As you would expect, any time there is a plane crash, people start asking me questions.
Since the Right’s favorite scapegoat these days is DEI, they’re of course blaming DEI for the recent midair collision at DCA as well as the crash of a regional jet in Toronto.
To which I call — bullshit.
I don’t want to speculate too much on the causes of these accidents since the investigations will likely take about a year. I expect that both will be at least partly be due to human factors. Note that very rarely is there a single cause for an accident. There is usually what we call a “chain of events”.
First let’s look at the midair collision between an Army H-60 helicopter on a low-level training mission and a regional airliner circling to land at DCA.
What we know about the midair at DCA was the airliner was making what’s called a “circling approach”. That involves flying the instrument approach to one runway, and then maneuvering to land on a different runway. You might do this if the winds are favoring the other runway or perhaps the other runway is longer and you need the stopping distance.
I used to operate into DCA but thankfully my airline doesn’t go there anymore. I always felt like I was playing “You bet your license!” every time I went in there. It is surrounded by restricted airspace so the arrivals and departures funnel everybody over the Potomac. If it was up to me they’d bulldoze it and build a high-speed rail line out to IAD (Dulles). Won’t ever happen because Congress critters like having that airport close to downtown.
At the same time there was an Army UH-60 helicopter engaged in a low-level training mission over the Potomac. Now, this is the part I find odd. I had no idea they did this sort of thing that close to the DCA traffic pattern. When we did that sort of training in fixed wing jets we did it way out in the middle of nowhere. Doing it through busy airspace like that seems like setting yourself up to fail. Granted a helicopter can do it at a much slower speed but to me it still seems like asking for trouble. If someone here has rotary wing time and wants to correct me feel free.
This sounds like a case of see-and-avoid going badly. Either the helicopter crew never heard the radio call about the airliner, or they did hear it but maybe saw the wrong airliner. It would be easy enough to do when you have that much air traffic.
They may also have been flying with Night Vision Goggles. I can recall flying with older generation NVGs back in the early 1990s and losing a lot of depth perception with them. I’m assuming that the newer ones are better but may still have been a factor.
Normal altitude separation between aircraft flying visually is supposed to be 500 feet minimum. Even if everybody was at their correct altitude they would have passed a lot closer than that.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about DEI. One of the pilots of the UH-60 was (gasp!) a female and that’s all certain people need to know.
From what I’ve been able to piece together, the female pilot was a 28-year-old Army Captain with approximately 500 flying hours. That tells me she was fairly experienced. In military flying 500 hours is someone who’s no longer a rookie and probably knows what they’re doing.
The instructor and pilot-in-command was a 39-year-old male Warrant Officer with over 1,000 hours. I had 1,000 hours at the end of my tour as a T-38 instructor and definitely knew what I was doing by then.
Now, and this is very important: the pilot-in-command is ultimately responsible for the safe conduct of the flight. Period. End of discussion. Even if the female pilot got her icky girl cooties all over everything the instructor was ultimately responsible.
When I was an instructor, if one of my students utterly and completely screwed things up (and they did) it was my job to unscrew them. Preferably it was my job to keep them from getting screwed up in the first place but if that failed I was supposed to step in and save the day.
Now let’s look at the recent crash in Toronto. This was a CRJ-900 operated by Endeavor. It may say “Delta” on the side but it’s not a mainline Delta jet. Preliminary investigation says it was a hard (3 G’s) landing in gusty winds that broke the right main gear and caused the plane to flip over. Fortunately there were no fatalities but there were injuries.
The female First Officer was the pilot flying. She had been at Endeavor for just over a year and had over 1,400 hours total flying time with just over 400 hours on the CRJ. That tells me that she was “junior” but not inexperienced.
The (male) Captain had 3,570 hours total time and 764 on the CRJ. This tells me that he was pretty experienced.
Descent rate was 1,100 feet per minute, which is excessive. Normally it would be around 700 feet per minute on approach and then a lot less in the landing flare. They got a “Sink Rate!” warning from the EGPWS (Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System) about 2.5 seconds before impact.
I don’t know exactly what happened here because I wasn’t on the controls. They were fighting gusty winds and it’s possible that a gust just before touchdown caused the high descent rate. It’s also possible that they got so focused on the crosswind that they forgot to flare for landing. I almost did that once but fortunately the Captain was on the ball and said something.
If you look at the moment they touch down, they’re in a slight right bank and probably came down hard on the right main gear. 3 G’s is a pretty hard touchdown and I doubt the gear is stressed for that.
I do know that if I got a “Sink Rate!” warning that close to the runway I’m going to be immediately adding a bunch of power to arrest the sink rate and if that doesn’t do the trick I’m going around. Something has gone badly wrong at that point.
I copied this from my company’s flight manual but I suspect every airline has something similar.
The decision to execute a go-around is both prudent and mandatory anytime the outcome of an approach or landing becomes uncertain.
Once again, the Captain is ultimately responsible for the safe conduct of the flight. If he thought the approach was too challenging for the First Officer, he should have flown it himself. Failing that, he should have commanded a go-around when things got ugly.
I looked up the airline’s minimum hiring requirements. This is pretty standard for the regional airlines. Note that these reflect the higher minimums enacted after the Colgan Air crash in 2009.
A “legacy” airline like United or Delta would have higher requirements. You would also likely need to well exceed those minimums to actually be competitive for a job at the majors. The major airlines tend to hire from the regionals or the military. Since there are a lot less military pilots on the market today than back in the day I would guess they hire a lot more from the regionals.
I can assure you that the airlines are not overrun with unqualified DEI hires. You can’t have unqualified people flying airliners so we all have to at least meet the standards as set out in the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations).
Before you can even get hired, you need at least the minimum qualifications required by the FAA. Then everyone has to make it through the training program. Airline training curriculums are also regulated by the FAA. Made it through your simulator checks? Great! Now you get to go out on IOE (Initial Operating Experience) with a Check Airman (Instructor/Evaluator). Passed your IOE? Awesome! Now you can enjoy being on probation for a year. Try not to screw up. You’ll also have to go through recurrent training (every 9 months in my case). Then you’ll be treated to the occasional check-ride from either a company Check Airman or maybe an FAA examiner. In addition to the Check Airman evaluating my first 727 IOE flight we also had a Fed riding with us. No pressure!
I can also assure you that in no way are there hiring barriers to white males in the airline business. If I look around our Flight Operations on any given night I would estimate that it’s 20-1 white males versus women and/or minorities. In my 20 years at this job I can just about count the number of female Captains I’ve flown with on one hand. It’s pretty much whitemaleapalooza where I work.
This could just as well be a group of airline Captains on a layover.
If anything women and minorities are heavily underrepresented in this industry relative to their percentage of the population.
Purely anecdotal but I would say the typical person I fly with is white, male, 40-60 years old, married at least once, and most likely flew in the military. We’ve hired so many Navy F-18 guys that if I asked a new Captain “So, which Hornet squadron were you in?” I’d have a better than even chance of being right. Odds are they’re from somewhere in the South and are politically somewhere between a Reagan voter and people that bury gold in their back yard.
Not to mention that we crashed planes left and right back when we only allowed white males to fly airliners. One reason airline crashes make the news is that they’re so rare. Hopefully we can keep it that way.
Stay safe out there.
