Posts about: "CRJ" [Posts: 363 Page: 18 of 19]¶

I recall this testimony (and had been avoiding trying to find it in the videotaped record).

If I understand the way the q&a progressed, and especially the definition provided by the examiner during the q&a of the Army pilot, "procedurally separate" means the airspace design is such that if both aircraft adhere to their assigned routes, the Route 4 helicopter operation can safely cross the approach path to 3-3 (and, though it should be obvious, please correct this if I've said it incorrectly or without enough precision). But as the Army pilot as well as the med evacuation group chief testified, they took steps to avoid operating across the approach path if there was DCA traffic - which the examiner referred to as "mitigations".

(The wash machine of my mind is cycling through some further thoughts on how the facts emerging from the hearings and certain items in the (voluminous) docket are likely to interact with the relevant legal issues and, in turn, how that appears likely to impact the looming NAS, FAA, and "new ATC system" reforms.)

It's not the controller's discretion, it's the pilot's discretion. If the pilot calls "traffic in sight" then the pilot is taking on the responsibility of ensuring separation. If the pilot hadn't done that in this case, then I'm sure the controller would've directed them to hold.

One of the Army pilots at the NTSB hearing said he'd always been instructed to hold when there was traffic on approach to 33. I'd be willing to bet that he never called "traffic in sight" in those instances. That's the crucial difference.

Ward Carroll posted some thoughts about the crash following the evidence a couple of weeks ago. He gives a quick summary of the faacts, and looks at the blame game.

He's quite clear that he thinks that ATC alerting the CRJ about the presence of the helo (using visual flight separation) probably wouldn't have changed the outcome.

But he does pick up on the cockpit dynamics on PAT25. He says

"Now, the most important facts to emerge from the hearings this week center on the cockpit exchange between Warrant Officer Eves and Captain Robach that happened just about a minute before the midair. He says to her, " All right, kind of come left for me, ma'am. I think that's why he's asking ." And she replies, " Sure ." He says, " We're kinda.. ." And she cuts him off by saying, " Oh-kay, fine ." And he finishes his statement “… out toward the middle ”, meaning the middle of the river and west of helicopter route 4. So PAT 25 is above and west of where they should have been as the CRJ is properly on final approach for runway 33. Using maritime rules of the road terms, the CRJ was the burden vessel and the Blackhawk was the giveway vessel." He quotes someone (David Cherbonnier) posting:

"In military protocol, referring to a fellow officer as sir or ma'am is the role of a subordinate. It’s use in the cockpit indicated ‘privilege of rank’ as opposed to the typical instructor student relationship. The instructor was a Chief Warrant Officer with over 10 years service as an enlisted person prior to selection as a Chief Warrant Officer and as well as met all criteria to be a check pilot and as such was the person in charge during the entire training/examination exercise. In any other capacity, a Captain represents a person who has been recognized by Congress to have the qualifications to become an officer. In my experience, an examinee’s response in a drawn out “ oh-kay fine ” would have signaled check ride over. In this instance, deference was given to rank. Was that a contributing factor?"

I disagree. My hackles would be up a bit, probably/hopefully enough, for me to wonder and have a look for it. A traffic headsup call from ATC would also lend more credence to the TCAS TA.

Yeah, "scheduled" was probably the wrong word. I meant that DCA ATC "instructed to fly that segment of the route", with ATC responsible for separation.
It occurs to me that this procedure creates extra work for air traffic control. DCA organisation accounted for it by having a controller position dedicated to controlling helicopters, but they did not have the staffing level to fill that seat at all times when it was needed. A process that may have been safe with adequate staffing stopped being safe when staffing levels fell. At that time, management needed to recognize this (the data was there!) and restructure the airspace to require less work, possibly at the cost of reducing the capacity of the airport/airspace.

Hopefully he knows more about aircraft rules than maritime rules. In maritime parlance (to adopt his analogy), the CRJ would be the "stand-on" vessel (expected to maintain course and speed); the Blackhawk would be the "burdened vessel", responsible for taking avoiding action (giving way).

Presumably you see the CRJ as 'limited in her ability to manoeuvre' since the Blackhawk was on her starboard side.

yes, but the local controller transmitted on both, e.g. the message where the controller told the Blackhawk to pass behind the CRJ.

I think it is unreasonable. Those crews probably do that runway change often, and would do it blindfolded. As for workload, I agree with Layman; the workload, even if they had briefed it, would have been the same.

Clearly not a pilot, again. Pilots, especially of multi-crew aircraft should NOT have to listen every transmission to every other aircraft to "maintain situational awareness".

This is the problem with enthusiastic amateurs and blood-thirsty lawyers: all these peripheral issues take centre-stage and the real causes are not addressed. Easier to spear the pilots of the CRJ for not doing a unneeded briefing or missing a TCAS alerts than get the FAA and army boffins that approved that sh1tshow in the first place...

Retired airline pilot here and I don't need to hear all ATC transmissions, just the ones that have anything to do with my aircraft.

I did not use the words "maintain situational awareness". I'd be hard pressed to pin down when SA is "maintained" and when it is not. To my understanding, SA is something you can have more or less of, and having more is safer, and has prevented some accidents in the past.

I also don't advocate for that issue taking center stage, but to taboo it and to say we can't talk about it ever doesn't seem right, either. The central issue in this accident is ATC's decision to routinely leave separation in the hands of a heli crew with night vision goggles and less than 75 feet of procedural separation. But we all know this by now if we've watched the NTSB presentation, so please excuse me for not repeating this with every post.

The central issue of the lawsuit is whether the level of safety provided by FAA rules, FAA/ATC procedures, Airline decisions and SOPs, Army decisions and SOPs, and pilot performance on the day are sufficient to legal standards. It's a complex interplay of factors, and even though it's clearly far from the deciding factor, I'm not going to say that a late approach briefing did not matter at all.

I personally do not think ADS-B on the helicopter would have changed anything , From what I understand , if it had it could have been spotted earlier by ATC , the conflict alert might have sounded a couple of seconds earlier , etc .. pure speculation .

It would not have changed much for the AA CRJ either , the TA would have been more precise and maybe a second or two earlier , but he had already 2 TAs and most certainly so short from landing the PF was focusing on the PAPI not his TA display

It might have changed something if the Heli was equipped with a CDTI ( ADS-B in display) as it is a powerful tool to help identify traffic visually. But not separate yourself from another aircraft . One thing people in offices making such statements forget is that to provide separations maneuvers ATC needs a stable radar picture , with antennas firmly on the ground facing North . Inside an aircraft constantly moving the picture moves with it , (as you can see on your TCAS display ) Extremely complex to separate yourself using that kind of picture when both you and the target are moving. AWACS operators are trained to do this , but not your average pilot .

So I think this ADS-B on the Military Helis is a red herring made by politicians wanting to appear to \x93do something \x93 and perhaps distract the public from the FAA and regulator failures on both the design of the airspace / routes and the lack of action after numerous previous serious incidents reports ,

I disagree. The operating theory was that the helicopter crew was looking at a plane that was farther out and not the one they hit. If they had had the presence of mind to look at an ADS-B display they would have seen two airplanes, not one, and seen the one they THOUGHT was #1 was really #2.
Can I add some sympathy for the AA crew - A night over water runway change on final combined with dodging traffic is a LOT to ask of anyone. I can't say for sure what they would have done with ADS-B on the chopper, they said they would miss us, not by how much and we are 30 seconds from landing. The benefit here is the helo crew realizing they are dodging the wrong airplane.
* full disclosure, I have had a close call with the helo traffic there more than once, back in the day they did some crazy stuff. I would have LOVED to have seen them coming on a screen if such a thing had existed.

Agreed.

If the helicopter hadn't called "traffic in sight," they would've been instructed to hold until the CRJ was clear. In general, a VFR aircraft saying "traffic in sight" is effectively exempt from such procedures.

Thanks WR-6-3 for the legal perspective , Extremely enlightening for a non-law savvy person like me .I like the " hot dog-warm puppy" analogy between a trial and the truth . Looking forward to the actual trial and your comments on it when the day will come .
@ IgnorantAndroid : I am aware of that as this is what the controllers hang on to since the beginning , since they were trained like that and thought they were just following the rules . . However we are a safety business ,. It is not because it is legal than it is safe

Which safety assessment was made and validated ( and by who) which allowed visual separation for an helicopter at 200ft to pass below the approach path of an aircrfat at 3 or 400 feet ?, resulting in a 100-200ft separation ?
That is the question I would be asking first.
How about which actions were taken after the previous incidents , and possibly acting on the normalization of deviance , would be the next .

Probably at Hains Point.
Thank you for your reply. I will offer the view that you are overthinking this.

None. That would obviously be unsafe, so the helicopter would be expected to use lateral separation. (e.g. "Pass behind the CRJ.")

The 200 ft altitude restriction seems to have given some the impression that helicopters were routinely passing directly below the approach traffic, but that's not the case. And even if it was, it wouldn't really be relevant to this accident. The Blackhawk pilots weren't trying to duck underneath the plane, they never even saw it.

The reason I brought this up was the contention by some earlier posters that there was an obvious case for negligence on the part of the Army pilots. I took that to be based on their 78ft breach of the route maximum altitude, which would obviously be an easy thing to prove (notwithstanding my point that the FAA only requires pilots to fly to an accuracy of 100ft). However if, as you say, the altitude restriction wasn't relevant to the accident then a case for Army pilot negligence would have to be based on their failure to see the CRJ, and that would be much harder to make out. It was argued much earlier in the thread that they probably saw the AAL aircraft on final to 1 and misidentified it as the CRJ. I think that would be difficult to argue as negligent.

I agree with you, by the way - my point being that the case for Army pilot negligence isn't as obvious as it might first appear.

You mean no SA was made because this scenario was not even considered ? That makes things worse for the FAA if this local "visual " procedure was written down somewhere or even just tolerated , because as I understood, it was standard practice .I am not sure if you know how safety assessments are made , but you must consider every possible scenario when designing procedures.


From a European / EASA perspective :
Re the "Lateral separation" you mention : in that scenario so close to the Runway threshold it would mean only a left turn is possible, i.e. away from the thresholds of both runways , it would mean flying over build up areas , and doing so at 200ft above buildings with possible antennas on top , etc.. ,not really safe , and definitively not at night . As to \x93pass behind\x94 , the standard wake turbulence separation criteria would not be met , especially passing behind/below and I would not even try that at 200ft under a large jet..

So , applying standard safety assessment criteria , allowing visual separation to aircraft on that route, even less at night where danger of mis identification is increased . would definitively not be considered \x93 Safe\x94 .

During the interviews, one Heli pilot from that same group ,mentioned that asking for visual separation was a routine request , even if you did not see the traffic at time of the request . That fact alone, if really proven to be systematically the case , would also add to the normalization of deviance case and put full responsibility on the regulator, not the pilots

A number of observations about the litigation and the facts from which it arises (to the extent the facts are in the public record so far) support my disagreement with the assertions (or if it is preferred, analysis or reasoning) in the quoted post.

First is the alignment and nature of the defendants. Only the airline company defendant has exposure to punitive damages (because of the limitations in the FTCA), and unless one is willing to assert that the U.S. taxpaying base is a kind of insurer, only the airline company defendant brings the deep pockets of its insurers into the plaintiffs' calculus. This is the situatjon even though most all if not actually all aviation professionals on this forum deride claims based on acts or omissions of the CRJ pilots - this isn't stopping the plaintiffs, of course. (The plaintiffs' attorneys, it should be noted, include some very highly experienced aviators, one of whom (according to his bio filed with the court) was part of the PAT unit operating in the relevant airspace earlier in his career.) There may be, though it's too early to be certain, some reluctance to assert strong factual and legal attacks against the Army pilots - it might thought that it just doesn't have a good look and recall, the claims against the airline will be tried to a jury, so minimizing "evil lawyer" opportunities could be important. (Gerry Spence once reported that after winning a hotly contested jury trial and a big damage award, one of the jurors caught him in the corridor and asked him why he had made the jurors "hate him so.")** [Correction! see **]

The relevance of this is that the excerpt your post quoted was about the scope of discovery. Given the claims against the airline are situated as the biggest financial targets, I very seriously doubt that plaintiffs' counsel will make their discovery plans based on only one theory of liability. (I have to add that, in early case filings, the bios of the plaintiff's lawyers (or some of them) are included, with regard to the discovery steering committee and executive committe for what will become many other lawyers involved. I hope I did not fail to articulate in earlier posts how voluminous are the experience portfolios of some of these counsel and their firms - saying they're 'heavy hitters' should NOT be read as damning with insufficient recognition of their. . . . well, Pacer is available to anyone who wants to read the bios themselves.)

So, although the discretionary function exception might be advanced by the government's attorneys, the scope of discovery sought by plaintiffs will, in my view, be very broad. And it's too early to say whether the airline company attorneys (and their insurers' counsel who will be deeply involved, I think) will cause discovery also to go the maximum extent. And this is without any implication at all that discovery expense would be run up on purpose to cause defendants to settle earlier and/or for larger sums - I know this happens in federal court civil llitigation sometimes, but that isn't the driver here (imo).

Second, I think the Complaint already provides a basis to understand the plaintiffs are indeed making allegations against - for lack of a better term and without intention of disrespect - functionaries and lower-level or mid-level managers within the FAA. Even if the Complaint does not spell all such facts out at this point, after the testimony at the Board hearing, it seems quite likely that plaintiffs will assert allegations of negligence against one or more ATCOs. the managers at DCA including in the ATO (the testimony of an ATO official at the Board hearing struck me as ripe for plaintiffs to zoom in on - and iirc it was the very same official who was involved in cross-talk leading to rebuke from the Board Chair), and perhaps on up in the ATO organization. The testimony by a fairly senior manager in the Potomac Tracon for example - whether or not this provides grist for the discretionary function exception for the government attorneys, I don't know, but it does appear likely for plaintiffs to want to discover quite a lot about the memo he testified he had written (about spacing of arrivals, iirc) and what, if anything, was done with it.

So I think my view isn't different, insofar as allegations against let's say individual actors within the overall set of "FAA facts" would naturally lead to very wide-scope discovery.

Third, with regard to the FTCA and the exception as potentially invoked on behalf of FAA overall, I've posted more than a few times that I think it should not apply. But perhaps it will in fact be asserted, and then it could prevail (but see the first point above, with regard to anticipating the scope of discovery). I can imagine the successive iterations of the legal analysis as to whether the exception becomes applicable if and only if there is a defined and specific decision, the determination of which was documented whether extensively or at least to some extent. Again (and I apologize for repeating it) as I recall the Varig Airlines case, the process FAA had set up for certain inspections (of aircraft components which failed and caused an accident) was that type of specific determination of a particular course of action or process. Tell me there's a memo from the FAA Administrator to the head of the ATO directly addressing the margins of safety for simultaneuous helicopter flights on the DCA routes when the specific runways are in use (per ATC Watcher's earlier post) and stating that aircraft movements must be given priority - or something similar as this - and then I would more likely agree that the discretion necessary to invoke the exception may well have been applied.

But what we have here is a much more diffuse situation, which took place over many years, isn't it? Normalization of deviance, or normalization of inertia toward "it hasn't caused a problem so far". And similarly, all the safety-related reports - and the apparent lack of meaningful action - or any action? - addressing these, there wasn't a specific determination about a particular choice or course of action with respect to which the federal district court could justify ruling that discretion had been exercised.

A friend who sometimes follows the forum asked me whether all the talk about the discretionary function exception was classic "over-thinking" because the FAA obviously made choices about how to structure and manage the airspace. Well, I answered, we see opinion polls every day about how people would vote if the election were held today, or how they anticipate they'll vote when Election Day occurs. Those are not votes, though, only your ballot cast in the election is a vote. All of FAA's incremental acts and failures to act - just answers to pollsters, not the ballot box. Maybe the analogy works, maybe not.

I have to acknowledge, never having been a law clerk to any judge at any level, that I'm completely speculating, but the law clerks for the federal district court judge to whom this case was assigned certainly will earn their pay, and will they ever have a great tale to tell, sometime down the road.

** I recalled this incorrectly - Spence had lost the case. Considering that some lawyer at some point in this litigation will engender extreme dislike, here's the tale as told by Gerry Spence:
"When I was a young lawyer feeling my power, my strategy in a certain case was to attack
and destroy every witness the other side put against me. I took on the witnesses, old men with
watery eyes who I knew were but company sycophants trying to keep their jobs. I took on the
experts, scholarly actors who I knew were but paid witnesses attempting to earn their fees rather than
reveal the truth. Cut them up, shredded them, pulverized them. The jury was out only fifteen
minutes before it returned a verdict against my client. I was devastated. Hadn't I won every battle?
Hadn't I destroyed the witnesses? Hadn't my power on cross-examination been overwhelming?
As the jury was filing out of the courthouse, one of the women approached me. She looked
up at me with tears in her eyes. It had obviously been hard for her to turn my severely injured client
out of a court of justice with nothing.
'Mr. Spence,' she said quietly, 'why did you make us hate you so?"'
GERRY SPENCE, How TO ARGUE AND WIN EVERY TIME 44-45 (1995) (quoted in [citation omitted]).