A Rather Unusual Midair Collision Story

Maurice Cabirac

Thursday, August 07, 2014 at 07:10 PM ET

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** Maurice Cabirac and his Mooney M10 Cadet**

Key Takeaways:

While practicing touch-and-gos, a pilot and student experienced an abrupt failure of their airspeed indicator during takeoff.
They successfully landed the aircraft using other instruments and visual references, treating it as valuable practice.
The unexpected cause of the airspeed indicator failure was a mosquito hawk's tail becoming lodged directly inside the pitot tube during a "midair collision."

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Here’s a story with an interesting twist. Flying reader Maurice Cabirac shares his run-in with an unexpected aircraft in the sky. For a midair collision, the incident had a rather unexpected ending.

My student, a 70-year-old friend, and I were shooting touch-and-gos when on one of our takeoffs our airspeed indicator went completely to zero. We immediately transitioned to using other instruments as well as outside references for determining safe speed. It was great practice. We were at a loss as to why this had occurred, as our suction pressure was good. We got the airplane safely on the ground, and my friend got out, went to the pitot tube and said, “You are going to have to see this to believe it!”