Quote:
Originally Posted by bob47
Just curious, based on your experience, how could the helicopter crew not see the airplane? In the more recent videos of the crash, the airplane landing lights are a blinding light coming straight at the camera. It's hard to imagine that the helicopter crew wouldn't see this if they even glanced to their left.
|
I have no where near as many hours in the cockpit as others who have posted, but I do have enough to know that pilots primarily rely on their peripheral vision, which is better able to distinguish "movement", thus the words "scanning for traffic". In an airplane, your head has to be on a slow swivel when searching for traffic. It's usually the only way to pick out a "small speck", 2 miles away. I haven't been in the cockpit since ADS-B was mandated, but I can't imagine it's changed much, as it's primarily "out-going", I believe?
Apparently the 2 pilots in the BH were wearing night-vision googles, which I've been told are something like looking at the world through a toilet paper roll ... little or no peripheral vision.
Coincidentally, I also have some experience in the ATC world and made a post regarding that, but it was deleted by the Moderators. That's fine, that's their right and I'm not going to argue the point. I am going to make a similar point, but hopefully without the specifics that caused that post to be deleted.
Like many other challenging employment positions in today's world, the standards have been lowered, simply to put "bodies in seats". It's not an easy task, as X number of people are needed and if you can't hire enough of the "best and the brightest", you have to take what you can get.
Some folks want to attribute lower standards to a specific political or social agenda. In the ATC world, that's simply not the case. It's the reality of the job marketplace. There's a severe shortage of available and competent Controllers and the FAA over the last few years has lowered their admission standards.
At the same time, the technology has improved dramatically and the hope has always been that the improved technology would make up for the lower standards. I think in this instance, as myself and a number of others have mentioned, ATC is going to take part of the blame and rightly so, in my opinion. With today's technology, two 100% operational aircraft shouldn't collide in the sky.