Re: 'Perfect storm': Pilots of Navy jet had few options after bird strike, expert says

[Fred J McCall]

In article <t15o3i$2qs66$8...@news.freedyn.de>
governo...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Too bad it didn't crash on local Democrat headquarters.
>

The two military pilots whose plane crashed last September after
a bird strike near Fort Worth had little to no way to prevent
the crash, an aviation safety expert said.

Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the U.S. Department
of Transportation, reviewed the cockpit video obtained this week
by the Star-Telegram. Schiavo said the pilots, both of whom
ejected at the last second, were up against a “perfect storm”
when they lost the jet’s single engine.

“This aircraft had all the bad things lined up against it,” she
said. “They just had everything working against them.”

A Navy instructor and a Marine student pilot were flying a T-45C
Goshawk on a training flight from Corpus Christi to the Naval
Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. As the jet made its
final approach, a 4.5-pound vulture appeared directly in front
of it and was ingested into the engine, according to the video
and a Navy report also obtained by the Star-Telegram.

In the seconds after the bird was sucked into the engine, one of
the pilots can be heard swearing and then radioing in an
emergency landing. But as landing instructions come over the
radio, competing with the sounds of alarms in the cockpit, the
pilot follows up with another transmission.

“We’re not gonna make it,” he says.

The plane then dips suddenly toward the ground, and the trees
below come closer into focus as the pilot yells, “Standby to
eject. Pull up! Pull up!”

Thirty seconds after the bird strike, the plane plummeted into a
dense Lake Worth neighborhood. The two pilots ejected and
survived the crash, although the student pilot sustained serious
injuries. The plane crashed through the neighborhood, damaging
multiple homes and injuring three civilians, although no one was
killed.

Schiavo, who was inspector general from 1990 to 1996, has been
highly critical of the airline industry and federal regulators
and now works as an aviation litigator. She has appeared in
numerous television programs about airline crash investigations.

After reviewing the Navy report and the flight video, Schiavo
said she doesn’t see a realistic way that the two pilots
could’ve avoided the crash.

To start with, birds don’t show up on a plane’s radar unless
they’re in an unusually large flock, she said, which means these
pilots wouldn’t have known about the bird hazard until they
physically saw the vulture.

“Unfortunately, the first knowledge that a pilot has — they’re
much very like what’s in that video — is, boom, there’s a bird
in your windshield or your engine,” Schiavo said.

And because the jet they were flying had just a single engine,
the pilots were left entirely without power once the bird was
ingested.

A plane can still be steered after it loses power, Schiavo said,
and pilots are typically taught to glide an aircraft that loses
power. But the T-45C Goshawk isn’t a very glide-able plane, she
said, because of its relatively stubby wings.

Plus, gliding any plane requires at least some airflow over the
wings. Based on the sudden dive that the trainer jet takes,
according to the video, it likely lost airflow, too, Schiavo
said.

“If somebody wanted to play devil’s advocate, they’d say, ‘Well,
maybe they could’ve set it up to glide.’ I doubt it,” she said.
“I think they were too close to the ground and too close to the
runway.”

Reports of bird strikes are increasing in the United States,
according to a voluntary database maintained by the Federal
Aviation Administration. That database reported 1,800 wildlife
strikes involving civil aircraft in 1990, compared with 16,000
in 2018. In the past 15 years, there have been more than 185,000
wildlife strikes, according to the FAA database, including 32
that fully destroyed the aircraft.

In perhaps the most well-known example, US Airways Flight 1549
crashed into New York’s Hudson River in 2009 after hitting a
flock of geese that took out both engines. Pilot Chesley “Sully”
Sullenberger glided the plane into the river, and everyone on
board survived.

Both Schiavo and the FAA pointed to growing bird populations as
one factor in the rising number of aircraft strikes.

Texas has seen an increase in the population of black vultures,
the type of bird that downed the trainer jet, for at least 50
years.

Schiavo said some bird strikes can be prevented by intentional
land-use practices that don’t attract birds, and by scaring
birds away from runway areas with sounds and lights. She noted
that these practices often can’t be applied off airport
property, which limits their effectiveness.

She also said drones can be deployed to spot bird flocks in
order to warn pilots, although that approach isn’t widely used.

The FAA says on its website that it has plans to expand its
research into wildlife risk management in the proximity of
airports.

Comments:

Horniphous
11 hours ago

one could design an anti-aircraft weapon based on this, if a
vulture brings down a military jet that easy... h ross perot
said that about the vietnam war tactics...

https://news.yahoo.com/perfect-storm-pilots-navy-jet-
225938985.html

[a425couple]

On 09/16/2022 01:36 AM, Fred J McCall wrote:
> In article <t15o3i$2qs66$8...@news.freedyn.de>
> governo...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> Too bad it didn't crash on local Democrat headquarters.
>>
>
> The two military pilots whose plane crashed last September after
> a bird strike near Fort Worth had little to no way to prevent
> the crash, an aviation safety expert said.
>
> Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general of the U.S. Department
> of Transportation, reviewed the cockpit video obtained this week
> by the Star-Telegram. Schiavo said the pilots, both of whom
> ejected at the last second, were up against a “perfect storm”
> when they lost the jet’s single engine.
>
> “This aircraft had all the bad things lined up against it,” she
> said. “They just had everything working against them.”
>

Overstated, but often times "It is, what it is".

Sometimes bad things can not be avoided.

[Mattb]

> Overstated, but often times "It is,[Hartung comma] what it is".

The comma is wrong.