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When I used to fly in Florida in the 2005-2015ish timeframe, NOTAMs for GPS interference (it didn't say that exactly but that's what it meant) were an everyday
by mrngld 2mo ago
When I used to fly in Florida in the 2005-2015ish timeframe, NOTAMs for GPS interference (it didn't say that exactly but that's what it meant) were an everyday occurrence along my path, it became boilerplate. I experienced it a few times. One moment the GPS thinks you're plodding along next to Ocala, next moment it thinks I've teleported a thousand miles away, and then it'd just quit.
But that's what we train for. That's why aircraft and pilots have redundancy to work around any single possible point of failure and why you practice it until it becomes natural. Because of the NOTAM I'd already have a VOR tuned in, and once the GPS went inop I just fine tuned it to get a radial fix on the VOR. Also tried to never lose my bearings with my MK I Eyeballs either. No big deal.
I feel bad for everyone that lost their lives here, but this is why competence is critical. There's a litany of errors the pilots made. And the article tries to pin a bit on the controller, but no, ultimate responsibility is on the pilot in command, FAR/AIM is clear on that.
If these allegedly instrument rated pilots had been properly drilled by their CFI's and properly grilled during reviews and such this should've been an easy flight.
Also, "just ask Kennedy". Wired bringing that into the conversation is perhaps relevant but not in the way I think they intended. JFK Jr lacked basic airmanship skills. His aircraft was 100% functional until the moment it impacted the ocean.
Some professions simply can't be go-along-to-get-along social clubs. Safety culture centered on competence and performance is key.
- colechristensen 2mo ago[flagged]
- SecretDreams 2mo agoI agree with your perspective re: the tone of the OP. But they hold a perspective that we should also give credence towards. Your main point is the most valid - wait for the final report. But you should be saying the same to the article as written. Prelim report: https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/202990/pdf https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/G... Out of my scope to infer.
- 1123581321 2mo agoWhat do you expect might change between the preliminary and the final report?
- gpm 2mo agoWell for one I would expect the final report to actually come to any sort of conclusion and not just transcribe the conversations between air traffic control and the plane, and the data recorded by the plane. The preliinary report doesn't support (or contradict) the judgment that the pilots just need to "get gud" at all - it doesn't make that sort of judgment at all. For another I'd note that past investigations into accidents that at the surface were the pilot making a very bad decision have found a laundry list of underlying causes that need to be fixed. E.g. see Ontario Flight 1363 where the proximate cause was not de-icing a plane that clearly needed de-icing and the root causes after investigation were a whole lot of institutional issues. And finally at a glance I note that the air traffic control tower appears to have approved this plane flying on instruments, a procedure only allowed when "local altimeter setting [is] received" - apparently referring to GPS. In doing so they had the military disable the jamming. The pilots appear to have communicated to the tower that they would be using that approval until further notice (notice that was anticipated in a couple of minutes). And that the tower apparently without informing the pilots appears to have approved restarting the GPS jamming... I'm not an expert but if I were asked to investigate this (a thing that non-experts are sometimes asked to do, e.g. with the aforementioned flight)... I suggest that this leads to obvious alternate theories of what went wrong such as instruments they had good cause to rely on silently misleading them.
- sokoloff 2mo agoYour last paragraph confuses a few different things. The aircraft was completely legal to fly under IFR during the en route phase. There is no requirement for a local altimeter setting for that; center can provide an area altimeter setting (and does so on every handoff). The lack of a local altimeter setting precluded the use of the instrument approaches (the way you transition from en route phase to landing). Both of the instrument approaches are "when local altimeter setting not received, procedure NA". That equally applies to the RNAV(GPS) and ILS approaches. That doesn't make filing or flying a flight plan to that airport under IFR NA; it just means that you have to either cancel IFR or fly a visual approach (which, despite the name, is an IFR procedure). Both are legal and commonly done; you can even file an IFR flight plan to an airport that doesn't even have a published approach or to a point in space that isn't even an airport. When the pilot asked for a visual approach, they were taking on the obligation for navigating to the airport and for terrain and obstacle clearance. Smaller item: KSRR is a non-towered airport. All the relevant ATC contact was with Albuquerque Center, not with a local tower controller. (If there was a local tower controller, they would almost certainly have been able to provide a local altimeter setting, making the instrument approaches fully available.) ILS-24: https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2607/06922IL24.PDF https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2607/06922IL24.PDF RNAV(GPS)-24: https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2607/06922R24.PDF https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2607/06922R24.PDF
- jatora 2mo agoIt's pretty clear they're laying out that this is pilot error, unlike the article's intent to blame parties other than the pilot. The poster is trying to correct that, from an obvious place of knowledge and experience most of us do not have, and isn't being rude about it either. It's important to understand why things happen in order to prevent them, and to counter the narrative of the opinionated article. And if we should wait for the NTSB report, then so should the article.
- treis 2mo agoMore than one thing can be true. Flying into the side of a mountain is an error by the pilot (obviously). It can also be true that if GPS wasn't being jammed it wouldn't have happened.
- wat10000 2mo ago“If X was different then Y wouldn’t have happened” is a useless way to evaluate things that leads one to blame a butterfly flapping its wings for causing a hurricane.
- gpm 2mo agoNot useless if you can identify and stop the butterflies that cause hurricanes.
- wat10000 2mo agoThe point is that they don’t cause hurricanes, despite the fact that some hurricanes might not have happened if not for the flapping. I can point to at least one fatal crash that wouldn’t have happened if GPS was unavailable. Would it be reasonable to say that crash was caused by a lack of GPS jamming?
- gpm 2mo agoIf I know stopping a particular butterfly from flapping its wings prevents thousands of people from dying and devastating effects on infrastructure (the typical result of a hurricane) I don't particularly care if they "cause" hurricanes I'm still stopping it. Philosophers can debate the meaning of the word "cause" all they want but it really isn't relevant.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- stefan_ 2mo agoMaybe you are just aren't aware that military GPS jamming is extremely routine around the US. It affects airplanes more than cars because the curvature of the earth can not help you and at typical flight altitudes you have easy line of sight to the jammer.
- rdtsc 2mo ago> Wait for the NTSB report before replying, essentially "get gud" The preliminary NTSB report points toward “get gud”. If you request a visual approach and then fly into a mountain getting “gud” will be at top of the list.
- raverbashing 2mo agoPilots complaining about automation: several Pilots unable to fly with all the bells and whistles and getting their ass handed to them when anything falls out of the ordinary: too many
- rootsudo 2mo agoAutomation because of safety, latest recent example, Boeing MCAS, cost savings led to airliners crashing, pilots didn’t complain enough then nor had the proper safety because Boeing. You are not supposed to need all the “bells and whistles” to fly, a plane is a plane and a pilot is in left seat meaning to fly the plane. There are checklists and minimum equipment lists that state what is possible and how to handle failures and control. You can not automate that, yet.
- raverbashing 2mo agoYeah I wouldn't call MCAS automation, and that was 99.9% not on the pilots (that 0.01% was because for good or bad Boeing did have a stab trim runway procedure in place - but even then that barely was enough for the trainwreck that MCAS was)
- rootsudo 2mo agoSorry, is software controlling MCAS not automation?
- raverbashing 2mo agoIt's not solving any actual problem besides "saving training cost" to make one aircraft feel like another one It's like adding a device making a steering wheel harder to turn because people are used to that (with more details, of course, but that's the general idea) Play stupid games, win stupid prizes Ask Boeing how that "cost saving" went
- michaelt 2mo agoThe Boeing MCAS stuff was a travesty, no doubt, and the 346 deaths in 2018-19 should not have happened. But did you know for 'General Aviation' (small planes flown for recreation and suchlike) there are around 300 deaths per year in the US?
- infecto 2mo agoYour post is overly critical, dismissive and rude.
- malfist 2mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2mo agoIs it not possible for a victim of something to carry some blame for the situation they're in? Is it inappropriate to discuss why Mussolini got lynched? Flying with GPS out is something a pilot should know how to do. Jamming isn't the only failure mode; much more mundane mechanical/electrical issues occur all the time.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoThe Darwin Awards site[0] is full of "victims" that were 100% responsible for their own deaths. > If any of yer ancestor's last words were "Hey, ya'll! Look at this!", then you jest might be a redneck. - Jeff Foxworthy [0] https://darwinawards.com https://darwinawards.com
- sokoloff 2mo agoThe pilot is literally the one who holds most of the blame here. This is a pilot-error accident. They flew a perfectly functioning airplane into rising terrain on a visual approach. The pilot requested, and was cleared for, a visual approach. Among other things that that imposes upon on the pilot is an obligation to maintain visual contact with the airport (or the preceding aircraft to follow, not applicable here) and to maintain terrain and obstacle clearance. The primary probable cause will be found to be something like "The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain while on visual approach." with additional notes of "Contributing to the accident were the dark moonless night, the NOTAM'd unreliability of GPS signal in the area which required the crew to revert to other navigation methods, and the pilot's decision to fly an unaided visual approach rather than flying the ILS instrument approach track." The passengers were blameless, but the flight crew was not.
- jatora 2mo agoYou're not sure? It's pretty clear they're laying out that this is pilot error, unlike the article's intent to blame parties other than the pilot. The poster is trying to correct that, from an obvious place of knowledge and experience most of us do not have, and isn't being rude about it either. It's important to understand why things happen in order to prevent them.
- rbanffy 2mo agoI guess GPS jamming was not routine for them. Had they been aware of any NOTAM regarding GPS interference, they'd be prepared, and, like you said, would have VOR setup prior to leaving the ground.
- PhaedrusV 2mo agoChecking NOTAMs is important.
- toomuchtodo 2mo agoI've taken to checking https://gpsjam.org/ https://gpsjam.org/ as part of preflight and inflight when connectivity is available. Cannot always trust the NOTAMs in this regard if those jamming or degrading GPS don't communicate intent or actual, so one must rely on direct observation and reports. I recommend other aviators do the same, the cost is free. (sites surfacing this information are obtaining it from actual automated observations from aircraft ADS-B broadcasts that contain GPS accuracy and positioning information, treating the entire commercial air traffic system as a GPS/GNSS observatory sensor network, which is very cool imho)
- dingaling 2mo agoRussia seldom publishes NOTAMs for offensive GPS interference
- 27183 2mo agoSystems fail for all kinds of reasons, if you're dependent on one SPOF without any backup, bad things will happen eventually. In aviation we're taught to think this way from the very beginning. Always have a spot picked out where you will attempt to land the airplane when (not if!) you lose your engine. Even in the absence of GPS jamming, you can effectively lose GPS for all kinds of reasons in a plane--a connector failing somewhere on the back of your panel, a wire chafing through, etc. GPS is nice, but it's probably a lot less reliable in most light aircraft than the other options. It's been 20yr since I've flown a plane, so maybe attitudes have changed, but my instructors always stressed the importance of always being able to fall back quickly and seamlessly to a paper chart, your watch, flight computer, and basic instruments. Because you will lose everything else at some point.
- jatora 2mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 2mo agoHN threads on aviation are always a bit goofy to anyone who's actually flown a plane, yeah.
- rdtsc 2mo agoI never flew a plane just know enough that a visual approach means “visual” rules. Hitting a mountain at that point is hard to argue for blaming anyone else but the pilot error? Did I get it right?
- gpm 2mo agoNo, you didn't, because they apparently had instrument clearance from the tower at the time they crashed into the mountain. The only correct conclusion here is more investigation is necessary than what has been publicly published.
- rdtsc 2mo agoI read this in the preliminary report https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/202990/pdf https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/G... > The flight crew again reported they “[have] a visual on Ruidoso” at 0008:30 and that they could “go visual.” The ARTCC controller subsequently cleared the flight to SRR, cleared the flight for a visual approach, and informed them they could cancel IFR in the air above 9,000 ft msl or they could cancel their clearance via the flight service station after landing. So you’re pointing out that they requested VFR, got clearance for it but still were flying under IFR rules? Basically the transition to VFR hadn’t completed fully?
- sokoloff 2mo agoA "visual approach" is an instrument flight rules operation. The flight was still IFR and had requested/been cleared for a visual approach, but had not switched to VFR (which they'd do by cancelling IFR). When they accepted the visual approach, they took responsibility for navigation and terrain/obstacle clearance.
- dingaling 2mo ago> No big deal. Sure, if it's obvious it's happening, like GPS being completely knocked-out. If it's a GPS spoofing nudge by a few dozen metres per minute, then it's not so obvious. Enough to make a OWA drone miss its target, while also not being easily noticed by pilots.
- idlewords 2mo agoThe highest mountain summit in Florida is 105 meters above sea level.
- wil421 2mo agoDid you misspell hill? It’s not like some sand mountain jets up 300 feet all of the sudden.
- idlewords 2mo agoRight. I said mountain to stress the importance of topography in the NM accident. The parent commenter may pat himself on the back for never flying into terrain during GPS outages in Florida, but there are factors in play in addition to his superior skills.
- V99 2mo agoIn Florida a) they don't take kindly to that kind of units and b) you should be more worried about the many 1500-2000' antennas than the "mountains". It's still pretty useful to know where you are and not die hitting an invisible guy wire.
- xnx 2mo agoAnd even that is basically Alabama.
- alistairSH 2mo agoYou're not wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean Uncle Sam should be dicking around with GPS jammers as a normal thing (at least not without acknowledging that doing so changes the risk profile of aviation to some extent).
- cdot2 2mo ago" acknowledging that doing so changes the risk profile of aviation to some extent" Isn't that what the NOTAM is?
- alistairSH 2mo agoClearly the NOTAMs aren't doing the job, as this isn't the only instance of issues. It's just the only instance of a crash with fatalities.
- cdot2 2mo agoSo they should turn off the GPS interference whenever they're asked to do so by ATC. Which they did in this case. The timeline is something like , NOTAM issued, flight takes off, flight has issues, ATC asked the military to turn off the interference, the military complies, the flight says they're good now and the interference can continue, ATC informes the military that they can continue, they do, and then the flight crashes. I don't see how the military carries any fault here.
- tenuousemphasis 2mo agoNOTAM is itself a broken system responsible for many mishaps.
- arcfour 2mo agoThat's like saying "what, it was published in the paper of record in your local area!" NOTAMs have so many issues it's not even funny. There's so many of them and 9/10 of them are irrelevant for one.
- tiahura 2mo ago
- mplewis 2mo agoWhat do you think Florida terrain is like in comparison to New Mexico?
- WheatMillington 2mo agoEveryone seems to agree that if the GPS hadn't been inop everyone would still be alive. So to happily dismiss the deadly decisions the government made to place blame on the pilots is kind of disgraceful.
- inemesitaffia 2mo agoTo dismiss the fact that this has been happening in the area long enough that people who were born when it started have kids is motivated reasoning.