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While acting as a safety pilot reporter discovers that his flying partner has descended early to the next step down altitude on a VOR approach.
| Attributes | |
| ACN | 1002935 |
| Time | |
| Date | 201204 |
| Local Time Of Day | 0601-1200 |
| Place | |
| Locale Reference | ZZZ.Airport |
| State Reference | US |
| Environment | |
| Flight Conditions | VMC |
| Light | Daylight |
| Aircraft 1 | |
| Make Model Name | Skylane 182/RG Turbo Skylane/RG |
| Operating Under FAR Part | Part 91 |
| Flight Phase | Initial Approach |
| Flight Plan | None |
| Person 1 | |
| Function | Pilot Not Flying |
| Qualification | Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP) Flight Crew Instrument |
| Experience | Flight Crew Last 90 Days 15 Flight Crew Total 19500 Flight Crew Type 100 |
| Events | |
| Anomaly | Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT |
Narrative:
We were doing practice instrument approaches under the hood for instrument currency. Both pilots very high time retired airline pilots; but neither of us flies a lot of IFR these days. We had completed my approaches and other requirements; and I was now the safety pilot for the other guy; and we were doing the last of his approaches. He was doing a letdown to the last altitude; minimums of 1;500 ft. I noticed that we looked a bit low for our distance to the airport; and looked at the chart; and saw that he had misread the altitude for that segment; and we were actually supposed to still be at 2;400 ft! So we were 900 ft low; and neither of us caught it until it was too late. Awfully close to the houses; and we were sure glad there were no towers out there! Lessons learned include how easy it is to misread a chart and go down to minimums one intersection early; how even the safety pilot has duties beyond looking for traffic; and how rusty you get just staying current when you don't fly real IFR a lot. No apparent harm done since we still cleared all the houses by at least 600 ft and approach never noticed or at least never said anything; but I'm going to try to stay current by doing practice approaches more often than the minimum; and when I'm safety pilot I'm going to spend a lot more time watching the approach plate!
Original NASA ASRS Text
Title: While acting as a safety pilot reporter discovers that his flying partner has descended early to the next step down altitude on a VOR approach.
Narrative: We were doing practice instrument approaches under the hood for instrument currency. Both pilots very high time retired airline pilots; but neither of us flies a lot of IFR these days. We had completed my approaches and other requirements; and I was now the safety pilot for the other guy; and we were doing the last of his approaches. He was doing a letdown to the last altitude; minimums of 1;500 FT. I noticed that we looked a bit low for our distance to the airport; and looked at the chart; and saw that he had misread the altitude for that segment; and we were actually supposed to still be at 2;400 FT! So we were 900 FT low; and neither of us caught it until it was too late. Awfully close to the houses; and we were sure glad there were no towers out there! Lessons learned include how easy it is to misread a chart and go down to minimums one intersection early; how even the safety pilot has duties beyond looking for traffic; and how rusty you get just staying current when you don't fly real IFR a lot. No apparent harm done since we still cleared all the houses by at least 600 FT and approach never noticed or at least never said anything; but I'm going to try to stay current by doing practice approaches more often than the minimum; and when I'm safety pilot I'm going to spend a lot more time watching the approach plate!
Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.