Posts about: "FAA" [Posts: 266 Page: 10 of 14]¶

@WillowRun6-3 : First a couple of replies to your earlier comments :
No the FAA cannot copy Europe, in fact the initial Single sky (SES) plan was the other way around, copying what the US had, based on a biased report that the US system was better and more productive than Europe . a single airspace structure under a single authority, When they realized it would not be possible, they then invented the FABs ( airspace blocks) that did not work either , so they went for technical harmonization , that is how SESAR grew . . Yes the current US-Europe discussions are about harmonization between NextGen ( what is left of it ) and SESAR . No-one wants to "copy" the other today but I suspect that the FAA 2.0 will most probably "copy" the technological path of Europe , with an ambitious master plan etc...Do not rock the boat just believe technology/ automation, now AI, will eventually solve all the problems.
on the NTSB powers :
As Lonewolf 50 correctly said and reminded us, the FAA does not have to follow NTSB recommendations . In fact they mostly don't , I have been told or read some time ago that over the last decades there were a few hundreds NTSB recommendations that remained open unactioned., But that is not a US alone issue, same in many other countries. An Investigation Board is not a Regulator, which is what is missing in the US.
as to how ICAO works :
I have been attending ICAO meetings . part of Panels and various working group ( still do it today ) The ANC is where the decisions are voted but not when the work is done and proposals are made. . There is not like in the UN , no State has a priority seat there, all equals , big and small.. And that causes difficulties My example was correct , for instance in Europe there are 2 large non-EU States both with very large international airlines and a dozen smaller ones , also both aircrfat manufacturers which are constantly blocked by very small countries with no airline but members of the EU. ( PM me if you want the names)
Military background, no use for me because we do not discuss Military matters in ICAO ( the "C" in ICAO is sacred ) and over-playing the sovereignty card is creating opposition , not consensus . Some States think it is is a nice retirement present to send a former Air Force General to ICAO : big mistake . You lose influence, not gain any, in my experience at least , but I will give Mr Anderson my full attention and will judge him on his actions , not his past .He might prove to be excellent in that role , who knows,
now about retaliation :
Not sure if this is the case., In Europe we do not do this .We suspend people involved in accidents, this is standard , some need retraining ,some come back to work ( almost always in the same facility) and some want to change jobs, but they are generally seen more as victims than culprits.
Here from what we know so far, the controllers and their supervisors were trained to work on local procedures made long before they came to the facility . Those procedures were or became unsafe but if this is how they were trained to work , you can't blame the operators for faulty procedures . OK but what about supervision ? 10 managers in 10 years, 5 in the last 5 years , show that some possibly felt vey uncomfortable with what they were seeing. But for me they also were kind of victims of the system

Beyond the Army reps that were at the hearing? Day 1 first panel had "CW4 Kylene Lewis, Department of Evaluation and Standardization with the U.S. Army. Mr. Steve Braddom, chief airworthiness engineer with the U.S. Army. And Mr. Scott Rosengren, the chief engineer with the U.S. Army."

Mr. Braddom is with SRD ( https://www.avmc.army.mil/Directorates/SRD/ (formerly AED)) which is the Army airworthiness authority. Basically the Army's version of the FAA (like NAVAIR for the Navy and TAA for the Air Force)
Mr. Rosengren is the Chief Engineer with the Utility Helicopter Project Office which buys the UH-60 and all the equipment installed on it.

Each of those individuals testified with apparently sincere and candid demeanor (I watched most all of that day) even seen and heard just through livestream.

My inquiry was meant to refer to an internal investigation process, possibly with witness testimony. Or does the NTSB investigation in effect preempt any internal Army investigation and reporting functions which presumably are conducted when there is no civilian involvement in an Army aviation accident?

It wasn't mentioned ( afaik ) in the NTSB hearings but does the Policy Board on Federal Aviation (which I understand is situated within DoD) have any investigation role in this accident? Or in deciding upon and possibly implementing recommendations the NTSB presumably will make when its report is complete, to the extent the recommendations are directed to Army aviation specifically (or other types of military aviation generally) as these operate in the NAS?

Is it time to think about the now non existant Heli-route#4 and the other DC area heliroutes?
Paris and London have heliroutes. Been awhile since flying both of these, but my recollection is that they were tightly managed by theATC folks with radar. Ignore their instructions and be met by the gendarmerie ( at least thats what happened to a pilot in front of us who ignored a hold at Bagnolet instruction -when we arrived at LeBourget, the cops had him, and there was a big black van awaiting.
The FAA might look into these two examples.

....@ST Dog
Those replies are appreciated. As the questions I asked probably reveal, I cannot claim any familiarity or experience with U.S. military aviation accident or incident investigations. But I think the course of events following this accident, especially the lawsuits, could lead to more activities becoming public than is usually the case.

Starting with the Army's response to the accident, the likely path the litigation will take could lead to some pressure for its internal inquiry - if an inquiry is conducted and in whatever form - to be disclosed. Apart from classified subjects, parts of the inquiry could be disclosed, even if only as a subject of discovery. Even more so if the case involves all-out legal fighting.

The PBFA also could emerge in a somewhat more public role. As the three days of hearings progressed, at least twice, a former Army helicopter pilot who also later served as an officer in the Air Force, and who works with medical helicopter flights, expressed regret for having to testify about safety concerns about Army and Air Force helicopter operations in the relevant airspace. (He supervises 10 pilots who "frequently fly within DCA airspace as we transport critically ill patients".) Together with several other pieces of testimonial evidence, this testimony showed there are a set of problems in the way the airspace is designed and used.

But the military aviation operations generally involve quite high priority roles and missions, as the letters PAT themselves indicate, even without trying to say anything intellilgent about another helicopter unit which (I read someplace) conducts training flights on a certain grassed-in, lawn area.

So there will be some level of intensity in the litigation. There will be keen Congressional interest, among other reasons because although Senators and Representatives (and their staffs and the cadres of K-Street et cetera) will not say so out loud, the current service level of DCA is something they want to maintain, not reduce. Of course FAA will be the immediate respondent to the investigation result, but in this situation FAA (imo) will not be able to act on its own. Some unit, office, group, or ad hoc assemblage of authorities someplace also will have to pick up the result of the NTSB investigation and do so within the context of intensified public attention.

It should not be assumed that the lawsuit will have proceeded very far in the time it takes for NTSB to reach its conclusions and complete its report. Worse, the discovery process in federal district court can very easily lead to additional pressure for more public involvement (yes, NTSB is thorough, but adversarial litigators do have a way of developing and presenting additional layers of information). None of this is meant as predictions, but there are a lot of unuusal pressures in this situation.

Edit: this post was written before I saw Galaxy Flyer's post. As a guest on this forum, I believe it is expected that I not try to revise content (as opposed to correcting typos) and so I'm leaving this post as written, despite now seeing some gaps in information or understanding.

I appreciate the invitation to comment. With first acknowledging there are several technical factors involved here as to which I have limited understanding (and also that I've commented several times on legal issues likely to be presented by the accident regardless), the legal picture probably is best understood if it is described in two contexts. The fact that the most clearly responsible entities - the Army and the FAA - are both parts of the federal government means that sovereign immunity must be taken into account. (Sikorski, mentioned as a potential defendant by one of the attorneys involved in the case already, has no significant legal risk here, in my view. The reason is its protection by a judicial doctrine known as the "military contractor defense." The specifications given to Sikorski for its design and manufacture were reasonably precise and it met them. See Boyle v. United Technologies Corp. (1989), if more depth and detail is desired.)

As for the airline, to fault the pilots when they were on short finals and expected to concentrate on flying - as others have expressed here numerous times - seems very ill-founded. Whether the airline company could be alleged to have responsibility for not having spoken up more effectively to cause the airspace design and procedure to be redone also strikes me as far too oblivious to the actual operation of the NAS, and the FAA and Congressional processes, to have any validity as an approach to liability. The airline and even Sikorski could still be named as defendants but, to reiterate, this would be just for leverage and not because there is any real pathway to liability for either one.

That having been set as background, the first context ignores the existence of sovereign immunity issues and looks just at what happened and who was responsible. As a rubric for this, "normalization of deviance" seems very accurate. This includes the fact that over time, ignoring Conflict Alerts came to be routine. It includes the practice of confirming "traffic in sight" or related proper terminology, for visual separation even though no traffic had been sighted yet - because it had become routine that the traffic would come into view and be properly identified as the traffic ATC had called out. The testimony about "just make it work", as I heard it, similarly was very concerning; iirc an overall very credible FAA witness acknowledged that the "just make it work" attitude also resulted in decreased safety margins. As did the medical helicopter operator who also had Army helicopter service background. Add in the lack of advanced training, and though I have not practiced law as legal counsel for accident victims' families, the liability theories here appear strong.

Then factor in the use of 3-3 to allievate congestion from high departure rates, rather than slowing or reducing departure slots. Part of the pressure to use 3-3 (as I understood the testimony) was that the Potomac Tracon wanted to increase in-trail separation but DCA instead increased use of 3-3. This was consistent with the attitude, "just make it work".

As to ADS-B on the helicopters, my understanding is that given the roles and missions of the helicopter operations, ADS-B is not equippage the military and its civilian control (in the sense of oversight) could have approved consistent with those roles and missions generally, and especially the continuing-of-government function.

Putting all the causal factors together into a "theory of the case" is perhaps better left to advocates for the accident victims' families (just as defense theories better left to defense counsel in this matter). But since you've impliedly asked, I would not - in this first context - parse out three of the four factors you noted, the lack of ADS-B being the one left out. That leaves the helicopter operating approximately 70 feet too high, the airspace design and procedures including the helicopter routes, and the inaction following the several safety alerts in databases and other reporting functions prior to the occurence of the accident. And including the forced enlistment of DCA for handling more traffic than the widely accepted airspace utilization and safe operation rules and procedures would allow - but they "just made it work." In other words, all of these three factors combine into the most likely theory of liability.

There is a second context, however. Federal government defendants are protected, despite the broad removal (waiver) of sovereign immunity by federal statute, from liability if the alleged negligence resulted from the exercise of discretion. If the actions or omissions being challenged resulted from decisions in which the federal entity weighed economic, social, political and other factors against each other in a form of "policy" decision-making, sovereign immunity remains in place. You can see where this is leading, of course. At what point does the over-use of DCA move out of the protection of "discretionary functions and decision-making" and into the realm of ... just plain negiligence which needs to be addressed in a court action. And likewise, at what point does the Army's set of decisions about how the routes are flown, and how visual separation and traffic sightings are handled, move out of the protection given by discretionary decisions and into the realm of significant negligence not deserving of such protection? Same question for FAA - surely the presence of safety concerns in databases and reporting systems - as unorganized as they may be and as lacking in systematic review as they may be - are matters within the FAA's discretionary functions and decision-making . . . until they're not. (And not equipping PAT helicopters or other D.C.-based Very Important air transport operations by helicopter with ADS-B would have no chance of being ruled not resulting from a discretionary function and decision - it's not even arguable imo.)

I almost included with this (already lengthy) post the "syllabus" of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the United States v. Varig Airlines case, which I think is the most pertinent aviation case in which the discretionary function rule is fundamentally involved....but this isn't a legal forum. Still, the U.S. S. Ct. opinion (467 U.S. 797 1984) gives me uncertainty about how any court of competent jurisdiction will draw the line between what would in a case against a not-federal defendant definitely appear to be negligence, and the actions and omissions of the federal defendants here. (My personal view is that the federal defendants acted with such severe negligence that the discretionary function protection has been lost - but that is a gut reaction to the "this accident never should have happened" idea and not legal analysis.)

Finally and last for a reason, I am not commenting about the motives of legal counsel who are representing or advising clients involved in this matter. I have not practiced law a single day, or a single billable hour, or otherwise, on behalf of the families or representatives of aviation accident victims, or the defendants in such matters. As a result, in participation as a guest on this forum I think it's much wiser to let the members of the bar who do have clients and who do practice in this area let their conduct in their professional capacities speak for itself.

Can\x92t say about the Army, but the USAF standard for altimeters is exactly the same as the FAA. Additionally, the USAF is very specific that in civil airspace we will comply with ICAO SARPs, FAA regulations or any bilatera agreements in place.

Thanks for raising a smile on an otherwise dull day!

Published by Flight Global, August 8 (quoted with any changes)

DOT inspector launches probe into FAA\x92s Washington DC airspace management

The US Department of Transportation\x92s top inspector has launched an investigation into the Federal Aviation Administration\x92s management of airspace near Washington, DC.

The investigation will focus on the agency\x92s design of the airspace and its process of granting military exemptions to a requirement that aircraft use Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) systems.

The review, disclosed by the DOT\x92s Office of Inspector General on 8 August, comes amid scrutiny over the FAA\x92s operations \x96 a response to the 29 January midair collision involving a US Army Sikorsky UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter and a PSA Airlines MHIRJ CRJ700 regional jet.

The helicopter had not been transmitting ASB-B \x93Out\x94 information when, flying higher than permitted, it collided with the CRJ700, which was moments from landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National airport, the National Transportation Safety Board has said.

Both aircraft plummeted into the Potomac River, killing all 65 people on the regional jet and all three on the Black Hawk. The Black Hawk had been operating a pilot training flight.


\x93We are initiating this audit to review FAA\x92s oversight of existing safety gaps in the management of DCA\x92s airspace, including the exemption process for ADS-B Out,\x94 says the DOT inspector\x92s office. \x93Our audit objectives are to assess FAA\x92s oversight and management of the airspace surrounding DCA, and policies and procedures to oversee ADS-B Out exemptions.\x94

The office intends to begin the audit this month.

The investigation comes at the request of two senators who asked the inspector general \x93to review a wide-ranging set of safety issues surrounding the accident\x94, the DOT office adds.

The FAA has since 2020 required aircraft have and use ADS-B Out, a system that transmits an aircraft\x92s position and other information about is flight to air traffic controllers. Aircraft equipped with ADS-B \x93In\x94 \x96 which the FAA does not mandate \x96 also receive the position reports. The ADS-B system is intended to give controllers and pilots more information about air traffic, helping prevent collisions.

Under a compromise with military and government aircraft operators, the FAA permits government aircraft operating \x93sensitive\x94 missions to be exempt from the ADS-B Out requirement. It has allowed those operators to define which missions are sensitive.

The US Army has used that exemption extensively when flying helicopters in the Washington, DC region.

On 29 July, senator Ted Cruz introduced a bill that if passed would prohibit government training flights from qualifying for the exemption. It would also require that all aircraft, within five years, have and use ADS-B In.

not intending to be cynical, but it makes the helos blend in nicely with the background, sort of out of the way for rwy 01/19 traffic (=95% of total)
I wonder how many pilots on rwy 01/19 really perceived this section of the routing as unsafe (when flown correctly = hugging the shoreline at max 200ft).
A nuisance, undoubtedly. And the whole helicopter traffic surrounding DCA, pretty unsafe, I can understand.
And then we have nighttime...



taking the nearby airport out of the equation, I wonder if any of the professional operators on this route 4 section, ever felt that this low-level flying was (unnecessarily) unsafe

thank you for your reply!
It looks safe if the jet crews can't see the helicopters?
Good thing they let only professional operators use heli route 4, then.

I take your point that the route was legal (if unsafe).

My impression is that the 500/1000 ft clearance rule exists so when a pilot gets disoriented, or suffers a flight control problem, they don't immediately smash into things; and that they have a chance to find a suitable place to crash land, should the need arise. The latter is obviously solved when the river is right there.

If you don't have that altitude, you're missing a slice of cheese; and of course you won't feel it missing unless you need it, which is often the case with safety.

If the heli route had been higher up, then letting helicopters fly it on visual separation while runway 33 was in use wouldn't be "normalising deviance", it'd be normalising insanity, i.e. the illusion of "safety" that the 200 ft restriction provided would have been absent. The fact that someone at the FAA thought, "it'll be ok if we force the helicopters down to an unsafe altitude routinely" speaks of eroded safety standards to me. There are some disasters (and at least one impressive Space Shuttle fireball) that resulted from eroded safety standards, where managers convinced themselves it would still be ok--until it wasn't.

A link to the first day's testimony. Note the exchange starting at 5:56:23.
I don't know how to answer your question. FAA said that there was no "procedural separation" plan in place. Army stated that when 33/15 was in use, the protocol/procedure was for Army to automatically hold at one of two points (depending on direction of travel) to await clearance past the extended runway center-line, or to request clearance past the same. So the 75-foot topic in theory maybe is relevant if considering wake/rotor-related turbulence, but not for physical separation of aircraft.

I cannot imagine that airlines take military helo flights into account while scheduling flights. What is important is the maximum commercial operations/flight density that can be accommodated (e.g. per hour). So when FAA allows commercial traffic to really get dense, this makes conflicts with random helo traffic more likely.

Not so much slackness and cutting corners, it's a failure of the FAA's Safety Management System that allows this dangerous stuff to continue. Reports would have been put in routinely I suspect; even the TCAS events should have triggered some SMS action.

Is the FAA ISO9001 approved?

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.)

I skimmed through the complaint. The defendants are American and PSA (which I will refer to as the airlines) and the USA as responsible for the actions of the air traffic controllers (which I will refer to as the FAA) and for the actions of the helicopter crew (which I will refer to as the army). Perhaps somewhat notable is who is not being sued. This includes the manufacturers of both aircraft and their components and the manufacturer of the night vision goggles.

The best (in my view) argument against the airlines is that it was PSA policy that their pilots should not accept a diversion from runway 1 to runway 33 if they had not already briefed this approach (in addition to briefing the approach to runway 1). The pilot in charge hadn't done this but nevertheless accepted the diversion. This looks bad of course but there is little reason to believe that the omission of the briefing made any difference. It is also argued that the response to the TCAS conflict alert was inadequate which seems only clear in hindsight. Finally there were also insinuations to the effect that airlines should not serve busy airports because they are dangerous that I didn't find convincing.

The argument against the FAA is that the ATCs had actually violated various regulations starting with having one controller handle both helicopters and airplanes and continuing with the specific instructions and information provided to the helicopter and airplane. I suspect these purported violations are not as clear cut as claimed. In any case it is unclear they made any difference.

The argument against the army is that the blackhawk crew violated specific regulations and rules that they were required to observe. Most seriously that they were too high, knew they were too high but didn't correct this in a timely way. This clearly did make a difference and in my view if proven would be sufficient to establish liability.

I didn't notice any references to the discretionary function exception. In general the arguments against the government are based on purported specific violations of established rules and regulations by low level personnel and not on debatable broad policy decisions. The case that an army pilot doesn't have discretion to violate altitude limits seems easy to make to me. Any more than an army driver has discretion to ignore stop signs.

On layman54's summary of the Complaint;

Sorry to return to law prof mode for a moment. The Federal Tort Claims Act waives, that is it removes, federal sovereign immunity. The statute also provides for continued sovereign immunity for federal government "discretionary functions", hence the "exception" is to the waiver of immunity. But the standard for whether a particular allegedly negligent act or omission was, or was not, within the meaning of "discretionary function" is something of a binary statement: if the action was a "ministerial action", then it did not involve the exercise of discretion as meant by the statute. Ministerial actions (though perhaps over-simplifying) are actions applying or following regulations or rules, or perhaps standardized procedures.

If my recollection of federal procedure is accurate, the federal defendants (FAA, and its statutory parent entity, Department of Transportation, and the Army) will need to assert sovereign immunity in motion practice of some sort, or possibly as an affirmative defense that needs to be pled in their (presumably) respective Answers to the Complaint - tbh I'm not certain which (but I'm not re-engaging the yoke of billable hours where I can avoid it).

My prior post thus was imprecise (apologies). The words "discretionary function exception" would not be expected to appear in this Complaint. But the several references to specific FAA rules and other written procedural-type stuff - I see these as carrying two loads. The first is the obvious one of making a strong case that this accident was caused, in major part, by FAA's negligence. FAA and the DOT can argue all they want about the several actually discretionary decisions which are implicated in the structure and operation of that airspace on the night of 29 January (federal legislation about capacity, being a headline among them, perhaps paired with the often-decried FAA basic idea of moving traffic over most other factors). But all those arguments will not bar the plaintiffs from arguing that in addition to discretionary policy decisions, FAA also violated its own rules and procedures. Which would be a serious argument that insofar as those rules and procedures are concerned, FAA was taking ministerial action, i.e., negligent ministerial action.

The Army's situation is more straightforward imo. Certainly a good number of discretionary functions are involved, or were involved, in the operation of the type of helicopter flights involved in this accident, in general, and specifically as training missions. But the altitude deviation and related operational factors do not fit within the scope of the discretiionary function exception to the waiver of immunity.

I recall some poster months ago stating that during the last leg of the approach, the PSA pilots "owned that airspace" or words to that effect. At a perhaps monkey-brain level, I agree with what the airline legal counsel is reported to have said: the helicopter flew into our airplane. But realizing I'm not objective (plus the fact this being a pilots' forum....) it is sickening to see those pilots alleged to have been negligent.

​​​​​​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 !).......

HNH, I can't agree with any of that. The ONLY reason federal regs are written is to set a standard that anybody can operate to/in/with and be safe. This idea that a major US carrier shouldn't have operated into DCA because it might be dangerous, depending on how the airline assesses it, and is therefore sue-able, when the FAA itself allows it, doesn't gel IMO. The sole job of the regulator is to ensure the airspace and it's procedures will allow a safe operation. In any case, I think what you are suggesting, that AA have worked out, by itself, that operating into DCA is unsafe, won't happen these day because the almighty dollar rules. The minimum standard, set by the FAA, will more often that not, be complied-with. Most company restrictions of the type you mention don't involve simply not doing it, which is what is being suggested here.