Posts about: "Accident Waiting to Happen" [Posts: 27 Page: 2 of 2]¶

Yes, I think that's right.

​​​​​​The argument would rely upon the defendant knowing or ought to have known that the accident was waiting to happen. The FAA had the database, but failed to act upon the accumulation of near miss reports.

​​​​​​​It's more difficult to argue that the airlines should have been doing FAA's job for them.

How many of these near miss reports were filed by American Airlines crews?

You have a point RBF but, ultimately, it's the airline who is responsible to keep their customers, staff and innocent bystanders (ie Joe Public going about their lawful business) safe. They are the operators and their Safety Management organisation is there to reduce all Risks they face to ALARP.

Sure, the FAA have that same responsibility in ensuring their airspace is safe and operates safely. However, that does not absolve the airline of their own Safety responsibilities. Just to say "Well, the FAA say it's OK so it's fine!" is not enough. Aviation is littered by 1000's of cases where the National rules say one thing but an airline will be even more restrictive. For eg, the ILS minima for an approach to R/W 24 at ABC may be, let's say, 100ft, but Airline XYZ itself says only Captains may fly down to that on this particular approach - their 1st Officers can't even fly the approach at all (for whatever reason)! Obviously, you can't go less restrictive than the Regs but you can go more restrictive.

The data in the various databases is freely available (I've used them myself for research back in the day) so the airline should be doing it's own "due diligence" around their operation rather than blindly accepting what the FAA say. However, and there always is one of these, the "downside" is that it may well be more expensive to operate within the more restrictive case which will upset the Finance Department who will cite the regs.....

And so it goes on......... The only certainty is that the lawyers will do well out of this (appols to Willow-Run !).......

I may have a dig round on the stats when I get time (currently sorting out heating in the house so quite busy with pipework everywhere!). But I'm sure many in the FAA etc have done exactly that and it's why the NTSB came down on the setup at DCA like a ton of bricks. IIR, they suggested that the FAA look to see if there were other similar risks at other airfields as well.

Also, there were some comments a while back in this Thread that there had been a number of "incidents" (ie TAs) at DCA. Also, it's not how many compared to X, Y or Z. It's not just down to simple numbers - risk assesment is way more than that. It's down to the SME's involved.

Just a few incidents should prompt a much more detailed analysis which then reveals the true risk. If there are more happening elsewhere, all that should do is make you look across the board and ask "Where else is this risk present?" despite no evidence to date - in other words they should have indirectly flagged up DCA.

The danger is an accident can happen the very first time a risk comes home to roost - if you are fortunate, you may get some "near-misses" first as a warning ..... but you may not! But, from what I've read, I'm not sure the NTSB saw this as an "out the blue" event - rather an "accident waiting to happen". Finally, safety is not purely numbers - it's appropriate/intelligent interpretation of those numbers. One event can be more significant than a history of 1000 of similar, but slightly different, events

Anyway, I've had my say and much of this has been said before anyway so I'll return to lurk mode! And my plumbing..... Deep joy!!!!!

Two-and-a-half hours into the hearing, and it's grim stuff, with the FAA being crucified in real-time.

While "an accident waiting to happen" is an old cliche, there can't have been many accidents where it was more apt, with reference being made to a precursor at DCA a dozen or so years ago where only luck avoided a similar outcome, and sod-all having been done in the meantime to mitigate the possibility of a recurrence.

that recreation is incredible, kudos to NTSB

I don\x92t know why they chose to create it from the IP\x92s (RHS)\x92s point of view though, the PF was LHS and arguably had a better view of the CRJ the entire time

IP seemed like he had his hands full with the RT (they were blocked a few times) and monitoring the PF\x92s flying (she busted the altitude constraint multiple times)

definitely an absurd environment and accident waiting to happen (plenty of near misses have been reported subsequently in the same airspace). Americans have all the gear and money but somehow their cowboy side comes out all too often and aviation seems to be one of the biggest candidates. They are lucky they didn\x92t have the obnoxious clown JFK Steve screaming in their ears