Posts by user "paulross" [Posts: 6 Total up-votes: 33 Page: 1 of 1]¶

Agreed. My experience too. There is a useful NASA lessons learned document that makes this exact argument (points 3, 5, 6 and maybe 10 in the link).

The original NYT article thanks to the Internet Archive (archive.org) .

I have just built a website that re-organises this long thread by subject.
You can find it here: https://paulross.github.io/pprune-th...DCA/index.html

All 1,795 posts are organised into 58 subjects.
Around 20% of the posts on the thread are excluded because I can't pick up a subject from that post so please contact me if you feel that you contribution has been excluded.

The project is here: https://github.com/paulross/pprune-threads .
Issues can be raised here: https://github.com/paulross/pprune-threads/issues or PM me with ideas.

As new information has emerged I have just rebuilt the website that re-organises this long thread by subject.
You can find it here: https://paulross.github.io/pprune-th...DCA/index.html

All 1,829 posts are organised into 68 subjects.

Changes:

• Added link to NTSB findings, probable cause and final recommendations.
• Added subjects: 'Accountability/Liability', 'Findings', 'NTSB Docket', 'Barometric Altimeter', 'Route Altitude', 'Hot Spots', 'Final Report', 'Probable Cause', 'Safety Recommendations', 'Helicopter Working Group'.

Around 20% of the posts on the thread are excluded because I can't pick up a subject from that post so please contact me if you feel that you contribution has been excluded.

The project is here: https://github.com/paulross/pprune-threads .
Issues can be raised here: https://github.com/paulross/pprune-threads/issues or PM me with ideas.

I have added an unofficial transcript of the hearing (about 60,000 words) to my site here: https://paulross.github.io/pprune-th...DCA/index.html It is item 6 on the "Useful Links" section at the top of the page.

The direct link to the transcript is here: https://paulross.github.io/pprune-th...6-01-27_B.html

One the official transcript becomes available I'll remove this one.

I have some small insight into the grief of families in these situations.

One of my best school friends was on UTA 772 that was bombed over Niger in 1989, he was 36. We had learnt to fly together, I saw his first solo and he saw mine. We both worked in Africa in the 1980s but for different companies.

I knew his family well and I spent a fair bit of time with them after the accident and here are a few things I learnt:

Firstly, immediately after an accident the friends and relatives are desperate for information, first the What, then the Why. They will look anywhere and everywhere for this information. In this modern world this might well lead them here. When I post on this forum I am always conscious that some of the bereaved are most likely reading. If that is you then I hold you in the light. Getting clear, accurate, timely information to them can be a great comfort. Not everyone can comprehend an accident report or some technical aviation detail but they can if it is explained in a language they can understand so good posts on pprune can help. Consider it a service.

The second lesson for me was dealing with grief. I have been involved in several fatal (non-aviation) accidents and with the families of the victims. As an engineer by training I was taught, reinforced later by experience, that an objective approach is most likely to get to understand the cause and prevention of an accident. However that objective, dispassionate, disinterested approach completely ignores the very powerful emotions that can consume the surviving victims. It is all too easy use the objective facts as some kind of shield for yourself. I think that some recognition that grief can be a great help to the bereaved. The spectrum of grief is enormous and no two people deal with it in the same way.

Motivation: In my experience (and this seems to be the case with Tim and Sheri Lilley) is that some bereaved often have a powerful motivation to prevent this happening again. These people can help you advance your cause if you feel the same way.

A final lesson, and apologies to any lawyers here, is that most legal systems utterly fail to serve the victims or their bereaved. They are glacially slow, bureaucratic, wildly expensive, and polluted with politics. They usually serve the powerful at the expense of the weak (in the UK the NHS is the poster child for this). UTA 772 was one and there are many other aviation ones as ATC Watcher mentions. More examples would be Hillsborough, Grenfell Tower, Pan Am 103, Deepwater Horizon, and Piper Alpha, the list goes on and on.

There is a postscript to my story of UTA 772. My friend's body was never identified so it was nearly seven years later that his affairs could be settled. We then held a memorial service at our flying club (he had left some money in his will to the club). After the memorial his mother reached into her bag and handed me a camera. Apparently the French military would regularly visit the UTA 772 crash site where the shifting sands would often reveal new wreckage. They found some of his belongings, including this camera. Here is what it looked like having survived the bomb, falling from 35,000 feet and spending several years in the desert:




It was pretty beaten up but I could tell it had a film in it. With a specialist photo laboratory in London and help from Kodak's technical department we carefully processed the film. The negatives were pretty thin but there were definitely half a dozen images there. As the lab said "once we heard the story all of our printers wanted to have a go at getting some prints from this."

I remember the joy on his mothers face when she leafed through the prints and right near the end was a picture of her son. It must have been taken a few days before the crash and was certainly the last image of him alive.
Personally, I hate the word 'closure' in these situations as it implies that the grief ends at some point. It never does, all you can hope for is that day by day one manages it a little better. I think that photograph helped his mother to do this, if only a little.

Others weren't so lucky; her other son became obsessed with finding out what had happened to UTA 772, also with Pan Am 103 which had some obvious similarities. That obsession gradually descended into mania.