Posts about: "NTSB" [Posts: 232 Page: 1 of 12]¶

Not sure if posted above, but NTSB will be holding a briefing at 2:45pm ET. Can't post links yet, but streaming on Youtube at - watch?v=d860IiUhaWo

Quote from an NTSB report

\x94 The NTSB determines that the probable cause of the accident was the failure of the flight crew to comply with the provisions of a maintain visual separation clearance including the requirement to inform the controller when they no longer had the other aircraft in sight.
Contributing to the accident were the air traffic control procedures in effect which authorized the controllers to use visual separation procedures to separate two aircraft on potentially conflicting tracks when the capability was available to provide either lateral or vertical radar separation to either aircraft. \x93

That was of course PSA 182 I\x92m not entirely sure that after a lengthy investigation the report won\x92t say something similar.

​​​​​​​It'll be the NTSB that does the report.

Still it is going to be very difficult to not have this become political as the causes will have to be distributed between the Army and the FAA.

How open is the Army going to be about their procedures? Are they going to try to pull the 'We cannot share that information due to national security' card?

How willing is the NTSB going to be to say out loud that the FAA's procedures have left no margin for error and need to be changed?

How willing is the FAA (among others) to increase costs and/or reduce capacity to increase safety? And not just at DCA, but also a lot of other US airports.

I have been watching this thread for a while now and felt compelled to respond, mainly due to some of the comments on here, a proportion of which, come from professionals within our industry which in itself is troubling.

Lets break it down based on what we know so far:

See and Avoid We have years and years and years of evidence about the limitations of see and avoid. It is not and never will be effective mitigation to a collision risk on its own. It needs to be backed up with other barriers such as ACAS etc. The human eye is particularly bad at spotting stationary objects, which would have been the case in this instance with another aircraft on a steady bearing. Those who criticise the aircrew for not keeping a good lookout are being disingenuous. The ability to judge distance at night, is difficult. Those who suggest the helicopter was looking up at the night sky, omit to recognise that the cameras on which you are basing that opinion, were at ground level. The crew of the Helo would have been at a similar altitude, looking at a background of many lights, with other aircraft barely above the horizon. The reports state that the aircrew may have been on NVG. This exacerbates the issue as they narrow your field of view, make depth perception even worse and of course, those I know of, do not display different colours, such as navigation lights. So see and avoid needs to be backed up by other measures and one can also see how VFR at night is fraught with danger.

Procedures - There is nothing inherently wrong with helicopter lanes close to aerodromes as long as the procedures that control such traffic are robust. I do not know what the local procedures state for routes 1 and 4 but I would expect them to include a limitation to ensure that you cannot use route 4/1 if an approach is being made to Rwy 33 or vice versa, an approach cannot be made to Rwy 33 if there is traffic on route 1/4. If such a procedure does no t exist then we could argue negligence. Lets assume one does exist. In that case, I would expect some process to block the route or the approach, using an aide memoire such as a flight strip or other electronic means. The recent crash at Haneda, highlights the need for such a safety barrier.

The Controller - Reports suggest that controller numbers were down to 19, which is woefully inadequate for an operation such as this and I hope the NTSB looks at what actions were taken by the airport to close in the face of staff limitations. We assume from reports, that the controller concerned was working in a combined position, with band-boxed frequencies. Looking at FR24 replays, it was quite busy at the time and we also do not know what level of fatigue the individuals were under. If the procedures above were in force, was a blocking strip forgotten? Was the controller overloaded or distracted? I hope they were not combining Radar and tower!

Phraseology - Others on here have mentioned about phraseology used. First of all, I cannot understand this machismo, that US controllers have to speak fast. Stop it! It is dangerous and you only end up having to repeat yourself. Others have mentioned about using the clock code. The Tower controller may not have the endorsement to use radar procedures and may have been forced to use geographical points. From what I have heard and yes lets wait for the report, it seems that the phraseology used was sub optimal.

Duty of Care - Some of here have spoken about the transfer of responsibility onto the helicopter operator. This is a pet hate of mine, of people hiding behind the rules to abrogate responsibility. Everyone in the system has a duty of care and Air Traffic Controllers, regardless of type of service, have an accountability to do what they can to prevent collisions. That is written into the highest levels of ICAO Annex 11

My condolences to all involved and my thoughts are also with those under investigation, who I feel may have been let down by the system.

Helicopter single box combing CVR+DFDR has been recovered and looked good. No exterior damage.

Aircraft CVR had already been recovered, showed water ingress, was soaked in ionised water, then into oven for getting water out, still checking connectors \x85 but high confidence to get audio out.

Aircraft FDR already recovered, no water ingress, soaked in alcohol, looked good, ref 2,000 datapoints, high confidence to get data out.

NTSB investigation runs parallel to DoD investigation (I assume that will be the usual double), but independent, so NTSB got its own heli on-type licensed pilot in the team.

Investigation has a closely matching config CRJ available to match recovery of items and seating and cockpit config with items being recovered (which are refd on grid coordinates).

Main lift starts tomorrow and may take days. Prio 1 is still recovering all the victims. After that heavy lift of the big chunks starts on Sunday. This will take days.

ATCO interview(s) has already started. The history of the wider ATC team of controllers will look back for 24-72 hrs probably. But also at level of hiring and training.

PoB manifest are, by law, never published by NTSB and are excluded from FOIA.

Yesterday Bill Inman was the \x93Board member on site. \x93 He gave the conference. Mrs Homendy was working behind the scenes. Mr Inman was joined by a few NTSB persons but these were not introduced by name. No IIC name was forwarded. Suppose that becomes clear in the next few days.

The location of the crash gives the much discussed \x93midair accidents waiting to happen\x94 immediate exposure to Congress. It was reported that Congress had already started its own investigation.

So next to one NTSB, two military and one Congressional investigation we appear to have already four investigations running in parallel. Plus whitehouse statements on events and investigation.

Hope Pprune moderators can keep us informed about what is within scope of our exchanges here.
Just thinking \x85 Maybe an idea to focus on factual, not using words like blame etc, so in line with Annex 13.
For me information from a congressional hearing will be part factual and part political.

he was named at the very start of the very first press conference (standing on the far left of the screen)

Island,

Thank you....figured that would be the answer especially if the runway change is very close in to the Airport.

Dave,

The video Clip I saw of Hegseth he noted the Crew "had" them then stated it had not been confirmed they were "using" them.

That was last night sometime I saw that on the Re-Run Stream channel I had on that draws from multiple sources.

Also....the NTSB guy said much the same thing saying the Investigation in time would try to determine that.

I trust the video and my lip reading ability over the media anymore.

I just did a google search and found this video clip that has Hegseth talking about the Mid-Air Collision and he clearly states the case as I described it.

About one minute into the video Hegseth addresses NVG's.

He wasn't there and is merely repeating what someone else who also wasn't there has told him. 😉

I am not being political, but this change at this time is concerning about the NTSB and its independence:

Question for those more knowledgable than me:

In finding \x91probable cause\x92, do the NTSB\x92s terms of reference provide any guidance on the proximity (in time) of that cause to the accident?

Not in any way wishing to prejudge the outcome of the enquiry, I\x92ll pick a couple of hypothetical examples.

Could the NTSB for example say, \x93it all goes back to 1981 and the firing of the striking Controllers\x94.

Or closer to the accident in the timeline, \x93the number of movements at the airport was excessive and the procedures in use were unsafe and we see that as root cause\x94.

Or are they limited to something completely specific and timely along the lines of, \x93the altimeter was out of calibration and that put the two aircraft in conflict\x94.

I\x92m implying that the events of 1981 were involved here, (or indeed trying to double-guess the report in any way), just trying to use something from a long time ago as an example.

Simply, my question was, how far back along the perceived timeline to an accident can the NTSB go?

thanks.

The PATCO strike was in 1981 and with one or two generations of new controllers and management over those 43 years, is irrelevant to the accident. Any controllers were invited back to the FAA during the Clinton administration. I know several. Is short staffing released, of course, it’s a systemic problem and was in 1981.

We have to wait for the NTSB to let us know what, if any, traffic appeared where on the CRJ panel, how prominent it appeared, or if there were aural warnings.

I have received warnings and an alarm for Flarm traffic. When I have seen ADS-B traffic I have been able to stay far enough away that I haven't been able to verify whether warnings and alarms are provided for ADS-B traffic if it becomes a threat.

Airline pilots do not, as a matter of course, avoid TCAS traffic unless given an RA, TCAS is notoriously inaccurate laterally, we will try to acquire traffic visually and may then react IF we can.

Also depending on the range selected on the TCAS or ND display you might get a load of garbled nonesense.

Just finished watching the NTSB briefing, which stated that the CRJ was at 325 feet AGL, and helicopter max allowed altitude is 200 feet.

Assuming the CRJ was at an expected/typical altitude at that point in it's approach, if the helicopter was at 200 feet, or lets say for their benefit 175 feet, then they would have avoided collision by a mere 150 feet of vertical separation if everything else about the position of the two aircraft remained the same.

Is 125 feet of vertical separation (with no horizontal separation) considered acceptable?

If the CRJ movement is controlled by ATC, and the helicopter is responsible for avoiding all other aircraft, then there is no question the helicopter was at fault here as the primary cause, and ATC as the secondary.

Given the collision course these aircraft were clearly on, why wouldn't ATC have diverted one of them prior to impact? Does ATC have any reason to believe that the helicopter sees everything with the same degree of detail and accuracy as ATC? This is not a sarcastic question. I'm genuinely curious. Would ATC, hearing the helicopter twice affirming visual separation, have had any plausible reason to doubt that the helicopter was unaware of the impending collision?

What's the point of having Air Traffic "Control"...if they're not actually in control?

125'? God no.

The helo should have been told to hold some half mile away and wait for crossing traffic to clear.

The NTSB is going to have a field day with the FAA on this.

Of course. So lets assume the readings to be at the outside of the envelope to the benefit of both aircraft, ie, CRJ at 350 (325 +/- 25 as stated by NTSB), and 200 +/- 75 for the helicopter, so 125. That's 225 feet of vertical-only separation. Is that considered acceptable? If not, why did ATC allow it?

That speaker had more patience than I would after being asked the exact same question over and over. His first explanation was clear. Sheesh.

ATC didn't "allow it".

The procedures allowed the controller to hand responsibility for separation to the helo pilot, once the helo was instructed to pass behind an aircraft which the helo said it had identified (twice I think?). However, it seems that the helo identified the wrong aircraft. That's hardly surprising when it's night, there's lots of stationary and moving lights around, and one of the apparently stationary lights is in fact bolted to an aircraft with which you're on a collision course.