AOPA, UND Study Landing Patterns To Combat LOC-I

AOPA’s Air Safety Institute (ASI) is working with the University of North Dakota to study continuous turning approaches as an alternative to the traditional rectangular landing pattern. The associations are studying the patterns as they explore possible means to help mitigate in-flight loss of control events (LOC-I).

The study comes as the National Transportation Safety Board retained LOC-I on its list of “Most Wanted” safety improvements for the third consecutive year. NTSB noted that LOC-I was involved in 47 percent of fatal fixed-wing general aviation accidents in the U.S. between 2008 and 2014. These accidents resulted in 1,210 fatalities.

UND and AOPA decided to collaborate on the study of the potential alternative pattern after working with senior NTSB officials at a recent loss-of-control panel.

The organizations are exploring whether simple changes in procedure or training for landing patterns could enhance safety and reduce LOC-I, AOPA said. “The hypothesis to be studied is that in contrast with a rectangular pattern, a continuous turn from downwind to final might provide for greater stability, reduced pilot workload and a constant bank angle throughout the maneuver, helping pilots better manage angle-of-attack variance,” the association said.

AOPA and UND also believe the continuous turning approach could reduce the potential for overshooting the runway during the base-to-final turn. The organizations noted that such overshoots have led to multiple stall and/or spin accidents from “aggressive corrective maneuvering.”

The study will include a review of flight data to evaluate the differences between the circular and rectangular patterns, including an analysis of bank angle, airspeed and runway overshoot. “Depending on the results of the study, this procedure may serve as a mitigating technique to reduce the likelihood of loss-of-control accidents during the landing phase of flight,” AOPA said.

“It’s too early to say for sure if the continuous turn to final method will be a safer, more stabilized way to land,” said George Perry, senior v-p of the AOPA ASI. “The U.S. military, airlines and many airline ab initio programs already use the continuous approach turn as the standard to support safe landing pattern operations. We should determine which is safer for general aviation, and this study will help us find the answer.”

“Although the study is in its early phases, and it’s far too soon to draw any definitive conclusions, the new procedure has already been studied and practiced by a select group of UND instructor pilots, and initial data collection has been going quite well,” added Lewis Archer from UND’s aviation department.

The organizations hope to make initial results available early this year.