LXApilot
Owes More Than He Makes
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2003
- Posts
- 262
Hey guys- I wanted to get your opinion on this one... While flying the boss and his family down to Sebastian, Florida awhile ago in the ol' multi-engine, I was surprised by a very strange turn of events. We were descending out of about 4,000 with X26 in-sight when we were cleared over for the visual approach to the airport and told to switch to advisory. Before I switched over to advisory, Miami Center advised that 'there is no observed traffic between you and the airport'. We were anticipating runway 4 with the winds, and so maneuvered ourselves onto the left base before making my call to traffic. I was pretty busy flying and talking on the radio and such (we had been 'slam-dunked' by the center) and made my initial call at about 5 miles on the base leg to the runway. I again made a call once established on the left base to which I was replied to "whoever that is better clear out of the way, skydivers over Sebastian 13,000 and below in 30 seconds" I was surprised that someone would have responded like that and stated "I'm inbound IFR on a visual approach, we are on a 2 or 3 miles left base to the final, are you going to let us get in or drop them on us?" I waited a few seconds to hear the reply; "we are going to drop them now, be advised sky divers 13,000 and below out the door at this time." I cut the airplane sharp towards the numbers and made a short approach to the runway. - I didn't want to be climbing towards the skydivers on a missed approach. In the landing roll-out skydivers were falling all around us, on the active runway, on the taxiways and on the grassy areas surrounding the taxiways. During the taxi-in I started to think about that pilot who had dropped his skydivers on an inbound IFR airplane, not advised ATC of his intentions, and has probably done so in previous encounters as well. I have been vectored directly over X26 before at about 9000 going into Melbourne or Ft. Pierce and had it been this day I might have found a skydiver splatted on the nose... I handled the passengers and fueling and took it upon myself to go over and 'have my say' with the Caravan pilots, but they had already landed and closed up shop for the day by the time I went over there. I hope to avoid X26 in the future, but what would have been you guys course of action? Just curious as to what your responses would have been...