C172 pilot came close to flying into the tower while in the VFR landing pattern.

Attributes
ACN	1394036
Time
Date	201610
Local Time Of Day	1801-2400
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Night
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Skyhawk 172/Cutlass 172
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Initial Climb
Route In Use	Visual Approach
Flight Plan	None
Person 1
Qualification	Flight Crew Commercial Flight Crew Flight Instructor Flight Crew Instrument Flight Crew Multiengine
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 120 Flight Crew Total 630 Flight Crew Type 450
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types Conflict Airborne Conflict Deviation - Procedural Clearance Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Deviation - Track / Heading All Types Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT
Miss Distance	Horizontal 500 Vertical 200

Narrative:

While conducting a touch and go; the tower instructed us to commence the crosswind turn shortly after departure from the runway. The student flying the aircraft turned a little bit too soon; and the tower thought there was an imminent collision. The tower controller stated that he thought we were going to hit the tower.visual contact with tower was never lost between me or the student. When I queried the student about why the turn was so abrupt (not the standard 300' below the traffic pattern that I teach) he responded that 1) he turned because he felt there was an imminent threat of midair collision from an aircraft on the parallel runway; and he was maneuvering to avoid such a collision and 2) because the tower told him to.contributing factors:this was the students first time flying at night; and he may have not had the appropriate level of experience and skill to handle the demanding workload that landing at an unfamiliar and very busy airport requires. Another contributing factor could have been a perceived sense of urgency in the controllers voice leading to the belief there was an imminent threat to the safety of our flight if we did not expedite the initial turn after takeoff.the corrective action I took as an instructor was to manipulate the yoke on the instructors side to avoid going any closer to the tower and to acknowledge the tower controller when he said not to hit the tower so he knew we had the tower in sight and were maintaining visual separation.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: C172 pilot came close to flying into the Tower while in the VFR landing pattern.

Narrative: While conducting a touch and go; the tower instructed us to commence the crosswind turn shortly after departure from the runway. The student flying the aircraft turned a little bit too soon; and the tower thought there was an imminent collision. The tower controller stated that he thought we were going to hit the tower.Visual contact with tower was never lost between me or the student. When I queried the student about why the turn was so abrupt (not the standard 300' below the traffic pattern that I teach) he responded that 1) he turned because he felt there was an imminent threat of midair collision from an aircraft on the parallel runway; and he was maneuvering to avoid such a collision and 2) because the tower told him to.Contributing Factors:This was the students first time flying at night; and he may have not had the appropriate level of experience and skill to handle the demanding workload that landing at an unfamiliar and very busy airport requires. Another contributing factor could have been a perceived sense of urgency in the controllers voice leading to the belief there was an imminent threat to the safety of our flight if we did not expedite the initial turn after takeoff.The corrective action I took as an instructor was to manipulate the yoke on the instructors side to avoid going any closer to the tower and to acknowledge the tower controller when he said not to hit the tower so he knew we had the tower in sight and were maintaining visual separation.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site 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.