How Aircraft Accidents, just like the DC Crash, Are Investigated

How Aircraft Accidents, just like the DC Crash, Are Investigated

By Gary Stix edited by Dean Visser

A video digital camera on the Kennedy Heart in Washington, D.C., captures a chiaroscuro picture of the evening panorama within the nation’s capital. A banking airplane approaches above. It strikes towards the digital camera after which passes uneventfully out of view. Off within the distance, a brilliant blip within the sky strikes slowly ahead. A a lot smaller pinpoint of sunshine approaches from behind at a faster tempo. Inside a number of seconds, the smaller plane overtakes the bigger one and a superb flash illuminates the evening sky lots of of ft above the Potomac River.

Final evening’s collision of a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with American Eagle Flight 5342 is feared to have resulted within the deaths of the industrial airplane’s 64 passengers and crew, in addition to the helicopter’s three U.S. Military service members. Understandably, the incident astonished each specialists and the flying public. Touring in U.S. airspace has usually been a remarkably safe expertise for a few years. The final home accident that concerned a industrial airliner and resulted in main fatalities dates again to 2009.

Ronald Reagan Washington Nationwide Airport stays a problem for pilots, who should deal with each the heavy site visitors and the restricted airspace close to areas such because the White Home and the Pentagon. The Potomac is the location of 1 earlier main accident: in 1982 an Air Florida flight crashed right into a bridge whereas taking off in a storm after which plummeted into the frozen river, killing 74 of the 79 individuals onboard and 4 motorists on the bridge. Lately, close to misses at Reagan Nationwide have occurred on the bottom, with airplane paths intersecting dangerously on the runway in a number of incidents recorded by the Federal Aviation Administration.

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How do air security officers proceed with investigating such a serious accident? Scientific American put that query to Kristy Kiernan, affiliate director of the Boeing Heart for Aviation and Aerospace Security at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical College.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

Accidents in industrial aviation are uncommon, and I believe lots of people are questioning how we’ll discover out what actually occurred in yesterday’s incident.

There are very clearly outlined processes for this. The NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] has a “go team” that’s launched instantly, and as soon as the rescue and restoration operations are winding down, the eye turns to perishable proof—issues that may be affected by the setting or by the motion and restoration of the wreckage. In order that’s a vital factor, to gather the perishable proof. Clearly, as soon as the scene has been secured and it’s potential to function safely, there are loads of hazards at an accident scene, so safety of the people who find themselves doing the rescue and restoration and the investigation can also be an vital issue.

iSo what comes after that?

Clearly, the so-called black bins, the voice and knowledge recorders, are essential to get better. These can be current on the regional jets. I don’t know what kind of recording units are on the UH-60 [helicopter]. However usually, the black bins are a giant focus. Then there are numerous teams which can be convened—operations, upkeep, air-traffic management, climate—and all of those teams, together with human components specialists examine their specific space.

So, as an example, in air-traffic management, you’ll be securing all of the air-traffic management radar and the tape of all of the communications. Equally, for operations, for each the Military and for PSA Airways [the regional American Airlines subsidiary involved in the crash], there will likely be a group of proof associated to the individuals concerned within the operation of the plane, together with their coaching data. If issues will not be as they need to be, the hassle in a specific space is proportional to the position {that a} specific reality performs within the investigation. So an increasing number of assets will likely be deployed towards the areas the place the investigation is progressing. All that takes time. Now we have a quick information cycle, and the general public ought to get data as quickly as they will, however it’s higher to attend for good data than to provide in to hypothesis and opinion, which frankly, have completely no place in aviation.

Are you able to describe what has been discovered from pursuing previous investigations?

I’d say is that now we have layers of security that exist. And so, for instance, there are procedures by way of the place airplanes are within the sky and what altitudes they’re at. Then now we have applied sciences. Now we have collision avoidance methods. Now we have what’s known as ADS-B, Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. That’s one other device that’s used to assist in situational consciousness of the place different plane are within the airspace. Now we have extremely educated air-traffic controllers, and in quite a few situations previously, they’ve been instrumental in avoiding midair collisions. Then now we have extremely skilled pilots on the flight deck of the regional jet and extremely educated and skilled aviators within the Military helicopter.

However that isn’t all the time sufficient, is it?

So we usually have all of those layers. Nonetheless, we even have to acknowledge that we ask loads of our methods. Now we have that space in Washington, [D.C.], which is high-density, high-volume and has a excessive tempo of operations. And whereas now we have totally different margins of security—in order that if you’re driving on a slick and snowy highway at midnight, you’ll be able to keep protected operations—your danger profile and your security margin is totally different than on a wonderful Sunday afternoon. So there are areas the place our security margins are thinner, and people are the areas that we actually should be vigilant for.

If individuals might see all the actions that go into protecting the airspace protected, I believe they might be reassured. However the very last thing that I’d say is that we must be snug the place we at the moment are. We must always all the time, as aviation security professionals, be uncomfortable. For the touring public, I believe they will take consolation due to all these actions that go on each single day. However even one accident, when there are 40,000 operations within the U.S. home airspace each day is just too many.

Air accidents with mass fatalities are uncommon. Doesn’t that in some methods make them tougher to analyze?

I don’t know that it makes [such accidents] more difficult to analyze. It undoubtedly makes [them] more difficult to foretell as a result of there’s loads of modeling that’s carried out within the business to try to perceive the various things that go into an accident. There may be not a smoking gun; there is not only one causal issue. Even in the event you discovered one factor, there’s a motive for that one factor, and that motive is extra difficult. And in the event you simply determine the one factor, you’re actually not fixing something. You must go deeper and take a look at the why behind it. These accidents are very uncommon. So the probability of the identical one recurring, particularly after we take motion, is extraordinarily low. However we are able to’t cease there. We wish to use every factor we uncover as a chance to look at all of the components that went into it—in order that we’re not simply being reactive however [are also] in a position to look ahead and determine the dangers and hazards that now we have to mitigate.