We represent families who lost loved ones in airplane and helicopter accidents.
Brian, Justin and Dan learned to fly in the military and hold commercial pilot licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration. Stuart served in the United States Marine Corps as a aviation mechanic and crew chief. We are committed to improving aviation safety and in helping victims of aviation disasters.
The purpose of this blog is to share with the public the aviation safety information that we learn during our work. We also will provide information about legal developments that affect the rights of aviation victims, but also that may be of interest to anyone who travels by air.
Investigators have determined the causes of the the April 10 Smolensk airplane crash which killed President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others.
Ultimately the factors boil down to human failure. It was a classic case, in my opinion, of pilots sacrificing safety because of pressure to complete a mission. Not only did the pilots put pressure on themselves to complete the mission, but clearly recieved pressure from others to do so as well. In the end they attempted an approach they had very little chance of safely completing and caused a historic tragedy.
The crash reminds me of the Air Force crash in Dubrovnik, Croatia that took the life of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. In that case, U.S. Air Force pilots attempted a NDB/Loc instrument approach in bad weather with only one ADF on their airplane. They got left of course and hit a mountain.
The risk factors that caused both tragedies are as old as aviation itself. What is surprising is that the tragedy in Smolensk occurred given all the information and training that pilots receive on the risk factors. It is clear that we need to ensure that pilots are not only competent — surely pilots entrusted to fly a President are compentent — but that they don’t sacrifice safety for mission accomplishment. In non-combat flying there is never a justification to do so.
A French judge ruled on Monday that Continental Airlines and one of its mechanics were guilty of involuntary homicide for their role in the 2000 crash of an Air France Concorde jet that killed 113 people.
In 2002, the French investigators found that a small strip of metal had fallen off a Continental DC-10 that took off minutes earlier and that the piece punctured a tire of the Concorde as it accelerated down the runway on July 25, 2000. The tire came apart and shards of rubber went into the fuel tanks and causing the catastrophic fire. Continental will appeal the verdict, which has already taken years to work its way through the French legal system.
The effect, if any, that the the criminal verdict will have on improving aviation safety remains to be seen. Europe, unlike the U.S., has begun to regularly criminally prosecute those responsible for aviation disasters. Proponents of “criminalizing” aviation law believe that it is important to hold accountable those responsible for aviation disasters. Opponents say that full disclosure following an aviation disaster is paramount and the threat of criminal charges will cause witnesses to “lawyer up,”thereby hampering the investigatation.
In the U.S., it is extremely rare that any criminal charges are brought following an aviation diaster. It is also rare that the Federal Aviation Administration will agressively go after those responsible for a diaster. The February 12, 2009 Continental Connection 3407 diaster is a case in point. Despite the disaster’s horrific facts — particularly the complete incompetence of the flight crew — the FAA has not taken any signficant steps against Continental or Colgan, which was flying the flight under contract with Continental. The families have taken matters into their own hands and lobbied Congress to change the rules that allowed such incompentent pilots to cause fifty deaths.
For those who say that the criminal verdict in France is too much punishment for Continental and its mechanic, I say that there is too little punishment of those who cause aviation disasters in the U.S.
Emergency Medical Service (EMS) helicopter aviation has had a very bad safety record. The flights are ususally flown single-piloted and are often launched to respond to emergencies so that there is little time for pre-flight planning. The flights are flown at all times of day and night and in all different types of weather.
To respond to the safety problem, which has been recognized for over fifteen years, the FAA has proposed new rules, including the following:
• Revision of part 91 Visual Flight Rules (VFR) weather minimums.
All Commercial Helicopter Operations (Operating Requirements).
• Revision of commercial helicopter instrument flight rules (IFR) alternate airport weather minimums.
• Require helicopter pilots to demonstrate competency in recovery from inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions.
• Require all commercial helicopters to be equipped with radio altimeters.
• Change definition of ‘‘extended over-water operation,’’ and require additional equipment for these operations. Air Ambulance Operations (Operating Requirements and Equipage).
• Require air ambulance flights with medical personnel on board to be conducted under part 135, including flight crew time limitation and rest requirements.
• Require certificate holders with 10 or more helicopter air ambulances to establish operations control centers.
• Require helicopter air ambulance certificate holders to implement pre-flight risk-analysis programs.
• Require safety briefings for medical personnel on helicopter air ambulances.
• Amend helicopter air ambulance operational requirements to include VFR weather minimums, IFR operations at airports/heliports without weather reporting, procedures for VFR approaches, and VFR
flight planning.
• Require pilots in command to hold an instrument rating.
• Require equipage with Helicopter Terrain Awareness and Warning Systems (HTAWS), and possibly light-weight aircraft recording systems (LARS).
The new regulations, if implemented and followed will make EMS aviation safer. It is up to the EMS industry, however, to make the flights safer and too often the financial interests of the for-profit businesses conflict with safety. We hope that these new regulations will prevent the industry from putting their employees and patients at risk by launching flights that because of the conditions should not be launched.
Judge Breyer of the Northern District of California has dismissed the litigation arising from the Air France disaster of June 1, 2009. He not only dismissed the claims of foreign citizens, but also the claims brought by U.S. citizens.
The court found that even though it had subject matter jurisdiction over the claims against Air France in the cases filed by representatives of victims with U.S. “principle and permanant” residences the case should be heard outside the U.S.
The decision is surprising. The Montreal Convention that governs the claims provides for U.S. jurisdiction against Air France in cases involving U.S. “residents” and the choice of U.S. citizens with their principle and permanent resdidences in the U.S. to litigate in the U.S. should have been provided great deference under the circumstances. This is particularly so because under the Convention Air France is essentially strictly liable.
Unfortunately, the U.S. residents got swept up in litigation involving foreign citizens bringing suit in the U.S. If the cases had been positioned differently, I expect that the families would have obtained justice in the United States. The forum non conveniens doctrine cannot do away with the Montreal Convention’s fifth jurisdiction — the victim’s principle and permanant residence.
Many families whose loved ones have been involved in an aviation or other major transportation accident (including major highway, railroad and marine accidents) are unaware that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has a website that provides important accident information. The website address is: http://www.ntsb.gov/.
For aviation matters, the website includes investigation materials for specific aviation accidents, general aviation safety issues and overall aviation accident data. The link is: http://www.ntsb.gov/AVIATION/Aviation.htm. Among other things, this section provides a listing by month of the preliminary, factual and probable cause reports for all accidents investigated by the NTSB.
Certain accidents or specific safety issues are the subject of NTSB board meetings and public hearings. The schedule for Board meetings is found at: http://www.ntsb.gov/events/boardmeeting.htm#upcoming. The schedule for public hearings is found at http://www.ntsb.gov/Events/hearing_sched.htm. Many of the hearings can be viewed through webcast links.
These proceedings provide significant insight into the inner workings of the NTSB and its investigative process.
Based on a recent study of aviation accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has concluded that small airplanes equipped with glass cockpits do not have a better overall safety record than airplanes with old-style traditional instrumentation.
Significantly, the Safety Board determined that “because glass cockpits are both complex and vary from aircraft to aircraft in function, design and failure modes, pilots are not always provided with all of the information they need — both by aircraft manufacturers and the Federal Aviation Administration — to adequately understand the unique operational and functional details of the primary flight instruments in their airplanes.”
The NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman stated that “while many pilots have thousands of hours of experience with conventional flight instruments, that alone is just not enough to prepare them to safely operate airplanes equipped with these glass cockpit features.”
In other words, even though the advanced technology of glass cockpits is supposed to provide more information, improve situational awareness and, as a result, make flying safer, the accident rate belies this notion.
And the NTSB has offered a common sense solution — MORE INFORMATION AND PILOT TRAINING.
Such training includes, among other things, requiring manufacturers to provide pilots with information to better manage system failures; incorporating electronic primary flight displays into training materials and aeronautical knowledge requirements; and, more training in glass cockpit simulators. The NTSB also highlighted the importance of reporting malfunctions or defects with electronic flight, navigation and control systems through the Service Difficulty Reporting system. As safety advocates we applaud this initiative and hope that the FAA, manufacturers and all of us pilots do their part to heed the NTSB’s call for action.
Today, the National Transportation Safety Board added improving the oversight of pilot proficiency as one of its most wanted aviation safety improvements. This addition was prompted in large part from revelations from the investigation into the Continental Connection Flight 3407 accident.
We are happy that the NTSB has highlighted the importance of proper pilot screening and monitoring. We hope that that the Federal Aviation Administration will act quickly on the recommendation to prevent anothe
The plane is registered to Jack Air LLC and appears to correspond to an aircraft bearing FAA registration N12NA which was recently advertised for sale with a contact person named Jack Mazurek. Mr. Mazurek was also onboard the plane.
The plane was apparently based at the Monmouth airport and was returning towards the runway when the crash occurred. Reports indicate that the plane at taken off from Monmouth minutes before the crash and was supposed to be heading on a sight-seeing trip to New York.
The plane was reported, by eye-witnesses, to have been approaching the airport with its landing gear up and at a high rate of speed. The plane was then observed to be pulled up to climb and parts of the plane, including the right wing, were observed to either fall off the plane or structurally fail in flight.
Investigators sift through plane wreckage at Monmouth airfield as snow falls heavier on the scene
The 337 was first built by Cessna in 1964 and has a relatively unique design with one propeller engine in the nose of the plane, and another propeller engine at the rear of the plane in the same line. The design is commonly referred to as a “push, pull” design and was intended to make the plane more controllable in the event that one engine fails (compared to having one of the two engines on either of the wings fail which causes the airplane to turn and can be harder to control). The 337 was used by the military. Cessna stopped making the 337 in 1980.
A Cessna 337 (shown without Riley conversion)
The accident plane appears to have been a 1976 model, but subsequently underwent a “Riley Rocket” conversion. The “Riley Rocket” conversion upgrades the plane’s engines, avionics and airframe, among other things, and increases the speed and performance of the 337.
The NTSB has preliminarily determined that the flight maneuver was consistent with a return to the field for a low altitude, high speed, “fly-by” over the field. If the pilot pulled the aircraft up at a high airspeed, it may have placed forces on the plane’s fuselage that were strong enough to break off parts of the plane, such as its flight control surfaces (the parts of the plane that control its flight) thereby rendering it uncontrollable. There was, apparently, a portable GPS system on board the plane which way help determine the aircraft’s speed which could assist in determining the precise cause of the crash and who may be responsible. If the aircraft was materially altered by Riley in a way that compromised its structural integrity, there may be culpability on their part.
It was reported that family members of the passengers were still at the airport when the crash occurred. Our thoughts are with the families of those that perished.
On February 6, 2010, at approximately 1:30 pm local time, a Cirrus SR-20 airplane collided with a Piper Pawnee airplane, while the Pawnee was towing a glider near Boulder, Colorado. Three persons tragically died in the mid-air collision: Robert Matthews, the owner and presumed pilot of the Cirrus, his brother Mark Matthews who was a passenger (as well as a licensed pilot) and the pilot of the Pawnee, Alexander Howard Gilmer. The glider operation was conducted by Mile High Gliding Inc. The pilot and two passengers in the glider escaped serious injury when the glider pilot released the cable connecting the glider to the tow aircraft only seconds before the collision and then narrowly avoided the fireball that resulted from the impact of the Cirrus and the Pawnee.
The tow plane and glider were apparently climbing from East to West while the Cirrus appears to have been descending from North to South. After the collision, the Cirrus was observed (and videoed) to be descending, on fire, under a parachute, which is part of the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS). The CAPS system was actually incorporated into the design of the Cirrus aircraft by its designer, Alan Klapmeirer, as a result of a mid-air accident he survived.
Being that I fly a similar model Cirrus aircraft, there are certain piloting and technological issues that concern me about this tragic accident. First, while the “right of way” rules in aviation say that a glider and tow have the right of way over an airplane, this of course presumes that the aircraft see each other – or at least that the aircraft sees the tow and glider. This apparently didn’t happen here, or not until it was too late. All pilots have a duty to “see and avoid” each other, but that is sometimes easier said than done… For instance, in low-wing aircraft, like the Cirrus, the wings can block the view of aircraft approaching from below, as the tow and glider may have been doing here. From my military training, I remember how we were taught to scan across different sectors of our field of view, ie left to right, and also at varying depths of focus, ie far, medium, close… But even that may not be enough if an aircraft is constantly blocked by aircraft structure.
It is for this among other reasons that technology generically referred to as ”Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems” (TCAS) was developed. Such technology generally depicts where nearby planes are located on a GPS-like screen in the cockpit and gives relative bearing and altitude information, and some versions even direct the pilot how to avoid a potential collision. Such technology is available on the Cirrus as an option (I have it on mine). It is not clear whether this Cirrus involved in this collision had TCAS technology. Even if it did, the technology requires the other aircraft to be electronically “transponding” its position, and even then the technology has been reported to not always work properly.
While it is too soon to know exactly what happened to cause this collision, one thing is certain; pilots should use as many resources as possible to minimize the risk of a mid-air collision including proper lookout, proper radio communications and available technology.
Many aviation safety advocates are aware of the National Transportation Safety Board’s “MOST WANTED LIST” which identifies the most pressing and important safety improvements needed in aviation safety. Notably, most of the recommendations are the result of actual investigations.
Presently the list highlights six critical items requiring improvement. They are (1) reduce dangers to aircraft flying in icing conditions: (2) improve runway safety; (3) require image recorders [in the cockpit]: (4) reduce accidents caused by human fatigue; (5) improve cockpit resource management; and, (6) improve safety of emergency medical flights.
The NTSB tracks the actions being taken in response to the recommendations and categorizes the action as: (1) being assessed, classification to follow; (2) acceptable response, progressing timely; (3) acceptable response, progressing slowly; or, (4)unacceptable response. Remarkably all six items on the present list are assigned to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for action and all six are categorized as “unacceptable response.”
While some of the recommendations require time, money and technological advances, many are common sense suggestions which can and should be implemented immediately. For example, what justification does the FAA have for not passing new regulations to monitor flight crew and air traffic controller fatigue? And why haven’t revised icing criteria been applied to currently certificated aircraft. I suspect that one of the reasons for inaction is the continuing conflict that lies at the heart of the FAA mission which, on the one hand, calls for the agency to be a watchdog over pilots and aviation operations and, on the other hand, requires them to promote aviation and the agenda of those they are policing. The other reason is undoubtedly a lack of resources, both money and personnel. We can only hope that the new administration will be more responsive because the present situation is frankly, “unacceptable.”
