I plead the fifth
, though in my hypothetical defense if you're flying an airplane with the glide ratio of the space shuttle and chopping the power at pattern altitude just east of the 67 takes you to a perfect flare at the numbers, it starts to become the truly "safer" (though non-standard) option traffic and ATC permitting (i.e. you aren't cutting anyone off who took the long way around). But further thoughts on "non-standard" procedures below...
I appreciate you writing this. I think a lot of professional pilots have these stories they reserve for "over beers" but it seems like a very easy mistake to make especially being fatigued. Flying is an insidious activity because it can be unclear sometimes how dangerous whatever you just did really was or how close you came to death that night vs. an innocent "oops I read the chart wrong, I'll do better next time." For a given procedure there's always a series of "outs" or "offramps" you can take before all the links in the accident chain line up and you are SOL. From an ADM standpoint even in my limited GA flying compared to most of you guys, I've definitely pressed on past a few offramps and boy is that a bad feeling when the hair starts to stand up on the back of your neck and you start to count what options you DO have left. Hopefully the ADM "feedback loop" works for you: You realize you were on a trajectory towards a negative outcome, take an offramp to safety, learn from your experience and try to make better choices next time.
However your story above is a great example of that ADM feedback loop not working, or perhaps being too fatigued to notice the offramps as they pass you by. You do a thing to the best of your ability, it works out for you (that time) and later in hindsight you realize "boy that was sketchy I'm glad that worked out for me, I'll make a more conservative decision next time." But the most insidious in my mind is the "unknown unknown" version, where not only are you doing a more dangerous thing than you realize but the feedback loop is broken so you never find out to correct it. Furthermore pilots learn by example so if the risky thing you're doing (and not realizing is risky) is frequently done by your peers, was TAUGHT to you by an instructor or given to you by your company as SOP, you can potentially be lulled into a false sense of security (appeal to authority fallacy, etc).
A buddy of mine who is currently doing instrument training put it well when he said "Isn't the whole point of the IFR system to standardize everyone's dissimilar equipment and flying styles into a benign form to reduce risk while in IMC?" (think standard rate turns, <1000 fpm level offs, 3° glideslopes, etc.) While it's also to protect you from yourself and reduce the workload burden on the pilot, I do agree with him. So if you or your local pilot group or company SOP is doing something "non-standard" for your operation that nobody else does, it may deserve at least a sanity check to honestly look at whether you really are the exception to the rule or if the risks of what you're doing outweigh the benefits. Comments like
@SFCC/UND 's above should trigger that sanity check and some honest introspection, because we all have our blind spots.
Very good points I hadn't considered since both MYF and CRQ are busy with jet traffic on clear and non-runway contaminated days. With west winds neither RNM or SDM have straight in approaches from the west due to terrain, so both force you to circle. However both SDM and RNM have lower Cat C circling minimums than Gillespie does, and in both cases the circling maneuver is less scary as it is just a regular traffic pattern (with no 1200 ft mountain 3000 ft from the end of the runway). CRQ is pretty temping with the ILS Rwy 24 and the 4900 ft almost long enough runway if your numbers said you could get away with it, but it's also on top of a hill with those sweet embankments on both ends. If you wanted a straight-in precision approach to a runway >5000 ft you're basically pigeonholed into SAN and a large bill from Signature. But I think there's a time and a place for that. Maybe I wouldn't make it in part 135.
For the record I'm not typing this out to second guess the actions of the crew, but it's a very helpful thought experiment to see how quickly you run out of good options due to weather and operational requirements in a city that is seemingly full of alternate airports.
Good point and there would certainly be pressure to bring the airplane home for the night, but see above.
Even baby-Eskimo (Horizon) does a ton of this type of flying. When arriving at STS from the south for example they always get "Cleared visual, contact tower" and 50% of the time tower gives them right traffic for runway 14.
