Stupid Pilot Tricks
Lane writes about some of the most memorable pilots she's ever flown with—the idiots.
By Lane Wallace
November 2002
 I
don't know his name, and I didn't quite catch his N-number. But
somewhere in the San Francisco area, there's a pilot who owes me
an apology.
I was flying my Cheetah down to the Oakland International Airport
on July 4th to pick up a friend who was flying in for a visit.
It was a pleasant morning, clear and smooth, and I was enjoying
the short flight south across the Bay. I was at about 2,500 feet,
still outside of the Class B airspace but talking to Bay Approach,
when the controller called out traffic at my same altitude, going
the opposite direction, at 11 o'clock and one mile. I looked and
quickly spotted a fast-moving gray plane headed past me, to my
left.
"Roger, Bay Approach, Niner-Four-Uniform's got the …"
My transmission trailed off as I watched the gray plane pull
up, bank steeply around and proceed to dive straight toward me
from my seven
o'clock position. Good Lord! What was this guy up to? My heart
choked, then began pounding. Did he see me? What kind of evasive
action could or should I take? As I watched, the gray plane abruptly
stopped its dive, pulling up into a loose formation position 50
yards or so to my left and a little behind and below me. The controller
called again.
"Niner-Four-Uniform, that traffic's now …"
"I SEE the traffic!" I answered sharply. "He's
right here, taking way too close a look at me, or something.
What the hell is he up to?? Are you talking to him?"
"Negative," the controller answered. "We've got
him on radar, but he's not talking to anyone."
A lightning-fast torrent of emotions and thoughts raced through
me. At first, I had thought the plane might be a military plane
doing an intercept on me. It was, after all, July 4th and tensions
about possible terrorist activities were high. But now that I
could see the plane more clearly, I knew that wasn't the case.
It was definitely a high-performance plane, painted an all-over
light gray, with a bright yellow nose, but it was a prop plane,
not a jet. It had the distinctive dorsal fin and tandem, bubble-canopy
cockpit of a Pilatus PC-7, although it could have been just a
plane that looked similar to a Pilatus. But whatever it was, I
was at its mercy, because it clearly had both speed and maneuverability
on my poor little fixed-gear Cheetah.
Part of me surged with the same defensive anger I feel on a New
York subway when some unsavory-looking character gets too close.
"This is my space, dammit, get out of it!" I
silently fumed at the gray and yellow intruder. But then another
possibility occurred to me. What if he was just fooling around
in the sky and just happened to have leveled out just there?
What if he didn't actually see me? That was an even scarier thought.
As I watched, the gray plane suddenly banked up and away, then
circled around once again. The controller called with two more
traffic targets, and I registered a vague awareness of their positions,
but I didn't look for them. My eyes were riveted on the much more
threatening wild-card target just off my left side. Now he was
diving down on me again, this time straight from my nine o'clock
position. All I could do was keep a straight and level line and
hope that he really did see me and didn't actually want to ram
me broadside. As I watched, my heart hammering in my throat, the
gray plane dove down, passed directly underneath me, and disappeared
beneath my fuselage somewhere toward the coastal hills.
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