CADORS

I’ve recently been introduced to an awesomely scary website

CADORS – or Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System.
It its simplest form basically if an incident* occurs,it gets reported (or are on the receiving end of someone else’s screw up**) this is where you’ll end up. You can do all kinds of interesting searches; you can look and see how many incidents the plane you are flying has been involved in or what your flying school has been up to!

The actual point is not to demonize people but to genuinely point out other people’s mistakes and the process that led up to them so that you don’t make the same ones.

It can be a bit troubling if you are of a nervous disposition, strangely though it doesn’t bother me at all that the plane I fly the most often has been involved in 2 mid air dings! What does bother me, is the so called mundane mistakes. Nothing got damaged and no one got injured but there was the potential for a problem. It bothers me because, reading through them I can see how easily these things happen. Pretty much everyone I’ve read (I did a search for the flight school!) I can see me doing exactly the same thing. I can see how you would accidentally land on 26 when you’ve been cleared for 24. Sometimes you hear what you expect to hear and not what is actually said. I can see how someone who is relieved to have gotten the plane on the ground in one piece might forget to get taxi clearance back to the hanger and just pootle on regardless.

I recall one flight out to the practice area, still fairly early on when I was just getting the hang of the radio stuff, getting ATC instructions and responding back to them (secretly pleased with myself that I’d got the response correct), then Bob asked me “ so did they clear us north or south of the stacks?” I had no clue. In concentrating on my response I’d accepted the instruction without actually hearing it.

When you are doing circuits , sometimes you don't get your landing clearance until the last minute, while at other times they clear you while still in the downwind. Everytime I cross that threshold there is a little voice inside me asking "did you actually get landing clearance?"

*an incident can be anything from a commercial airliner making a missed approach, to a bird strike to a mid air prang!

**This distinction is important, RTH has filed a CADORS report during his training but did nothing wrong. He got buzzed by an idiot in a Pilatus who was not monitoring the frequency and had made no position calls. The F@#kwit is probably still blissfully unaware that RTH nearly climbed into him.