As a 40+ year pilot with airline, military and corporate experience including training/check airman status, I would like to add my two-cents to the Comair crash discussion. In doing research for my book "False Security: The Real Story About Airline Safety," I found a plethora of data to back up my real-world experience regarding pilot fatigue. Given the duty-time start for this trip and the typical regional-airline pilot's schedule, I believe the investigators need to look at and give proper weight to fatigue as the primary contributing factor in this crash.
Yes, it appears the pilots made at least three big mistakes: distracting conversation during taxi, not checking runway alignment with aircraft heading and ignoring the lack of runway lights. However, pilots don't like to make mistakes. The big question should be: What caused them to make these mistakes?
In my opinion, all of us concerned with aviation safety must speak up for what we know is the biggest contributor to pilot mistakes -- fatigue. As we all know, pilot error is now the most-prevalent cause of aviation accidents. Fatigue is the biggest contributor to pilot error.
Therefore, airline and corporate managers need to be put in the spotlight whenever they force their crews (either through duty regs or management pressure) to fly when they are fatigued. Fatigue has been largely ignored by the powers-that-be because of the economic impact of doing what's right. This is the same economics-versus-safety fight that pilots have been fighting since the dawn of commercial aviation.
The battle for safer duty-time regulations could quite possibly be the last major one in our quest for safer skies. Let's win it. As I understand it from controllers at DAB, the now-removed wx radios ( ) were purchased by the tower manager with money from the Coke fund.
As to what wx is available to controllers, we see six levels of weather echoes, which could be anything from mist to a severe downpour. Here at BHM, we are in the middle of an antenna raising project and for another five weeks minimum we are using Center radar. That means no radar wx returns at all, no LLWAS alerts, no microburst information or wind gust info.
In fact, when a pilot wants the current winds I have to move to the clearance delivery position to read it off the AWOS computer. The only information available is at the supervisor computer in the back of the TRACON/CAB with limited Internet access. So to tell you what the weather is, I have to get up from my radar scope, walk around the desk to the back of the TRACON, and pull the info up on the computer.
Who's distracted now? For the FAA to say radios in the operating quarters are distracting is just more b.s.
to make our lives uncomfortable. We can't have radios, but answering the telephone, dealing with Airways Facilities Techs working on equipment, enduring alternately frigid (67 degrees) and toasty (87 degrees) temperatures in the Tower, supervisors giving "required" on the spot corrections and no radar below 3000 - 2000 feet aren't distractions? I'd rather have some soothing AC/DC on the radio any day!
I got a real kick out of the first sentence in your first article ( ), which said, "The FAA needs to build a modern airspace infrastructure, and 2007 will be a critical year in building a new financing system to support it, Mary Peters, the new Department of Transportation Secretary told...
" My message to Mary Peters is simply this: Can anyone in their right mind trust the FAA to build a modern airspace infrastructure and a financing structure to support it when the FAA has demonstrated it can not even account for $5 billion in assets as reported in the findings of a recent Agency audit? In my opinion, such negligence is nothing short of criminal and someone needs to be held accountable. In view of this, I would strongly urge Ms.
Peters to reprioritize and spend her time and efforts investigating this situation prior to proposing her veiled attempt to pacify the airline lobby groups at the expense of the general aviation community.
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