With Help Like This

Before you go out of your way to make life easier, make sure your help is truly needed

File this one under “Pilot as good guy, sometimes to a fault.”

I like to help out controllers when I can. If the departure end of the airport is stacked with departures while I’m making a leisurely VFR approach, I’m quick to volunteer to extend downwind to let a couple of airplanes out. If I’m in a slow airplane approaching final in front of a fast one, I’ll offer to take a vector or turn to put me behind the other airplane.

While there are a lot of pilots who share this attitude, some take helpfulness to counterproductive extremes.

I was transitioning some busy airspace recently when a pilot called the tower, reporting “inbound from the southwest.” The controller asked his positi...