Trump is right again! It was DEI. Very sad.
The bad data comment is a misdirection. regardless of 300, 400 or 278 the data clearly showed they were way above the 200-foot ceiling, and they knew it. It does not matter that the data was not exactly 278, in fact what they thought it was makes their error more egregious and makes them more accountable.
Once they determined this MAJOR discrepancy they should have immediately stopped, descended and got out of traffic.
If this was a training mission for night goggle flight, why would both be wearing them? It seems to me, the trainer would not be using them so he could see and prevent mistakes or problems that he wouldn’t with restricted vision?
AVIATION PING!....................
Civilians should never be unwitting NPCs in military training exercises.
So the evidence all redirects to “pilot error”.
Unpreparedness or outright malice? Plenty of room for interpretation either way.
“—it was a cascade of failures.”
Most “accidents” are exactly that. When you get to 3 failures you can almost guaranteed an accident will occur.
What the heck were these pilots doing using barometric altimeters instead of the radar altimeter for primary altitude reference for low level night flight through complex, busy airspace over densely populated areas?.
Sounds like pilot and other error. As expected.
How about conducting flight trainings not in the landing paths of commercial flights.
So far I’ve read at least one grieving widow has filed a lawsuit against the FAA and the military. Cant say I blame them.
Stupid command structure allowing such NVG tight pattern training flights in glide paths of busy airport at a time when it was plane after plane after plane. THAT is the big screw up. In retrospect, incomprehensible.
Hairsplitting over AM/FM/digital and mike keystrokes is just an attempt to keep high ranking people from taking the hit for this.
The helicopter pilots were dumb and flying sloppily but they never should have been flying this sort of mission.
It's a command fault.
DEI is another matter.
Global problem with military is the characteristic punishment of intelligent people who point out obviously stupid and crazy orders.
Ought to be some means of injecting some brains and process improvement into the system. Not holding my breath when I read about the BS postmortem on this screw up.
A couple things bother me about this. Why was her name being released delayed. Why was her social media scrubbed. Why was there no condolences mentioned by the Bidens since she was a member of the white house team.
I have more questions then answers
Whether it is ship collisions or airplane collisions, the U.S. military needs serious flushing and rebuilding...
FAA issues have been around for a long time, thanks to obama...
Relatives of the airline passengers involved in the Reagan National airport disaster need to start suing obama...
“The chopper’s altimeter was off—way off. Pilot read 300 feet, instructor saw 400, but the real number? 278 feet—well above the 200-foot ceiling. “
... then they should have been flying much lower, right?
With all the description of altimeter error/discrepancies/capabilities why fly at all in an area with a limit of only 200ft?
There is not enough margin for error with a 200ft ceiling in an urban environment through a flight path of commercial airplanes passing through that altitude.
Its “on its face” RIDICULOUS! And now we know, DEADLY!
I would imagine that it is hard to stay current with your pilot skills when you are working in the White House.
I would also think that the place to refresh your flying skills would not be at Washington, D.C. but perhaps a quieter military post.
This is semi-useless unless you know whether or not the altimeters had the correct altimeter settings dialed in. When I worked aircraft instrumentation, I could adjust an altimeter to within 5-10 feet of perfect. And on our test equipment we could set the altitude to within 1 foot!
Another way for altimeters to be off by a lot is water in the static lines that feed the altimeter systems.
So the pilot and instructor both knew they were too high, and actually thought they were even more wrong than they actually were?
This is all on the Army. No way to spin that.