2StgTurbine

There is enough stupid there to go around for everyone.

Std Deviation

I tried to analyze this one from both angles: as a pilot that knows that airport (about 10 miles from the house and have landed/trained students there) and as a psychologist.

I'm going with inattentional blindness (ever seen the video with the students playing basketball?). The people had been there before (to eat at the airport restaurant) and looked without seeing - habitual to cross that runway without any traffic ever being there-that's expectation bias. The student was so focused on the landing he was inattentionally blind to the surrounding hazard. And he was a little low on approach.

NASA did some inattentional blindness studies in the 727 when the HUD was first being developed for civilian use. They positioned an aircraft on the runway (the crew on approach was unaware of this during an approach to minimums) and some of the crews landed right on top of the aircraft. They never recalled seeing it when debriefed.

Amazed no one got seriously hurt on this one.

ImEbee

Love how there are two AA MD80's in formation just east of the field.

pilot0987

Both to blame here, they should of stopped seen him, and the pilot should have been on the glide path, or gone around.

AZFlyer

Both parties have a share in the blame.

The student pilot was too low and the driver of the car was not vigilant/complacent in watching out for air traffic.

The woman from the SUV was annoying.

Bellanca

Definitely both sides are to blame. Although, it does sound like the pilot was familiar with this airport (I assume this is where he does his training), but this would be the kind of thing I'd expect someone unfamiliar with the airport to get caught in. As a pilot, if I saw a road that close to the runway that appeared to be inside the fence , I would assume it was a service road for the airport, and not be worried that an SUV would come up under me as I cross it.

I could see a student in the planes I instruct in (DA-20's) coming in real low on a short field because they know they need to be in ground effect well before the numbers if they are actually going to set down on the numbers. But that airport has a 3500 foot runway, more than enough for a 172, and a displaced threshold.

This is the reason why I want to get out of instructing. No matter how well you train a student, they can always do something dumb when they are off by themselves. There probably isn't a pilot out there that didn't do something on a solo during their training that could have caused a crash and/or a reg violation, but they got lucky. Just a couple weeks ago, I had a student freak out and land at a craptastic non-towered airport. They were flying into a class C airport and it was bumpy and when center handed them off to approach they somehow hit the "PA" button on the Garmin audio panel, and then approach couldn't hear them and they thought they were lost coms and went to the nearest airport which happened to be this thing with a ~2000 foot runway on a slope with obstacles on each end. You just never know what a student will do. Also, I've had students that I gave an initial solo xc endorsement go to another instructor to get an endorsement to go on an XC to an airport that I wouldn't let them fly to.

takl23

Blame to go both ways on this one I think. As to the state of mind of the pilot, do you think they could have been nervous about landing and wanted to set it down early?

That's the only thing I can think as to why you would want to land early on a displaced threshold.

Std Deviation

Cars crossing that runway are very common and hence the norm. Pilots get used to it and assume - and we all know how that works out - they're going to stop. My instructions to students are to go around if they see anyone there at all.

At Hick's just to the southwest a railroad track runs parallel to the runway (north/south). I've watched more that one person narrowly avert balling it up because of the mechanical turbulence associated with a strong west wind broken up by a moving train. Again...hold till the hazard goes away.

Bellanca

Definitely sounds like an interesting little airport lol.

I guess my point is that you can tell a student 100 times to go around if they see a car, but then they get up in the plane by themselves, and they're tired of getting bounced around in the heat, in a hurry to get down, just not paying attention to everything, etc, and next thing you know they forget to look to see if there are any cars there.

Std Deviation

The restaurant is across the runway. Thus, the general population of clueless airplane watchers (reference the SUV in the example) drives past the runway and on adjacent taxiways to get their saturday afternoon hamburger.