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> Warrant Officer Eaves stated that it was at 300 feet and descending to 200 feet — necessary because the maximum height for its route closer to the airport had

by rdtsc 1y ago

> Warrant Officer Eaves stated that it was at 300 feet and descending to 200 feet — necessary because the maximum height for its route closer to the airport had dropped to 200 feet. But even as it reached that juncture, Warrant Officer Eaves evidently felt obligated to repeat his instruction: The Black Hawk was at 300 feet, he said, and needed to descend > Not only was the Black Hawk flying too high, but in the final seconds before the crash, its pilot failed to heed a directive from her co-pilot, an Army flight instructor, to change course. > He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank. Turning left would have opened up more space between the helicopter and Flight 5342, which was heading for Runway 33 at an altitude of roughly 300 feet. She did not turn left. As much as the article tries to balance it out that the controllers should have done more it seems that ultimately the pilot flying was distracted and not following instructions from the instructor sitting next to them. It happened at least twice based on the captured recordings. Was there something in their personal life or career to warrant that - a setback, some family situation? Otherwise they seemed qualified and flew that route a few times already.

alistairSH 1y ago
Was there something in their personal life or career to warrant that - a setback, some family situation? Otherwise they seemed qualified and flew that route a few times already. Beyond her general lack of flight-time? Her primary role appeared to be some sort of liaison in DC, not flying Blackhawks.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- rhcom2 1y ago
  450 hours over 5 years for a Army helicopter pilot stateside doesn't seem to be abnormally low.
  - alistairSH 1y ago
    That's only 90 hours/year. Not even 2 hours/week. That may be common for an Army pilot, but for somebody expected to fly during wartime, transport VIPs under stressful conditions, etc that's pretty goddam minimal.
    - sjs382 1y ago
      Is that based on something other than vibes? From what I can tell, that's the low end of average, but that's based on 5ish mins of fact-checking.
      - alistairSH 1y ago
        Vibes, I guess... 2 hours/week feels inadequate to maintain proficiency in a highly technical, high-stress role.
        sjs382 1y ago
        Seems that for a FAC 1, UH-60, 48 hours is required semiannually (every 6 months) and 12hr of sim can be applied to meet those flight time minimums. For FAC 2, it's 30 over 6 months, also allowing 12 hrs of that as sim time. One source among many: https://helicopterforum.verticalreference.com/topic/24169-army-commissioned-pilot-flight-hours/ https://helicopterforum.verticalreference.com/topic/24169-ar... This is one of those situations where common intuition doesn't match reality. I've similarly been wrong in the past where my intuition was off wrt/ to hours on industrial equipment compared to their expected life.
        alistairSH 1y ago
        Yeah, I’m not claiming the hours were unusual, only that the 2 hours/weeks feels inadequate to maintain superior operational readiness. That’s not even a round of golf.
        nativeit 1y ago
YetAnotherNick 1y ago
The warrant officer was the instructor and was training her. Few times doesn't make someone qualified. I think it was because of military egos and ranks, the warrant officer didn't force corrected the Captain. Also why is training happening in such dangerous path where even if the instructions were followed the aircrafts could get as close as 30 m apart.
- milkshakes 1y ago
  exploring this phenomenon is the premise of season two of "the rehearsal"
- rdtsc 1y ago
  > I think it was because of military egos and ranks, the warrant officer didn't force corrected the Captain. I think they should prohibit such type of flights when ranks are reversed. Let's imagine he would have yanked the controls and avoided the crash. Now the Captain could have said "you're insubordinate and tanked my qualification flight, there will be a price to pay".
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
    Extremely unlikely. Laughably so.
    - rdtsc 1y ago
      Sorry, I am trying to follow, but it's a bit ambiguous. It is laughable that the instructor would take controls away, or laughable that they wouldn't, or that in a military subordinate structure there can be retaliations. I am up for a good laugh, just not sure which one you meant we'd be laughing at.
- radlad 1y ago
  Coincidentally, Nathan Fielder is currently doing an entire season of The Rehearsal based on the premise that a number of flight crashes occurred after the co-pilot failed to contradict or take controls from the pilot. > Nathan Fielder studies airliner black box transcripts in which the first officer feels too intimidated to challenge the captain, leading to fatal crashes due to pilot error. He discusses this with John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member, who had once recommended roleplay simulation to improve pilot communication. Really good season so far!
Onavo 1y ago
A hundred feet in aviation unfortunately just isn't that much. It's the equivalent of driving 3 miles over the speed limit on the highway. I am not sure about rotorcraft but if you are flying a traditional Cessna for training, a bit of wind shear or updraft can easily change your altitude by hundreds of feet.
- rdtsc 1y ago
  > A hundred feet in aviation unfortunately just isn't that much. It's the equivalent of driving 3 miles over the speed limit on the highway. I am not sure about rotorcraft but if you are flying a traditional Cessna for training, a bit of wind shear or updraft can easily change your altitude by hundreds of feet. I would agree in general, but in that particular environment around DC with the restricted WH fly zone, the busy airport, the river and the bridges and the ADSB switched off it can make a huge difference.
  - Onavo 1y ago
    Yeah, I find the report to be more of a morning after quarterback situation. For general plane to plane vertical separation, you are supposed to maintain a minimum of hundreds of feet. A hundred feet shouldn't make a difference.
xhkkffbf 1y ago
[flagged]
- rdtsc 1y ago
  It shouldn't matter and I didn't want to bring their gender into the picture.
- guywithahat 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - renewiltord 1y ago
    The grammar is fine. Saying "the pilot did not listen to the instructor sitting next to them" is perfectly fine in English and has been so since at least the '90s when I first learned the language as a child.
    - crooked-v 1y ago
      Singular they has always been valid in modern English, going back to before Shakespeare (he used it a couple of times). The idea that it isn't comes from contrarian mid-18th-century prescriptivists who wanted to actively change the language people were already using.
    - guywithahat 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - alistairSH 1y ago
        At best, the use of singular they is far more complicated than you're stating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
        guywithahat 1y ago
        a Wikipedia link means nothing, especially in the context of politically charged grammar. You can't link most conservative papers on Wikipedia, and some of the founders regularly acknowledge the site is heavily biased. I mean that article claims singular they was common through the 19th and 20th century, but we see that's not true through any dictionary lookup https://www.websters1913.com/words/They https://www.websters1913.com/words/They They (thā), pron. pl.; poss. Theirs; obj. Them. [Icel. þeir they, properly nom. pl. masc. of sā, sū, þat, a demonstrative pronoun, akin to the English definite article, AS. sē, seó, ðæt, nom. pl. ðā. See That.] The plural of he, she, or it. They is never used adjectively, but always as a pronoun proper, and sometimes refers to persons without an antecedent expressed. Using they to refer to someone when you don't want to acknowledge their gender is a very recent thing, only done by the politically motivated.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pj_mukh 1y ago
I mean maybe instead of patholigizing to that level we maybe need to accept that there is a temporal normal distribution to human attention spans and design our systems around it. It feels like semi-autonomous ATC and flight controls were possible as of 5 years ago. Has FAA even started writing initial reports on this?
- rdtsc 1y ago
  > semi-autonomous ATC Yeah, that one has been around as long as there have been computers. It's sort of like the flying car of the ATC world - it's always 5 years away. > temporal normal distribution to human attention spans Tn this case we had both the ATC and the instructor tell the pilot to do something different and they didn't listen. Not sure if that's an attention span issue, it may be, but it's not clear it's definitely what it is.
  - pj_mukh 1y ago
    AFAICT the technologies been around for a while (esp assistance). It's the regulation and the minefield of a roll-out plan that the FAA would rather not take on. Nobody gets fired for doing nothing and continuing to play whack-a-mole with human frailties.
    - rdtsc 1y ago
      > AFAICT the technologies been around for a while (esp assistance) Yeah, agree. There is even mention of a collision alarm at the tower going off > Nobody gets fired for doing nothing and continuing to play whack-a-mole with human frailties. That seems like it. It kind of feels something should have been worked out by now, but nobody wants to put a system in place, that would could due to a glitch direct a bunch of flight to crash into a mountain or into each other.
xienze 1y ago
[flagged]
mbrameld 1y ago
> As much as the article tries to balance it out that the controllers should have done more it seems that ultimately the pilot flying was distracted and not following instructions from the instructor sitting next to them. It happened at least twice based on the captured recordings. I'm a helicopter flight instructor, although I've never flown in the military. There are 5 magic words the instructor can, and I would argue is obligated to, use to fix the situation: "I have the flight controls" Knowing they were 100 feet high and flying into the approach corridor with an aircraft on short final and not taking the controls is an enormous failure on the part of the instructor. The student was likely task-saturated and the instructor should have recognized that.
- rconti 1y ago
  I was also struck by | He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank. Now, I'd love to _hear_ the actual comment/instruction here. He may have been hedging because he was trying to piece together the stepped on "pass behind" direction from ATC. But I also wonder if it's an inherent problem when the student outranks the instructor?
  - aaronbaugher 1y ago
    Seems like a lot of people have never had to deal with a higher-ranked person who might ruin the underling's career if shown up in a particularly embarrassing way. It's easy to imagine that prospect causing the instructor to hesitate just enough for disaster.
    - mbrameld 1y ago
      Instructors routinely take the flight controls, it's not embarrassing at all.
- rainsford 1y ago
  > Knowing they were 100 feet high and flying into the approach corridor with an aircraft on short final and not taking the controls is an enormous failure on the part of the instructor. Even if they were out of the helicopter airway, based at least on radio transmissions the instructor thought they had the landing aircraft in sight and presumably thought they could stay separated from it visually. I would agree with you if staying at the exact right altitude and position was being thought of as the primary factor keeping them separated from traffic they couldn't see, but it seems different when they were operating under visual separation and thought they could see the aircraft. That said, I fly Skyhawks not Blackhawks (or any kind of helicopter), so maybe the expectations are different in the rotary wing world. But my experience is that a 100ft altitude deviation is not an "instructors takes the controls" situation in an airplane unless you're about to run into something. Of course they were in this case, but it's not obvious the instructor knew that.
mmooss 1y ago
> Was there something in their personal life or career to warrant that - a setback, some family situation? Why do you focus on that and not many other possibilities for distraction - cognitive overload, lack of sleep, an injury, other distractions in the cockpit, etc.
- rdtsc 1y ago
  > Why do you focus on that and not many other possibilities for distraction Why shouldn't I focus on those? I guess just by asking the question you haven't quite shown why your guess are better. I guess I don't how lack of sleep is a better explainer than, I don't know, a family member dying? I guess which one would the investigator be able to figure out? They can read the obituary of the grandmother but how would they figure she didn't sleep well the night before.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    I'm not guessing one or the other; I don't see why anyone would. For evidence, they could ask people who know the pilot, review personal data, etc.
    - rdtsc 1y ago
      > I'm not guessing one or the other; I don't see why anyone would. Well you just did above: > and not many other possibilities for distraction - cognitive overload, lack of sleep, an injury, other distractions in the cockpit, etc. Yeah it could be all of those and we should wait for investigation. But seems my particular guess bothered you for some reason and you suggested better guess, and I am just wondering what about my guess bothered you. I can see if you just say "ok, let's not guess and wait for the investigation", I can agree with that.
      - mmooss 1y ago
        I did not guess any; I listed possibilities in addition to the one you hypothesized about. Your attachment to reality seems a little weak: You make up a reason the helicopter pilot was (possibly) distracted, you make up my motivations. The way we intelligently distinguish fantasy from reality is evidence. > I can see if you just say "ok, let's not guess and wait for the investigation", I can agree with that. I thought you might have some evidence.
IncreasePosts 1y ago
It seems like both the pilot and instructor misidentified the plane they were supposed to be separated from, otherwise the instructor would have taken the controls and performed the maneuver himself if he knew a collision was imminent. Maybe visual flight separation is a bad idea when there are a bunch of lights from the ground and a busy airspace. A plane on a collision course with you will just look like a static light, like many many other lights in the area.
- rdtsc 1y ago
  > It seems like both the pilot and instructor misidentified the plane they were supposed to be separated from, otherwise the instructor would have taken the controls and performed the maneuver himself if he knew a collision was imminent. I think eventually they figured out and instructed the pilot to avoid but the pilot didn't listen. But that was the second mishap of the flight. The pilot was failing to maintain a proper altitude before that. > Maybe visual flight separation is a bad idea when there are a bunch of lights from the ground and a busy airspace. A plane on a collision course with you will just look like a static light, like many many other lights in the area. To me, at least in this case, it seems the pilot was not adequately prepared. They were either distracted or rusty. The instructor should have taken controls and flown back at the first sign of not being able to maintain a proper altitude. However, the pilot outranked the instructor; taking controls away and failing the qualification / training flight could have resulted in some retribution or more hassles. Also, I think they should instead let pilots do this kind of qualification in similar but more remote or less busy area, longer, until they get more hours under their belt and not allow rank reversals to train like that. They should have found someone outranking her who wouldn't have though twice about grabbing the control.
rainsford 1y ago
I think there is way too much focus on the exact position of the helicopter and the article actually does a pretty good job providing additional details (which it then undermines by ending the article the way it did). For me the most consequential factor is that the helicopter pilots (technically the instructor, but I assume both were in agreement) requested visual separation based on their obviously incorrect visual sighting of the landing aircraft, which the controller granted. While perfect adherence to the routes by both helicopter and airplane might have avoided a collision, the margin is so incredibly slim (75 ft) that it seems unlikely the intent was that it would serve as the primary way to separate traffic. Properly executed visual separation would have kept everyone safe, but it seems pretty likely that neither helicopter pilot actually has eyes on the jet, maybe at any point or maybe just prior to the crash. I also think it's hasty to discount the controller's role. At least based on the article, it's not clear the controller provided enough information that the helicopter pilots could have determined if they had visually identified the right aircraft. Given how busy the airspace is, making sure the helicopter was tracking the right landing aircraft is pretty critical. And while it's the pilots' job, the controller can certainly give them every advantage. I think the statement in the article about many things going wrong all at the same time is likely the right one, although of course we should wait for the final NTSB report to say for certain. I feel like people want the satisfaction of identifying one single primary cause, but most aircraft accidents don't really work like that. And we should want to understand all the factors to plug as many holes in the swiss cheese as we can going forward.
- rdtsc 1y ago
  > the margin is so incredibly slim (75 ft) that it seems unlikely the intent was that it would serve as the primary way to separate traffic. At that level a few hundred feet (since the helicopter is already supposed to be flying 200 or so feet above the ground) can make all the difference. > I think the statement in the article about many things going wrong all at the same time is likely the right one, although of course we should wait for the final NTSB report to say for certain. I feel like people want the satisfaction of identifying one single primary cause, but most aircraft accidents don't really work like that. And we should want to understand all the factors to plug as many holes in the swiss cheese as we can going forward. There can be contributing factors but the just because there are many factors doesn't mean they are equally weighted. At least with the pilot with have at least two indications they were confused. The instructor next to them tried to correct them a few times already. > At least based on the article, it's not clear the controller provided enough information that the helicopter pilots could have determined if they had visually identified the right aircraft. Given how busy the airspace is, making sure the helicopter was tracking the right landing aircraft is pretty critical. I think at least the non-flying pilot, the instructor, had understood and directed the pilot to avoid the collision, but the pilot didn't listen. The ATC in a busy airspace like don't have the time to have a long discussion with pilots ensuring they are good pilots and know what aircraft they are seeing "do you see 3 lights on it, one is red?", "how many engines do you see?". That just not very likely. They assume a helicopter pilot on that kind of an airspace configuration will know what they are doing. If they request visual separation they assume a hefty responsibility.
bfeynman 1y ago
idiotic comment. This is literally a training mission - not following an order is not disobeying this is clearly failure of instructor who was not ready to take over. This is a common pattern in like almost any other training situation.

by rdtsc 1y ago

alistairSH 1y ago

Was there something in their personal life or career to warrant that - a setback, some family situation? Otherwise they seemed qualified and flew that route a few times already. Beyond her general lack of flight-time? Her primary role appeared to be some sort of liaison in DC, not flying Blackhawks.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rhcom2 1y ago
450 hours over 5 years for a Army helicopter pilot stateside doesn't seem to be abnormally low.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  That's only 90 hours/year. Not even 2 hours/week. That may be common for an Army pilot, but for somebody expected to fly during wartime, transport VIPs under stressful conditions, etc that's pretty goddam minimal.
  - sjs382 1y ago
    Is that based on something other than vibes? From what I can tell, that's the low end of average, but that's based on 5ish mins of fact-checking.
    - alistairSH 1y ago
      Vibes, I guess... 2 hours/week feels inadequate to maintain proficiency in a highly technical, high-stress role.
      - sjs382 1y ago
        Seems that for a FAC 1, UH-60, 48 hours is required semiannually (every 6 months) and 12hr of sim can be applied to meet those flight time minimums. For FAC 2, it's 30 over 6 months, also allowing 12 hrs of that as sim time. One source among many: https://helicopterforum.verticalreference.com/topic/24169-army-commissioned-pilot-flight-hours/ https://helicopterforum.verticalreference.com/topic/24169-ar... This is one of those situations where common intuition doesn't match reality. I've similarly been wrong in the past where my intuition was off wrt/ to hours on industrial equipment compared to their expected life.
        alistairSH 1y ago
        Yeah, I’m not claiming the hours were unusual, only that the 2 hours/weeks feels inadequate to maintain superior operational readiness. That’s not even a round of golf.
        nativeit 1y ago

YetAnotherNick 1y ago

The warrant officer was the instructor and was training her. Few times doesn't make someone qualified. I think it was because of military egos and ranks, the warrant officer didn't force corrected the Captain. Also why is training happening in such dangerous path where even if the instructions were followed the aircrafts could get as close as 30 m apart.

milkshakes 1y ago
exploring this phenomenon is the premise of season two of "the rehearsal"
rdtsc 1y ago
> I think it was because of military egos and ranks, the warrant officer didn't force corrected the Captain. I think they should prohibit such type of flights when ranks are reversed. Let's imagine he would have yanked the controls and avoided the crash. Now the Captain could have said "you're insubordinate and tanked my qualification flight, there will be a price to pay".
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
  Extremely unlikely. Laughably so.
  - rdtsc 1y ago
    Sorry, I am trying to follow, but it's a bit ambiguous. It is laughable that the instructor would take controls away, or laughable that they wouldn't, or that in a military subordinate structure there can be retaliations. I am up for a good laugh, just not sure which one you meant we'd be laughing at.
radlad 1y ago
Coincidentally, Nathan Fielder is currently doing an entire season of The Rehearsal based on the premise that a number of flight crashes occurred after the co-pilot failed to contradict or take controls from the pilot. > Nathan Fielder studies airliner black box transcripts in which the first officer feels too intimidated to challenge the captain, leading to fatal crashes due to pilot error. He discusses this with John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member, who had once recommended roleplay simulation to improve pilot communication. Really good season so far!

Onavo 1y ago

A hundred feet in aviation unfortunately just isn't that much. It's the equivalent of driving 3 miles over the speed limit on the highway. I am not sure about rotorcraft but if you are flying a traditional Cessna for training, a bit of wind shear or updraft can easily change your altitude by hundreds of feet.

rdtsc 1y ago
> A hundred feet in aviation unfortunately just isn't that much. It's the equivalent of driving 3 miles over the speed limit on the highway. I am not sure about rotorcraft but if you are flying a traditional Cessna for training, a bit of wind shear or updraft can easily change your altitude by hundreds of feet. I would agree in general, but in that particular environment around DC with the restricted WH fly zone, the busy airport, the river and the bridges and the ADSB switched off it can make a huge difference.
- Onavo 1y ago
  Yeah, I find the report to be more of a morning after quarterback situation. For general plane to plane vertical separation, you are supposed to maintain a minimum of hundreds of feet. A hundred feet shouldn't make a difference.

xhkkffbf 1y ago

[flagged]

rdtsc 1y ago
It shouldn't matter and I didn't want to bring their gender into the picture.
guywithahat 1y ago
[flagged]
- renewiltord 1y ago
  The grammar is fine. Saying "the pilot did not listen to the instructor sitting next to them" is perfectly fine in English and has been so since at least the '90s when I first learned the language as a child.
  - crooked-v 1y ago
    Singular they has always been valid in modern English, going back to before Shakespeare (he used it a couple of times). The idea that it isn't comes from contrarian mid-18th-century prescriptivists who wanted to actively change the language people were already using.
  - guywithahat 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - alistairSH 1y ago
      At best, the use of singular they is far more complicated than you're stating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
      - guywithahat 1y ago
        a Wikipedia link means nothing, especially in the context of politically charged grammar. You can't link most conservative papers on Wikipedia, and some of the founders regularly acknowledge the site is heavily biased. I mean that article claims singular they was common through the 19th and 20th century, but we see that's not true through any dictionary lookup https://www.websters1913.com/words/They https://www.websters1913.com/words/They They (thā), pron. pl.; poss. Theirs; obj. Them. [Icel. þeir they, properly nom. pl. masc. of sā, sū, þat, a demonstrative pronoun, akin to the English definite article, AS. sē, seó, ðæt, nom. pl. ðā. See That.] The plural of he, she, or it. They is never used adjectively, but always as a pronoun proper, and sometimes refers to persons without an antecedent expressed. Using they to refer to someone when you don't want to acknowledge their gender is a very recent thing, only done by the politically motivated.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

pj_mukh 1y ago

I mean maybe instead of patholigizing to that level we maybe need to accept that there is a temporal normal distribution to human attention spans and design our systems around it. It feels like semi-autonomous ATC and flight controls were possible as of 5 years ago. Has FAA even started writing initial reports on this?

rdtsc 1y ago
> semi-autonomous ATC Yeah, that one has been around as long as there have been computers. It's sort of like the flying car of the ATC world - it's always 5 years away. > temporal normal distribution to human attention spans Tn this case we had both the ATC and the instructor tell the pilot to do something different and they didn't listen. Not sure if that's an attention span issue, it may be, but it's not clear it's definitely what it is.
- pj_mukh 1y ago
  AFAICT the technologies been around for a while (esp assistance). It's the regulation and the minefield of a roll-out plan that the FAA would rather not take on. Nobody gets fired for doing nothing and continuing to play whack-a-mole with human frailties.
  - rdtsc 1y ago
    > AFAICT the technologies been around for a while (esp assistance) Yeah, agree. There is even mention of a collision alarm at the tower going off > Nobody gets fired for doing nothing and continuing to play whack-a-mole with human frailties. That seems like it. It kind of feels something should have been worked out by now, but nobody wants to put a system in place, that would could due to a glitch direct a bunch of flight to crash into a mountain or into each other.

xienze 1y ago

[flagged]

mbrameld 1y ago

> As much as the article tries to balance it out that the controllers should have done more it seems that ultimately the pilot flying was distracted and not following instructions from the instructor sitting next to them. It happened at least twice based on the captured recordings. I'm a helicopter flight instructor, although I've never flown in the military. There are 5 magic words the instructor can, and I would argue is obligated to, use to fix the situation: "I have the flight controls" Knowing they were 100 feet high and flying into the approach corridor with an aircraft on short final and not taking the controls is an enormous failure on the part of the instructor. The student was likely task-saturated and the instructor should have recognized that.

rconti 1y ago
I was also struck by | He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank. Now, I'd love to _hear_ the actual comment/instruction here. He may have been hedging because he was trying to piece together the stepped on "pass behind" direction from ATC. But I also wonder if it's an inherent problem when the student outranks the instructor?
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
  Seems like a lot of people have never had to deal with a higher-ranked person who might ruin the underling's career if shown up in a particularly embarrassing way. It's easy to imagine that prospect causing the instructor to hesitate just enough for disaster.
  - mbrameld 1y ago
    Instructors routinely take the flight controls, it's not embarrassing at all.
rainsford 1y ago
> Knowing they were 100 feet high and flying into the approach corridor with an aircraft on short final and not taking the controls is an enormous failure on the part of the instructor. Even if they were out of the helicopter airway, based at least on radio transmissions the instructor thought they had the landing aircraft in sight and presumably thought they could stay separated from it visually. I would agree with you if staying at the exact right altitude and position was being thought of as the primary factor keeping them separated from traffic they couldn't see, but it seems different when they were operating under visual separation and thought they could see the aircraft. That said, I fly Skyhawks not Blackhawks (or any kind of helicopter), so maybe the expectations are different in the rotary wing world. But my experience is that a 100ft altitude deviation is not an "instructors takes the controls" situation in an airplane unless you're about to run into something. Of course they were in this case, but it's not obvious the instructor knew that.

mmooss 1y ago

> Was there something in their personal life or career to warrant that - a setback, some family situation? Why do you focus on that and not many other possibilities for distraction - cognitive overload, lack of sleep, an injury, other distractions in the cockpit, etc.

rdtsc 1y ago
> Why do you focus on that and not many other possibilities for distraction Why shouldn't I focus on those? I guess just by asking the question you haven't quite shown why your guess are better. I guess I don't how lack of sleep is a better explainer than, I don't know, a family member dying? I guess which one would the investigator be able to figure out? They can read the obituary of the grandmother but how would they figure she didn't sleep well the night before.
- mmooss 1y ago
  I'm not guessing one or the other; I don't see why anyone would. For evidence, they could ask people who know the pilot, review personal data, etc.
  - rdtsc 1y ago
    > I'm not guessing one or the other; I don't see why anyone would. Well you just did above: > and not many other possibilities for distraction - cognitive overload, lack of sleep, an injury, other distractions in the cockpit, etc. Yeah it could be all of those and we should wait for investigation. But seems my particular guess bothered you for some reason and you suggested better guess, and I am just wondering what about my guess bothered you. I can see if you just say "ok, let's not guess and wait for the investigation", I can agree with that.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      I did not guess any; I listed possibilities in addition to the one you hypothesized about. Your attachment to reality seems a little weak: You make up a reason the helicopter pilot was (possibly) distracted, you make up my motivations. The way we intelligently distinguish fantasy from reality is evidence. > I can see if you just say "ok, let's not guess and wait for the investigation", I can agree with that. I thought you might have some evidence.

IncreasePosts 1y ago

It seems like both the pilot and instructor misidentified the plane they were supposed to be separated from, otherwise the instructor would have taken the controls and performed the maneuver himself if he knew a collision was imminent. Maybe visual flight separation is a bad idea when there are a bunch of lights from the ground and a busy airspace. A plane on a collision course with you will just look like a static light, like many many other lights in the area.

rdtsc 1y ago
> It seems like both the pilot and instructor misidentified the plane they were supposed to be separated from, otherwise the instructor would have taken the controls and performed the maneuver himself if he knew a collision was imminent. I think eventually they figured out and instructed the pilot to avoid but the pilot didn't listen. But that was the second mishap of the flight. The pilot was failing to maintain a proper altitude before that. > Maybe visual flight separation is a bad idea when there are a bunch of lights from the ground and a busy airspace. A plane on a collision course with you will just look like a static light, like many many other lights in the area. To me, at least in this case, it seems the pilot was not adequately prepared. They were either distracted or rusty. The instructor should have taken controls and flown back at the first sign of not being able to maintain a proper altitude. However, the pilot outranked the instructor; taking controls away and failing the qualification / training flight could have resulted in some retribution or more hassles. Also, I think they should instead let pilots do this kind of qualification in similar but more remote or less busy area, longer, until they get more hours under their belt and not allow rank reversals to train like that. They should have found someone outranking her who wouldn't have though twice about grabbing the control.

rainsford 1y ago

I think there is way too much focus on the exact position of the helicopter and the article actually does a pretty good job providing additional details (which it then undermines by ending the article the way it did). For me the most consequential factor is that the helicopter pilots (technically the instructor, but I assume both were in agreement) requested visual separation based on their obviously incorrect visual sighting of the landing aircraft, which the controller granted. While perfect adherence to the routes by both helicopter and airplane might have avoided a collision, the margin is so incredibly slim (75 ft) that it seems unlikely the intent was that it would serve as the primary way to separate traffic. Properly executed visual separation would have kept everyone safe, but it seems pretty likely that neither helicopter pilot actually has eyes on the jet, maybe at any point or maybe just prior to the crash. I also think it's hasty to discount the controller's role. At least based on the article, it's not clear the controller provided enough information that the helicopter pilots could have determined if they had visually identified the right aircraft. Given how busy the airspace is, making sure the helicopter was tracking the right landing aircraft is pretty critical. And while it's the pilots' job, the controller can certainly give them every advantage. I think the statement in the article about many things going wrong all at the same time is likely the right one, although of course we should wait for the final NTSB report to say for certain. I feel like people want the satisfaction of identifying one single primary cause, but most aircraft accidents don't really work like that. And we should want to understand all the factors to plug as many holes in the swiss cheese as we can going forward.

rdtsc 1y ago
> the margin is so incredibly slim (75 ft) that it seems unlikely the intent was that it would serve as the primary way to separate traffic. At that level a few hundred feet (since the helicopter is already supposed to be flying 200 or so feet above the ground) can make all the difference. > I think the statement in the article about many things going wrong all at the same time is likely the right one, although of course we should wait for the final NTSB report to say for certain. I feel like people want the satisfaction of identifying one single primary cause, but most aircraft accidents don't really work like that. And we should want to understand all the factors to plug as many holes in the swiss cheese as we can going forward. There can be contributing factors but the just because there are many factors doesn't mean they are equally weighted. At least with the pilot with have at least two indications they were confused. The instructor next to them tried to correct them a few times already. > At least based on the article, it's not clear the controller provided enough information that the helicopter pilots could have determined if they had visually identified the right aircraft. Given how busy the airspace is, making sure the helicopter was tracking the right landing aircraft is pretty critical. I think at least the non-flying pilot, the instructor, had understood and directed the pilot to avoid the collision, but the pilot didn't listen. The ATC in a busy airspace like don't have the time to have a long discussion with pilots ensuring they are good pilots and know what aircraft they are seeing "do you see 3 lights on it, one is red?", "how many engines do you see?". That just not very likely. They assume a helicopter pilot on that kind of an airspace configuration will know what they are doing. If they request visual separation they assume a hefty responsibility.

bfeynman 1y ago

idiotic comment. This is literally a training mission - not following an order is not disobeying this is clearly failure of instructor who was not ready to take over. This is a common pattern in like almost any other training situation.