How Busy is the Sky in the Phoenix Area?

[jwp_145]

I was just wondering how busy the sky is in the Phoenix area due to all of the training that takes place in the surrounding suburbs. Here in Tulsa it gets extremely busy because of Riverside Airport. I fly out of there and it is crazy sometime. I am intrigued to know how bad Phoenix can get.

If anyone of you guys instruct out there please let me know what it is like.

[Airdale]

I don't know dude, but my Aunt lives out there and she says it rains Cats and Cessnas. Better watch your six Holllywood.

[N826AW]

The airspace around Phoenix can get a little hairy sometimes. The southeast practice area is an accident waiting to happen with people not calling out position reports or calling calling them out in a different language.

[BobDDuck]

Let me preface this with saying all this information is 3 years old. It MAY still be accurate, but I don't know.

The training area outside PHX is basically divided into fourths. The NorthEast, The SouthEast, The SouthWest and the NorthWest. There is a common freq for the South side and a freq for the North side. There are multiple informal reporting points all over the practice areas. The problem is a) not everybody makes position reports b) people aren't always familiar with the positions being reported and c) sometimes people report the wrong position.

I was very rarely on the north side and when I was, it was normally with PHX approach so I was IFR and was getting traffic separation. From what I heard and saw the north was pretty congested with all the stuff operating our of DVT and Scottsdale.

On the south stuff was crazy some days and quiet others. I had several near misses (should be near hits I guess) with planes from RAA who never made any radio calls. Also, every once in a while a glider would drift over from somewhere and play chicken. On top of that there were heavy duty skydive ops out of Eloy (we just avoided that place) and Coolidge (but not as often) so bodies were dropping from the sky too. I've HEARD that there is now a DZ at Casa Grande as well, which would really add to the mess.

In general, I felt like I was seeing about 75% of the traffic. We always did clearing turns and I made position reports often. Also, I got so I could teach my student and still monitor the freq in the background so I had a sense of where airplanes were. Some of the new planes we had had TIS (which is sort of a poor man's TCAS) in them. I was shocked at how much traffic they displayed that I wasn't seeing.

As somebody already said, I am really surprised there hasn't been a mid air out there yet, especially when the Samurai from Ryan come north on their cross countries.

[JetJok]

Originally Posted by BobDDuck

As somebody already said, I am really surprised there hasn't been a mid air out there yet, especially when the Samurai from Ryan come north on their cross countries.

Kamikaze/Samurai - All depends which part of the valley you are from.

Only those of us who know will understand the above statement. 2 near hits, 2 calls to their Chief Flight Instructor and two statements given to the FSDO. After the POI inspected them they "don't much come north no more."

If you fly in the practice areas around phoenix you not only need horizontal seperation but also vertical. It is nothing for 3 different aircraft using the same block of airspace. One at 3,500, another at 4,500 and another at 5,500. (NOT HOLDS EITHER) You definetely will have a sore neck after a few hours of instructing.

[juskl]

Still the same... busier then &)!^..... You do get very good at watching for traffic on the south.... And if the non Engrish speakers would stop using the freq as their language practice frequency it would get better. But it is only going to get busier. Every large flight school is foreign pilot engaged and we have more non US pilots out there then US.

See and avoid is still the best policy, add in a little listening and a very little talking and all is better.... Oh yeah and those of you coming out of IWA, remember that the aerobatic box is on the south side of the Santan's.... So heads up.