Posts about: "ATC" [Posts: 614 Page: 21 of 31]¶

It's an interesting comparison, but I am not sure it's fair to say that a controller would know that visual separation at night is unsafe or appreciate the counterintuitive point that NVG make it less safe. Of course, they *should* know, but since they don't need to have night flying (or any flying) experience of their own, they are reliant on being educated on that point. That would be a matter for the regulator (specifically, pilots and human factors specialists within the regulator) to ensure. The same goes for the more robust option of prohibiting night visual separation entirely.
Returning to your doctor analogy: if front line medics prescribed a drug which years later turned out to be harmful to patients, despite following all professional best practice and having no reason at the time to suspect that the drug had been wrongly certified, it would be grossly unfair to hold the medics responsible. Instead we would turn to the drug regulator and those who carried out the trials.

Apologies on not using accurate terminology wrt being stepped up solutions but;
the technology is available to stop dual transmissions, even a warning light in the cockpit (ATC station).when simultaneous transmissions are being made would help safety.

On the collision avoidance technology the CAA gave a grant of \xa3250 towards the cost of approved FLARM devices one of which I have - XC TRACER MAXX - which also has FANET.

The swiss invented FLARM nearly 30 years ago and marketed it at cost; it has been obligatory in France for glider operations for the last decade. According to the CAA website it is better than the ADS-B out.

The telecommunication industry has come a long way from the necessity of climbing into the electrical bay and re racking or thumping a radio module but basic cockpit radio procedures haven’t.

What appears to be also relevant is the language and associated phraseology; there was a narrow airmiss in Dublin between an executive jet on take off and a private helicopter pilot caused by ambiguous crossing clearance issued - cross behind the rolling aircraft IIRC which the helicopter pilot took to mean the aircraft rolling down the runway after landing whereas the controller meant the executive jet about to roll; the copilot stuffed the stick forward after take off and passed underneath helicopter.

In this accident I presume that all were Americans; flying around a southern French airfield the controller standard can be diabolical.

Simplex RT works fine. We are all trained how to listen before using the PTT, how to formulate a transmission and how to allow space for an answer - most of the time.

ATC works very well. All efforts are made to avoid any confliction from the flight plan stage to the tactical stage - most of the time.

Pilots develop an awareness of other aircraft around them by listening to the RT, watching TCAS / Wx radar and looking out. This is most useful in understanding complicated situations - most of the time.

Even when the odd situation occurs where time and ideas run out and things are tight, people get away with it - most of the time.

But - not all the time. The Tenerife crash for instance involved a double transmission. One aircraft in extremis stuck on the foggy runway, trying desperately to stop the other rolling, while a tower communication took place and the RT was jammed. The question is, do we want to plan for these rare last second occurrences? I would guess yes - same philosophy as with GPWS and TCAS. We should have a means of communicating where an priority transmission overrides other radio traffic. There will be many who can explain why this can't be done, impossible, too expensive or unworkable. I am not here to explain in this modern and digital World how it should be done but you young bloods should suss out fairly quickly how it could be done. (spoiler - don't forget the open guard box)

N123, join the downwind, your traffic is a 737 on final 2 miles out, turn base behind him, you are #2. I can do that at night unless there are other 737s lined up and then I have to figure out which one.
N123, do you see the closest plane lined up, pass right below and behind him and never mind all the other planes right behind. Ah......NO.
There is night visual and there is night nutty visual. The first example leaves a lot of room for error and time for ATC to see if it is going wrong.

Errr. No means to identify the East bank of a major river in the middle of a well lit city at night ? Not sure about that. They are what they are though and I'm sure Jennifer would have checked her facts. Just by way of comparison, I can assure you if you were 1000ft away from the London Heliroutes over Heathrow you'd have the undivided attention of the controller.

So this just cracks me up. He's in the middle of the river where the route says it's up the East bank, and that's OK because the routes are not defined with no procedural separation from landing traffic. He's instructed to pass behind the CRJ, but that would involve him either holding short or deviating over the city at 200ft at night, but instead he chooses to plow right on. The helicopter is out of his standard altitude, and the jet is way above the glideslope, and ATC encourages them to sort it out themselves. And the helicopter crew are wearing NVGs. What could possibly go wrong.

Accepting that the altimetry may be a side issue in this accident, but one explanation for the apparent altimeter discrepancy of around 100ft could be if pilots adjusted baro-alt to read same as radalt while over the water. Is this SOP in helicopter ops? Or were they given an altimeter setting to apply when they checked in on freq? The Potomac is tidal in that area with a tidal range 3ft or so, so radalt is near equivalent to amsl.

So maybe the handling pilot misread 300ft radio and set an indicated 210ft on her baro-altimeter, while the pilot monitoring correctly set 300ft on his baro-altimeter, but without a crosscheck being performed. Subsequently if they adjusted flightpath to fly 200ft on the handling pilots baro alt then that would explain quite a lot\x85.

eg The helicopter flying at 290ft radio (actually 278ft at impact); the pilot monitoring\x92s nudge to the pilot handling to descend a bit; the transponder mode C reporting 300ft from the pressure altitude capsule in the handling pilots baro altimeter (which we\x92ve seen on the various ATC traffic videos).

Here you go. I feel rage too. And I'm willing to bet that those responsible are not held to account. You can hear the, "we've looked at this and there are definitely changes we can make to increase the safety in this airspace" being warmed up. I looked at the other heliroutes charts for the US around NY & Boston, and I can't see any minimum or maximum altitudes at all. I'm sure someone who knows these areas can point out what I'm missing. But if I'm not missing anything, then it's a sign that the bare minimum is put out there for guidance, and the people who are trying to make the best of it will be hung out to dry.

So the message for everyone is to politely and firmly refuse to do things that are not in your own interest, to make copious reports through safety management systems of events that you see that breach the normal, and to stop trying to work around a broken system where you ultimately will be the scapegoat.

Not quite funny once the body bags fill up.
Your litany of how the holes in the cheese lined up might be missing a detail or two, but any of those holes not lining up might have avoided this tragedy.
I think I agree with you.
The rad alt is right there.
At night over water at low level, the pilots I flew with did not ignore their rad alt.
It was a part of one's scan.
If I know that field elevation is 14', and my rad alt isn't at 200' or less on a route where max altitude is 200', a correction is needed now, before the error gets larger. (The separate issue of going behind, and that tower guidance apparently being stepped on, is another pair of holes in the cheese).
I am at a loss to understand the apparent magnitude of the altitude error (they were still too close laterally, yes), but as I've been out of the cockpit for a few years I am not aware of what's being taught these days.
On most airlines, they do have a barf bag, still, in the seat pocket in front of you. Suggest you vomit into that and avoid the choke hazard.

On rare occasion (for my civilian flying) I have been given a VFR clearance at an unusually low altitude (flying along Miami Beach being one example), and occasionally a routing I consider more risky (over water or a built up area with no where to go if the engine quits). Usually, I have accepted and flown the cleared routing, though there have been times I have requested a variation to reduce risk. These have been occasional for me, therefore I treated them as such, and my awareness went up considerably. To me, a situation which deviates from my "normal" requires heightened vigilance I'm a little nervous doing something I would not normally do.

So if the Blackhawk pilots either flew this low altitude route regularly, or it was an operational norm for that pilot group/operation, pilots would begin to relax with it - it's "normal" I opine that it is never normal to fly at 200 feet AGL in a built up area, nor close to the approach path for a busy airport. So if the training and operational norms of this routing lead pilots to think it is normal, they treat it that way, and vigilance goes down. This was an accident waiting to happen, because of normalization of deviance form established norms of flying.

I've learned the hard way that when ATC asks if you have X aircraft in sight, once you think you do, mentally map the path of that aircraft, then start looking for the one you have not seen yet - particularly with two pilots! You get a clearance to pass at 200 AGL under the approach path of a busy airport at night - that's unusual, and spidy senses should be tingling lots! This hyper awareness should be being trained into the operation - a preflight briefing from the lead "On this flight, we could expect this routing and clearance. This will be unusual, and we're going to be extra aware by doing the following....".

So it's easy to blame the Blackhawk pilots, and yes, they wear some of this, but the military let the pilots down by not categorizing this flight as "high risk", and ATC let the pilots down by clearing a routing which had the potential to provide only a hundreds of feet vertical separation, rather than insisting on both vertical, lateral, and projected path separation, and thereafter, telling the Blackhawk pilots all of the airplanes they should be seeing, not just the one, which seems to have been misunderstood.

I have been instructed to orbit to allow for a passing aircraft to clear in front of me, why not this time? Maybe that low altitude air route is too small for a normal orbit? Another red lag about that route not being a good idea!

I agree the altimeters are not as an important an issue as the flawed policies and procedures were. Were the helicopter routes originally approved for day VMC only while, years ago, the airport was much less busy and over time due to pressures layers of added operations were added such as night and NVG operations?



While the PAT 25 pilots, prior to take off, would set the barometric pressure each gauge must have no more than a +/- 75 foot error (FAA). One gauge may have read + 50 feet high while the other one read - 50 feet low which would account for the 100 foot difference in flight between the two barometric altimeters. Many mechanical and pilot input errors would be potential factors. Not common but sometimes a pilot will read back the correct setting while at the same time setting a different value by mistake. IF the 100 foot discrepancy was discussed initially on the ground it may account for the lack of discussion , later in the flight, while at 400 feet PM and 300 feet PF. It begs the question was radar altimeter planned to be used and if so when?

Even though there are some transmissions stepped on for various reasons, the words runway thirty three were mentioned a number of times. As crossing the threshold to runway 33 posed a significant risk to PAT 25 I would have thought the PAT 25 crew, to know from experience, that in 3 to 4 minutes from the time ATC reported the CRJ crossing the bridge the CRJ would pass directly in front of them at or near the same altitude. It's not clear to me why PAT 25 would not have reduced airspeed and or held at HAINS point.

I belive the simultaneous helicopter and runway 33 operations should never have been permitted. Clearance limits and expected further clearance times mirroring the ETA for rwy 33 given to helicopters to arrive at or hold at HAINS point would have be helpful in preventing conflicts.

The diagram shows the route up the east ~half of the river, solidly over water. The inset seems to show it within perhaps the east quarter, but still 100% over water. Asking crews to follow the riverbank therefore seems to be a direct contradiction.

You could reasonably define the bank as the water's edge, and therefore expect crews to fly along an infinitesimally narrow path. Or as the space between the water's edge and the [edge of the flood plain | first flat area | something else], which would imply that the western boundary changes with the water level. Both imply the route is substantially above land.

Neither are useful for precise navigation, but the map and the description are probably 'close enough' if they are only needed for general route guidance and knowing that structures on the east bank need to be NOTAMed for helicopters, but probably not the west bank.

A good reminder that measurements/specifications without tolerance are often worse than useless.

If it quacks like a duck... this kind of "It can't be an X because we can't do it, so we'll call it a Y" leads to a culture that gets used to massaging the truth for convenience. Did we hear more on the Alaska door plug that was an 'opening' not a 'removal'?

I have not read, in any detail, exactly what has been said about altimeters , mode C, VFR routes, visual separation at night, mistakes by ATC or pilots - any , or all of these may have been contributory causes to this accident but; there was one overriding cause of this tragedy, & that was the existence of a dangerous route & procedure in a very low level & high pressure & demanding traffic situation. In short, these sort of routes should never be allowed anywhere near short finals at a busy commercial airport. If the helicopter route had not existed, this accident could, & would, never have happened. End of story - almost.

Playing Devil's Advocate for a moment, if the heliroutes are published for the common sense use of participants, not for the protection of air transport, and we further accept that it is not within the purview of ATC to question the discretion of willing users, I'm afraid we can only fall back on this accident being the sole responsibility of the helicopter. Which I guess is is another way of re-stating your last post.

I wouldn't put it past the FAA to pull a stunt like that, read Mary Schiavo's (ex IG of the Dept. of Transportation) book if you want to know how wily they can be. And Jennifer gave them the perfect lay up in the last briefing.

The more posts I've read on this thread, the more I'm anticipating that court actions seeking compensation for the families of the people killed in this accident will encounter very tough barriers.

This is an excerpt from a website of an actually well-known, very accomplished, and respected group of lawyers who specialize in (among other things) aviation matters. I'm not using their name and I don't have any approval, express or implied, to use information from their website - but if justice is to be sought for the victims' families, public discussion is - or should be - encouraged.

"A discretionary function is an action of a governmental nature exercised by a federal employee, but in order for that action to be considered a discretionary function, it must pass a two-part test:

There must be an element of judgment or choice. That is, if a federal statute or regulation prescribes a course of action for an employee to follow, there is no discretion.
That judgment or choice must be susceptible to policy analysis.
The Federal Tort Claims Act contains a discretionary function exception that says the U.S. cannot be held liable for any employee\x92s failure to exercise or perform a discretionary duty.

Within the legal field of aviation accidents, discretionary duties for which the U.S. is not liable include the following:

Aircraft \x93spot check\x94 certifications
Weather forecasting
Failure to install equipment
The FAA\x92s design of flight procedures
The types of actions that are considered not discretionary, and therefore, open the U.S. government to litigation are:

The failure to issue air traffic control manual warnings
If air traffic control fails to warn of weather dangers
The failure to maintain equipment
Relaying incorrect instructions to pilots."
END OF EXCERPT [not intended as legal advice here or on its original internet page]

So to return to ATC Watcher's point...... the more posts I read about this midair collision (plus other information such as NTSB briefings) the more I am anticipating that it will require an act of Congress to provide for compensation for the families of the victims. Isn't it the obvious fact that convenience for people who work in Washington and travel "back home" generally speaking on weekends and when Congress isn't convened, is a prime and central reason for the way DCA airspace has been constructed and managed? Is it really going to be the case that because the lawsuits will - in all likelihood - fail to overcome the "discretionary function" exception, that the 67 families will be without a remedy? Is that how it works, then?

In case anyone thinks my sense of being horrified at this accident is clouding reason or logic, consider this - the book Collision Course discusses the PATCO union's genesis, the strike, and so on. PATCO's earliest stirrings resulted in large part from the 1960 midair over New York. Is the United States aviation sector willing to accept an outcome of this accident that in effect travels back over six decades? The point is, given the long-term shortage of ATCOs in this country . . . I don't think a court is capable of ruling that the situation, allowed and in fact enabled by Congress and successive White House presidential administrations, is subject to "negligence" analysis in the currently applicable legal sense. All this being said, this is how I arrive at thinking that in the interests of justice, some other means of providing for the loved ones of 67 souls who were on board needs to be determined and implemented.

Without going down the altitude rabbit hole again, no, aircraft were not allowed to simultaneously occupy almost the same space. They were either separated procedurally by ATC (radar) or maintained their own separation (visual). The DIY at night element failed in this case.

Think of it like a road with a traffic light (ATC) but you can merge on red if you can see it\x92s clear (helicopter). No rotary pilot I know would knowingly pass that close under/behind a jet transport as the wake could literally be the end of you at 200\x92AGL.

Absolutely . Lack of Wake turbulence separation is something that immediately came to my mind when discovering the procedure . That should have been another red flag in the Safety assessment , but I assume initially the H routes were designed with RWY 1 OPS in mind and 33 only for departures. Combining 33 Arrivals with route 4 is the initial issue .
Indeed , and there is a precedent : the 1986 Cerritos collision : the NTSB found no responsibility to ATC as the pilot of the PA28 that hit the DC9 had entered Los Angeles Terminal Control Area airspace without the required clearance. However a judge found the FAA partly responsible to make sure the families of the pax , mostly Mexicans , would be compensated , as the responsible private pilot's wealth would not have been able to cover those.
Here if you want to learn or just refresh your memory ; https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...%20government.

As an aside , the NTSB conclusions of that collision are interesting compared to our DCA accident : ( exactly 40 years ago !)

Yes history often repeats itself . just like the PATCO history...

If you put bad data into the best computer in the world, you will get bad data coming out of it. I would rather set the blame to the procedure designers and those who approved these Heliroutes.
It's way to easy to blame the pilots, over the years there have been incidents due to incorrect QNH settings, were both pilots and ATC have failed to catch the error, in a busy airspace with overworked ATC, late change of runway for airlines, and military helicopters using Night Vision Goggles, altimeter equipment failure/error.

Even the Max 200 ft altitude under the approach to a major US airport is an accident waiting to happen, and whoever approved this to be used during normal operations should be investigated. The CRJ was at around 325 ft on a visual/circling approach when it crashed, does anyone really think it's great airmanship to have a Black Hawk helicopter at 200 ft passing under you?

That's what made the Swiss Cheese model line up perfectly, a planned approved separation of 125 ft was the "best case" scenario.

But, who exactly are the \x93knuckleheads\x94 ? To my mind, they are the officials who approved these routes & procedures. Would you agree ? Others (ATC & pilots) might have made contributory errors, but the situation was orchestrated by those who designed & allowed the procedures. Correct ?

These charted routes are Pre 9/11/01. ATC workload and growth of route, ahem, users, too.

How do you boil a frog? Just like this. Obe degree at a time. This is the B-17/P63 crash- dumb orchestration, no one spoke up.