just wanted to explain it to you in case you didn't know what was going on.
Now, the really important thing to understand here is exactly what the pilot read back
and what the controller originally said to him.
The controller originally told him: "Go westbound".
But the pilot read back, as far as what I can hear, "Go left bound".
Listen to this.
Clear for takeoff, fly westbound.
N114FA, fly left bound.
If you're a controller,
you could very easily make the assumption that he said westbound,
even though the pilot red back left bound.
And from the pilot standpoint,
I'm guessing he's a newer pilot,
he could be thinking:
"The guy wants me to go left bound" because there is something
in aviation when you're new,
you'll make traffic patterns where you'll do your takeoff and landings
and a lot of new pilots do these
and they have something called "left hand traffic patterns".
Which means you just take off and just make a bunch of left hand turns.
And then, that's basically how you get onto the runway.
This is a picture here that the controller would say make left traffic.
And that just basically means this pilots just gonna keep turning left
and come back around to land,
take off and keep making that pattern.
And that would be a left traffic pattern.
Now, while I'm not defending the pilot and not clarifying the situation,
I think what he heard was: "Go left", not west.
So he's saying left bound,
but there really is no left bound in aviation.
There's a westbound and a southbound, but there is no left bound.
There's a left traffic.
And that's where this whole thing starts to become a problem.
To give you some context of where they're at,
they're right here in Orlando Executive airport.
And so a pilot taking off on runway 25,
which is basically westbound, would be heading in this direction.
But if he goes left bound or south,
he's headed straight to this other airport
and this is Orlando international
which is the main airport of Orlando.
Now, if you aren't familiar,
why different runways have different numbers?
I'll put a link to the "Catch me if you can" Hollywood versus reality up here.
And if I forget to do that after posting this video,
remind me in the comment section but,
I explained more about why the different runway always have different numbers.
You can see from this picture here,
if The pilot were to continue flying west,
he would just be heading away from everything.
But by heading south,
he's gonna have a very big problem because this airspace is known
as Bravo airspace.
Typically your big airports are in a category B airspace,
which is what we call a Bravo airspace.
And you need permiss to fly into that.
Those big airports are typically where your airliners are flying in and out of.
And so they don't want to have big airliners coming in and landing
because we're moving at a much faster pace
and a much faster speed than a small single engine aircraft like this.
Our landing speed is gonna be faster than their top speed.
So mixing those two together, make no sense.
It's kinda like if you had a school bike path going to school,
right next to a freeway and they were kind of using the same traffic lanes.
It just wouldn't make sense. And there would be a real problem,
same concept.
So the controller thinks the pilot's going this way.
The pilot thinks he's going this way and you can see why that's gonna be a problem.
But listen what happens next.
N114FA remain outside the Bravo frequency change is approved actually
N114F
looks like you've turned south there in the Bravo, sir.
I need you to descend immediately out or below 800,
I told you to fly westbound.
N114FA exec tower.
Skyhawk 114FA exec tower.
Skyhawk 4FA exec tower. You are in the Bravo, sir.
I need you to exit the Bravo.
If you can hear this transmission, IDENT N4FA.
All right, N4FA exec tower,
If you can hear me, sir,
I need you to turn left northbound immediately and descend.
You're in the Bravo at 1,600.
N114FA frequency change approved.
N114FA negative, sir.
You can't just walk away from me like that.
I've got more to talk to you about.
Now this category B airspace has a different structure
than a lot of different airports.
Think like a wedding cake with the different tiers,
but upside down.
So as you get closer to the airport,
they have the airspace all the way to the ground,
but as they get further and further away, there's little shelves or tears.
So that's why the controller is saying:
"Hey, you're at this specific altitude".
It's not that he just crossed the line.
It's not just from the ground to 10,000 feet all the way around.
They have different little tiers.
So he's able to go underneath the Bravo airspace,
but not into the Bravo airspace.
And that's why he's replying and telling him about his altitude.
That's why he's reminding him about this altitude there.
So this pilot turned and flew directly into that airspace
which is obviously not allowed, but this controller,
while continuing to radio to get a hold of that pilot
continued to handle all of the planes that were going on in his airspace.
I deleted all that because it would've made the video too long,
but I just wanna show you that this pilot is creating a real situation.
And the controller is continuing to try to radio to him
while juggling all of his normal traffic
because he thought that guy was gonna be leaving his airspace.
At the very beginning, he said:
"Frequency change". He was gonna switch him over.
Frequency change approved is what he was gonna say.
Listen right here.
N114FA remain outside the Bravo frequency change is actually
In that case, when he says frequency change approved,
had he continued to say that?
That pilot would've switched over to another controller
and that controller that you hear talking right now,
would've been done with him.
So he expected for that plane to be leaving his airspace
and not have to worry about it.
Now, he really has to worry about it
because he needs to get ahold of him to get him
out of going into Orlando international airport there.
So he's handling that guy who's making the problem and his normal traffic.
Now, if you aren't familiar with this term:
If you can hear this transmission, IDENT N4FA.
What that means is that if the pilot can hear the controller,
but can't transmit for whatever reason,
his radio isn't working to allow him to transmit,
he can hit a button on his plane
and that will show up on the controller's screen.
So the controller knows that the pilot can hear him
but is not able to transmit.
Then, the pilot can follow the control or follow the instructions from the controller.
And the controller knows that he's unable to transmit
but he can hear him.
So when he tells him this:
Sir, I need you to turn left northbound immediately.
He's telling the pilot: "Make a 180, fly away from this airspace
and back towards my airspace".
Where he has control of everything.
He's trying to avoid from this pilot
getting really close to the airport there
and possibly shutting down all the takeoffs and landings that are going on
into Orlando international,
which you can imagine would be a real mess because there's a lot of traffic
that's taking off and landing in there.
But then the pilot jumped in and said this:
N114FA frequency change approved.
Now that transmission from the controller about doing the frequency change
was a while ago.
So he obviously heard that or maybe he heard that.
And he was just trying to hope that this situation went away.
I think he was confused of where he was at and where he was going.
He was doing the left bound and then realized:
"Oh, I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing".
And then: "Okay. Frequency change approved".
Hoping it just kinda like would go away.
And the controller was laughingly saying like:
"No, it's just not that easy".
Negative, sir. You can't just walk away from me like that.
I've got more to talk to you about.
All the screens that the controllers have are recorded.
And obviously all the transmission are recorded.
Just like what you're hearing now.
And it's not the first time that a student pilot flew into the wrong airspace,
but the next part is different than some of the previous videos
that I've gone over. Listen to this.
N114FA I'm having problems with my radio. Give me a second. I'm trying to fix it.
Yes, sir. I understand that. So do you need any assistance?
N114FA, repeat that again.
Do you need assistance, sir? You just...
you just dusted the Bravo shelf at 1700 and
I was trying to get ahold of you for the last 10 flying miles.
I need to know if you were all right out there.
N114FA, yeah. I just been working on my radio. I apologize about that.
Everything is alright right now, but thank you.
All right. I need you to give me a call here.
Where are you headed today?
I'm heading to Brooksville. KBKV.
N114FA, Roger.
I need you to write down a number when you have a second, okay?
N114FA, go ahead.
Yeah, just give us a call. I just wanna talk to you and see what happened,
cuz I understand your radio's out,
but you took a hard left turn and climbed into that Delta.
We just need to talk about that, sir. Okay?
You just get to your destination safe and give us a call
so we can just talk about it. All right?
Now, I don't know what the phone call sounded like.
This isn't like the Harrison Ford,
where I have the phone call audio to talk about what happened.
But this controller is remaining super calm with everything that's going on.
And the pilot, even though he's making an excuse about how this all happened,
he's not being a brat about it. There's a big difference.
You mess up and everybody knows.
Pilots are human just like everybody else.
We make mistakes, but he's not being a brat. He's not being entitled.
He's just saying:
"Oh, this was the problem".
Does that excuse make up for the mistake that he made? No.
He's still gonna have to talk to some people about it
but he's not being a bra about it. Which means his...
his experience when he is talking with the FAA or the controller on the phone
is going to be a lot different than when you have a pilot
who's acting like a total brat.
Like you've heard in some of the previous videos.
Now this guy is in a small plane
that's flying pretty slow and he is going for the last 10 miles.
The controller said.
So this guy is flying maybe a mile a minute.
And you can imagine that if you're flying a mile a minute,
it's probably about 10 minutes that this pilot is flying away
from the controller into that airspace.
So the controller was working on this for a while
to get this guy to actually respond to him.
Now, if you're the FAA and you get all this documentation of what's going on,
which they would get,
they would look at everything.
They would listen to the audio. They would listen to the pilot.
They would listen to the controller. They would evaluate all the information.
And the reason they're doing that is to see what caused this situation.
What was the reason this happened?
Obviously, everything ended okay,
nobody died. Nobody got hurt, no planes almost crashed or anything dramatic
but they wanna see what caused this situation.
So that way they can prevent it from going on.
The reality is that the fed, the FAA,
their main thing is to look and evaluate the information so they can prevent things
from continuing to happen.
They say a lot of aviation lessons are learned in blood,
but you can learn from this situation of what caused it
and how do we prevent it
because there wasn't a problem, there wasn't
a major dramatic outcome that happened,
but they can learn from it to prevent it from happening again.
And then they'd also listen to the controller
and how the controller was interacting with this pilot.
And they did something really good that I wish a lot of controllers did
when they were dealing with new pilots.
And that's this part right here.
So we just need to talk about that, sir. Okay?
You just get to your destination safe and give us a call
so we can just talk about it. All right?
The controller did an amazing job in my opinion,
keeping calm because he knows this pilot is gonna be rattled.
He knows this pilot is going to realize that he messed something up.
Once you get the phone number, you never want to get the phone number,
but once you get that phone number, you know that you're gonna be rattled,
but he's trying to keep this guy calm because he knows that this pilot
still is flying to his other airport, Brooksville.
He's trying to keep him relaxed.
So he doesn't have a problem.
Hey man, not a big deal. We're gonna safely,
you know, safely get there. Give us a call. We just wanna talk about it.
He's not doing a:
"Oh, you're busted, man. You're in a lot of trouble".
He's not really amping that pilot up to make him feel stressed out
on this whole flight that he has to do.
The pilot's gonna be nervous.
He knows the pilot's gonna be nervous until he lands
but he's trying to keep him as calm as possible with everything that's going on.
This is like rule number one of aviation: Aviate, navigate and communicate.
And this guy wasn't doing that. The pilot was so busy,
focused on what was going on with his radio.
If that was really a thing,
he was so focused on that. He forgot to do number two: Navigate.
Which was to go west, not left.
I think what happened is he actually got confused with the left and west,
but either way, he said that the problem was the radio.
But remember, aviate,
fly the plane first. Navigate, where are you going? And then communicate.
So the whole thing about talking with Air traffic control,
you can see if he didn't respond to Air traffic control,
but was flying west,
it would've been a lot less of an issue than flying south into that Bravo airspace
and saying: "Oh, was busy working on my radio".
Okay, well that should be the third priority.
The second priority is going west.
Not south. You should have known.
You shouldn't have been going into that airspace.
Now the other day, there was a four man crew.
We were flying from Europe somewhere into Miami.
And when we were coming in, this four man crew,
three of the people,
three of these pilots heard one thing
and one of the pilots heard another thing.
And my rule, always when I'm flying, is that
if not all of us hear the exact same thing,
then we're gonna call back and clarify.
And that's something that as a newer pilot,
I didn't wanna do because I felt like:
"Oh, that sounds unprofessional".
Like you didn't hear it right the first time
but you'll never get in trouble for clarifying.
It might annoy your controller
but you'll never get violated for it.
Don't be scared to ask for a clarification.
We do it all the time.
I've heard pilots...
I've heard controllers get annoyed with pilots when we do it,
but I don't really care cuz I can't get in trouble for that.
Had this pilot said: Confirm you want me to go left?
You want me to make a left and just fly south?
Had that pilot said that?
He could have avoided this entire thing.
But instead, he assumed that the guy said: Left bound.
Even though that doesn't make sense.
Had they clarified it,
would've been not an issue.
So if you ever aren't sure, ask.
Keep asking until you know what that thing is.
I recently had a flight where I was actually leaving the flight deck.
I was getting ready to get out and get into rest.
My headset was still plugged in. The captain had plugged in
and relieved me
and the other first officer was up there
and I had my headset plugged into one of the back radios
and we were over France.
And the French controller had a very thick accent when he was talking
and he was giving us
a new fix and a new frequency.
So neither of them or me could understand what exactly he was saying,
what frequency he was saying and what fix he was saying.
So we asked him three different times and all three of us were trying to listen
to what he was saying to figure out the fix and the frequency
that this controller was trying to give us.
And we just kept asking until we got the right thing and got it clarified and
looked at it on our map. And it made sense.
Did the controller get annoyed?
I don't really care because I never got violated.
And there was never any paperwork to do.
Just realized asking three or four times might take 10 or 15 seconds outta your day.
And it might take 10 or 15 seconds out of their day,
but it's gonna be a lot less work by you getting that clarification
than you having to fill out a lot of paperwork for doing something wrong.
Now, I know this was a long video but I had a funny one that someone sent to me.
So we're gonna do that one right now.
Tower United 2304, we just got word from the flight attendants.
Somebody got up and went to the restroom.
Oh, that's a terrible time for that.
2304 cancel takeoff clearance, hold in position and get them back in their seat.
They're in their seat. Just not in the right one.
Hahaha, okay. Korean 026 heavy, cross 28L, cross 28R, turn right on C.
Korean six heavy cross to left cross street rights turned right on Charles.
This United aircraft was given takeoff clearance.
And then, when they said
that somebody was sitting there, their takeoff clearance was canceled.
And that's what the controller was saying. Takeoff clearance canceled.
So he's saying that which basically means you're no longer allowed to take off.
That's what he's saying right here.
2304, cancel takeoff clearance, hold in position and get them back in their seat.
Now the one thing I'm gonna say about this and I'm guilty of it too,
but don't go to the bathroom as soon as you get on the plane.
Those 20 minutes that you spend,
like hovering outside your gate and blocking other people that are boarding before you,
that whole time that you spend there and then racing down
to then get into the line to get onto the plane,
that whole time could be spent going to the bathroom right there
at the terminal, just a couple feet away, nice and spacious,
plenty of room in there.
And you could go spend that time going in there.
Plane's not gonna leave without you. We're not gonna board in five minutes.
So just,
just my personal thing and all the flight attendants are going to love you,
or just not be annoyed by you from blocking
and interrupting the boarding process by fighting upstream
or going all the way to the back and using that bathroom.
And then having to fight all the way upstream
and interrupt the whole boarding process.
I boarded over 400 people before in my aircraft.
And granted, this was a military thing,
but we boarded 400 and something people faster than seeing 120 people
get on a regular commercial airline
because people are going to the back and going to the front,
putting their bag up, getting up,
getting down and it just makes the process very slow.
So if you go to the bathroom before you get on the plane,
it's gonna make the boarding process a lot smoother.
If you wanna see some more Air traffic control versus pilot,
check out this video here.
And if you want to see some pilots who were struggling to fly their plane,
check out this video up here.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Until then,
keep the blue side up.