Two Lessons From The DCA Crash

[Schllc]

16 minutes ago, AH-1 Cobra Pilot said:

No.  It is probably way worse than you think.  Throughout my military career, I have flown with people who would fit the "DEI Hire" profile; most were fine pilots.  It is always the exception that proves the rule.  It was especially bad in the 1970s to early 1980s, (and probably really bad in the last few years).  The incompetents were given every opportunity and advantage to overcome problems that would definitely have sunk any given white male and pushed ahead regardless of their abilities.  There have been many documented incidents of these failures that you can look up.

I always feel worst for the competent people who are proverbially tarred with the same brush.  One day on cruise in the 80s, my friend and colleague Ray entered into a conversation several of us were having about airline jobs.  He noted that it took 1500 hours of jet time to qualify.  While the rest of us contemplated that, he hung his head in shame and added, "And for women and minorities, it is 350."

I am waiting for the cockpit voice recorders data before I make my final judgment.

I completely agree with you. 
40 years ago I went to airborne school. We ran with boots, pants and a canteen in our pocket, and did six minute miles.  If you got out of step twice in a week you either quit or went back to the beginning of the school and started over. 
But the women ran in a separate formation, in shorts and running shoes, and were so much slower we lapped them on a 2 mile track. DEI has been around a long time…

it’s idiotic  create a standard, meet the standard, progress  don’t meet the standard, you’re washed out  

there is no benefit to anyone to lower a standard.

I meant that for this particulate I incident, I didn’t hear anyone suggest the pilots or controllers were dei hires, merely that they were understaffed because of the required dei quotas. 
 

[Ibra]

1 hour ago, Aerodon said:

And then - let's force all go GA to get ADSB for safety.  The target trend of traffic on my 760 is fantastic, and I pay attention to it every time.  

I feel this tragedy would have been prevented if helicopter was using ADSB-IN to get full traffic picture rather than solely relying on visual at night.

My guess is they likely mis-identified wrong traffic with confirmation bias: ADSB-IN view of CRJ and AAL would have sorted any conflict and saved lives ! 

I am not talking ADSB-OUT (military aircraft, fancy avionic installation...), only ADSB-IN: where one only need an iPad that displays heavy airliners, this is more than enough to provide "lookout assist", especially at night in complex airspace: the ADSB-IN view like the one you have on 760 gives you a clear view on where heavy metal flies (not only for traffic separation or collision avoidance but also for planning wake turbulence in large airports)

Edited 21 hours ago by Ibra

[A64Pilot]

16 hours ago, AH-1 Cobra Pilot said:

I did plenty of non-training flights:  MEDEVAC, fire fighting, border patrol assistance,…

AR 95-1 states that all non training flights will be flown under IFR rules.

So every one of those flights were “training” flights, I’m sure they were briefed as such, in truth it may be that test flights are training flights as well, I never really worried about it.

Point I’m making is that Military training flights are not what Civilians think of as training flights, IE there is no “trainer” on board, there will be no grade slip etc. You say training to a Civilian and they think CFI giving instruction, which can be Military, but usually not.

Most often the Warrant is the PIC, and often the Comissioned Officer may be the Air Mission Commander if it’s a multi ship flight.

Commissioned Officers flying is an additional duty and most of their Career they rarely get to do, a Warrant however mostly flying is their primary duty, there are a few staff Warrants but they are the exception, at least 20 years ago anyway.

Navy has “Limited duty” officers to fill the Warrant role, and they don’t climb very high in promotions, I assume the AF does similar, just don’t know if they are officially recognized like the Navy does.

Decades ago the Army had a TWO’s study, or Total Warrant Officer Study where they were going to eliminate Warrant Officers, but looked at what that would cost, and decided to Commission Warrants instead.

Things were changing for Warrants when I Retired in 03, not for the better in my opinion.

[Pinecone]

18 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

So every one of those flights were “training” flights, I’m sure they were briefed as such, in truth it may be that test flights are training flights as well, I never really worried about it.

Point I’m making is that Military training flights are not what Civilians think of as training flights, IE there is no “trainer” on board, there will be no grade slip etc. You say training to a Civilian and they think CFI giving instruction, which can be Military, but usually not.

A more recognizable term to civilian pilots would be Practice flights.  You go and practice the skills needed to fly your actual mission.   Not getting training, other than the experience and currency.

Some of those would be mission flights, such a MEDEVAC, even VIP transport.  That is the mission of those aircraft and pilots.

[Pinecone]

19 hours ago, Aerodon said:

Just trying to understand the whole situation.  The day before there was a similar conflict, same red CA with inbound aircraft and helicopter.  Airplane initiated go around because of an RA, even though it was in daytime and everyone had each other in sight, and a 500 ft differential.  (1300 and 800 I think).  Controller sounded slightly miffed, but not too bad.

When does TCAS no longer work, below 1000?  

As I understand it, airline ops require response to an RA.

As I understand it yes, it will not generate an RA below 1000 feet AGL.

[A64Pilot]

The DEI thing has always been around, just different reasons and maybe not so obvious and had different names. The US Military is and should be under 100% Civilian control, people think the Generals run things, but they really don’t. The US Military has always been subjected to different social experiments depending on the Civilian leaders in charge.

Flight school for me was 1987, if a white male busted a check ride they would usually get another chance, bust two and you were done, which is I think right and proper, I only wanted the best pilots flying with me.

I remember one female that couldn’t pass primary flight, they would set her back to the next flight coming up, she would get I guess two more weeks of additional training and bust the next check ride, last I heard they had recycled her seven times? I guess the plan was that since they couldn’t bust her she would eventually quit. Now I’d guess the pass rate was the same for both sexes, just the males you could send to Infantry school or something, but you weren’t allowed to bust Females. At least they weren’t passing her if she couldn’t meet criteria.

Fast forward to 1989 or so and I was a very new CW2 AH-64 test pilot, Ft Hood was unusual as we had about 50% of the Army’s Apaches there as such we had two very senior CW-4 MTFE’s, Test flight evaluators. anyway they came to me with a very unusual request, they wanted me to fly with a brand new Test Pilot, so I did.

This was back when there were No Females in the Cav, I mean none, not even in medical or anywhere.

It started out at center Sod, the area between the taxi way and runway that we always departed from, on picking up to a hover to do a 90 degree pedal turn the pilot basically buried the pedal with the tailwheel still on the ground, we dug a pretty deep ditch and rolled the aircraft pretty hard. I didn’t know what to think.

So in flight one of the tests was to reduce dual engine power to 50%, reduce the non test engine to idle and slowly increase power until the test engines temp was at least 10 degrees higher than it limited dual engine, this tested that contingency power was enabled and applied. So as we had decided that number two engine was the test engine I told him to pull number 1 off, well he shut it down. That ended the flight, so we flew home.

The two old grizzled CW-4’s came to talk to me, I explained what happened and told them it confused me, it was almost as if the guy couldn’t fly, didn’t even understand the tests etc.

They told me that was why they had me fly with him, they thought maybe they intimated him and that was why he was so ate up.

He was a nice guy, just couldn’t fly, turned out he was full blooded American Indian and we guessed he just wasn’t allowed to fail.

So exactly what happened I’m unsure, but he was promoted out of flying and given some kind of Staff job at Division I think. I don’t remember names, but his has stuck with me.

Like I said he was a nice guy, just couldn’t fly, had no aptitude, yet had gone through flight school, the AH-64 transition and the Maintenance Test Pilot course.

 

[A64Pilot]

10 minutes ago, Pinecone said:

A more recognizable term to civilian pilots would be Practice flights.  You go and practice the skills needed to fly your actual mission.   Not getting training, other than the experience and currency.

Some of those would be mission flights, such a MEDEVAC, even VIP transport.  That is the mission of those aircraft and pilots.

Yeah, we unofficially called training flights OFO flights. OFO is Out F’ing Off

Briefing wise officially we were briefed to practice ATM maneuvers, ATM is Aviators Training Manual.

[AH-1 Cobra Pilot]

42 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Navy has “Limited duty” officers to fill the Warrant role, and they don’t climb very high in promotions, I assume the AF does similar, just don’t know if they are officially recognized like the Navy does.

In 1984, I think, the Navy LDO program changed from LCDR to CDR as the top rank they could make.  Most of the LDOs in my AOCS class were more than happy to end a 20-year career as a LCDR.

[AH-1 Cobra Pilot]

12 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Yeah, we unofficially called training flights OFO flights. OFO is Out F’ing Off

Ours was FACIT.  F Around, Call It Training.

[A64Pilot]

Warrants were very unusual. 

In the Amy a second Lieutenant salutes a first Lt and higher and calls them Sir or Mam.

The most junior W1 in the Army addresses the most senior CW-4 by his or her first name and does not salute, there is no rank among Warrants. Their respect for each other is based on their Merit not rank. Which is against Military tradition.

On average assuming you made it, were promoted to CW-4 at roughly I think 15 years or so. The way the Military culls members is by not promoting them, every rank has a retention control point, a time that your mustered out if you don’t make promotion, no Retirement, just on the street. Most don’t make it to Retirement, they are passed over and mustered out, no 401K etc., zero benefits.

Once making CW-4 you were essentially untouchable as long as you didn’t do something literally Criminal there was nothing that could be done to you, add to that that almost all CFI’s, aircraft commanders etc were Warrants they to a great extent held the Commissioned Officers Careers in their hands, you bust check rides which every pilot must take yearly and it doesn’t bode well for your Career. Warrants having this much control even though they didn’t command was called the Warrant Officer Mafia.

Things were changing, before I Retired CW-5 was invented and that gave “them” the means to get rid of the old CW-4’s that didn’t play politics, and there was talk of Warrants being required to salute higher ranking ones etc.

I don’t know if that happened or not, I Retired as soon as I could and honestly never looked back

[AJ88V]

23 hours ago, Ibra said:

You are right, I looked at VASA replay all traffic were on radar/ils initial, before joining visual runway1, some traffic was sent to runway33 (to allow takeoff on runway1? or crosswind?)

The CRJ was at 1200ft on “own routing” to runway33 when ATC passed traffic info to PAT rather than “traditional circle-to-land”…

Indeed, lot to be learned on how/why after this sad accident !

Just want to clarify....

The terminal for the small American Airlines RJs is on the north end of DCA.  I suspect the controller shifted the CRJ onto 33 to get more separation and better utilization on RWY 1.  Landing on 33 took AA5342 almost direct to its terminal, clearing rwy 1 which already had a bunch of flights stacked up for departure - and there was a larger plane (A340?) lined up right behind AA5342 to landing on 1.  Hope that made sense.

 

[AJ88V]

Changing gears.  I have only significantly encountered wake turbulence once in my life (amen).  That was flying directly under the path of some 'heavy' which had departed KPHX about 2 minutes before I crossed the rwy centerline.  Felt like we were slammed down out of nowhere (no rolling, thank G-d).  Think everything loose in the cockpit hit the ceiling.

Now takeoff climb out surely surely needs more lift than landing, but isn't there some wake turbulence when landing under the glidepath of another plane?  Wouldn't an aircraft (helo) traveling at a measly 200 AGL risk encountering wake turbulence flying directly under the glidepath of a CRJ?

[Pinecone]

18 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

Yeah, we unofficially called training flights OFO flights. OFO is Out F’ing Off

Briefing wise officially we were briefed to practice ATM maneuvers, ATM is Aviators Training Manual.

Our training flights in the USAF was typically going to range to practice dropping bombs and shooting the gun.  Also instrument practice, night, air refueling, air to air, and such.

There was a big board in OPS showing each pilot and how they were doing against the 6 month task timeline.  Each 6 months, each pilot needed so many range visits, I recall a minimum of 2 day and 1 night refueling, so many instrument approaches, etc.

Not a lot of OFO flights.  Not that what we did was not a blast and a half.

[Pinecone]

16 hours ago, AJ88V said:

Changing gears.  I have only significantly encountered wake turbulence once in my life (amen).  That was flying directly under the path of some 'heavy' which had departed KPHX about 2 minutes before I crossed the rwy centerline.  Felt like we were slammed down out of nowhere (no rolling, thank G-d).  Think everything loose in the cockpit hit the ceiling.

Now takeoff climb out surely surely needs more lift than landing, but isn't there some wake turbulence when landing under the glidepath of another plane?  Wouldn't an aircraft (helo) traveling at a measly 200 AGL risk encountering wake turbulence flying directly under the glidepath of a CRJ?

CRJ is not that much wake turbulence.  The planes that do will give their call sign and the word HEAVY or SUPER HEAVY to warn people.

Heck, even a C-150 generates wake turbulence.

 

[Pinecone]

18 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

On average assuming you made it, were promoted to CW-4 at roughly I think 15 years or so. The way the Military culls members is by not promoting them, every rank has a retention control point, a time that your mustered out if you don’t make promotion, no Retirement, just on the street. Most don’t make it to Retirement, they are passed over and mustered out, no 401K etc., zero benefits.

In the USAF and USN, if you are Regular, not Reserve, you are supposedly guaranteed to make 20 years to retire.  Reserve can be let go at any time.  There was a Tech SGT in my ANG unit that had been a Major and RIFed (Reduction In Force) at 19 years 6 months.  So NO retirement.  So he enlisted, figuring 50% of E-5 pay was better than 0% of O-4 pay.  

BTW, I am pretty sure military members have TSP (Thrift Savings Plan, like a 401K) also.

[Pinecone]

19 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

The DEI thing has always been around, just different reasons and maybe not so obvious and had different names. The US Military is and should be under 100% Civilian control, people think the Generals run things, but they really don’t. The US Military has always been subjected to different social experiments depending on the Civilian leaders in charge.

Flight school for me was 1987, if a white male busted a check ride they would usually get another chance, bust two and you were done, which is I think right and proper, I only wanted the best pilots flying with me.

I remember one female that couldn’t pass primary flight, they would set her back to the next flight coming up, she would get I guess two more weeks of additional training and bust the next check ride, last I heard they had recycled her seven times? I guess the plan was that since they couldn’t bust her she would eventually quit. Now I’d guess the pass rate was the same for both sexes, just the males you could send to Infantry school or something, but you weren’t allowed to bust Females. At least they weren’t passing her if she couldn’t meet criteria.

About the time I was in USAF UPT there was a female in one class.  The only one in her class.  She applied to do in military law enforcement, but recruiter suggested she take the flying written tests and she got a slot.

I don't remember how she did on her check rides, but I graduated with 170.3 hours in UPS.  But I already had my PP, flew gliders, tailwheel, and aerobatics.  One guy beat me with 170.1 hours.  But he arrived with CP, ASMEL, IA, etc, and some 2500 hours (his dad owned several airplanes).

IIRC the female student was over 250 hours getting through the program.  Although she did it with her original class.

Last I heard, she ended up in Test Pilot School (she was originally assigned some transport aircraft).  Not because of her flying ability, but she married another pilot, and HE got into TP school, and she got a slot to collocate her with him.