GA1386 - Flap forgotten during touch and go

Initial Report

I attended the airport to conduct three circuits in a PA28 Warrior. There was an airliner in the circuit carrying out circuit and landing training for trainee airline pilots. This was not unusual and I had conducted many circuits in the past few years whilst they were training. The airport is full ATC in controlled airspace. I called ATC and asked if I would get clearance for circuits and was told I would be given clearance for the circuits. The aircraft needed fuel and unfortunately the fuel truck was delayed by 45 minutes. After the aircraft was fuelled, I checked the weather and the cloud base had dropped to a level that was marginal for circuits, so I waited. The airliner landed. After around 40 minutes the low cloud passed and I called ATC for clearance to do the circuits. This time I was given clearance but told that if the airliner resumed their training I would have my clearance cancelled and would have to land. After carrying out all my checks, I taxied, completed my power checks and was cleared to take off for my circuits. The first circuit and landing went well.  On the second circuit I was on final and given clearance for touch and go when I heard the airline captain/trainer on the radio. I was around 300ft agl about to land, I heard the airline captain mention the light aircraft in the circuit, but I was concentrating on landing the aircraft and didn’t hear the whole message. This was likely due to auditory exclusion as I was focused on the task of landing the aircraft. As I touched down I was fully expecting ATC to cancel my flight and tell me to taxi back to the apron. After a few seconds ATC did not speak to me so I continued with my flight. I put the power to full and took off. As I began to climb, I noticed that I was not achieving the expected climb rate and the aircraft was struggling to climb, the engine note was good and sounded normal. I immediately put the nose down and scanned the instruments, RPM, fuel pressure, oil pressure were all good. I then looked at the flaps and realised I had not retracted them. I maintained level flight to increase my speed and took one stage of flap off. When I had achieved the desired speed and positive rate of climb I further reduced the flaps, in stages. After climbing to circuit height ATC contacted me and asked if I could state the actual cloud base height and visibility for the airline captain. The third and final landing was uneventful.

CHIRP Comment

CHIRP commends the reporter for their open and honest account of this event. It takes integrity and professionalism to share experiences that could easily be kept private, and doing so contributes significantly to the learning and safety of the wider aviation community. This is precisely the kind of valuable reporting we aim to encourage at CHIRP. In many ways the candid report speaks for itself. The reporter identifies that they were concentrating on a demanding phase of the flight, ie the landing, became distracted and just didn’t hear (or fully process) comms between the airliner and ATC. Listening whilst anticipating something specific (in the reporter’s case to be told to land) can, owing to confirmation bias (in this case a mention of a light aircraft), lead to the brain hearing what it’s expecting to hear.

It’s possible that the reporter felt that they were a lower priority than the airliner, leading to expectation bias and implicitly receiving the corresponding message. The problem seems to have been compounded by a reduction in capacity owing to focus on another task ie landing. To their credit, throughout finals and the landing, the reporter did absolutely the right thing in prioritising flying the aircraft.

It’s worth remembering that if you’ve missed an ATC call, partially heard something, or are just not sure what was said, rather than assuming it’s ok or hoping it wasn’t relevant to you, then requesting a “say again” never harms; it’s better to be safe than sorry. The reporter did particularly well to identify on go around that something wasn’t right, then calmly and systematically work through the possible causes, finally correcting the mistake without rushing and potentially compounding the error. Sometimes unexpected things happen in flying; working through the issue and always remembering to Aviate, Navigate, Communicate will lead to a better outcome. Then debrief yourself afterwards when you’re on the ground and assess what went wrong, how you dealt with it, what you did well and what could have been done better. There are invariably lessons to be learned; maybe consider reporting to CHIRP so that others can benefit from the experience too.

In general, it’s also worth highlighting that ATC are very unlikely to call for a touch-and-go to be converted to a full landing once an aircraft is on final, unless there is some sort of emergency. For safety reasons, ATC try to avoid issuing changes of instructions to pilots during high-workload activity. Finally, for unusual operations eg in this case an airfield in controlled airspace and with regular airline training traffic, some thorough Threat Error Management and having a plan for potential eventualities is always a good idea.

Dirty Dozen Human Factors

The following ‘Dirty Dozen’ Human Factors elements were a key part of the CHIRP discussions about this report and are intended to provide food for thought when considering aspects that might be pertinent in similar circumstances.

Distraction & Deviation – Focus on landing led to missed cues and flap oversight.

Pressure – Presumed themselves to be a lower priority and determined not to inconvenience airliner.

Awareness
– Assumed flight would be terminated, affecting perception (expectation bias).
– Heard what was expected on R/T rather than full message (confirmation bias).
– Calm identification and resolution of error during climb-out (good airmanship).

Communication – Missed partial R/T highlighting need to request clarification.

Resources – High-task phase reduced cognitive bandwidth.