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In the April 2012 issue of AOPA PILOT magazine, I just received a day ago, under the PILOT COUNSEL section on page 38, an article by John S. Yodice entitled "Who are the 'bad' guys?" has been written concerning this accident. I cannot specifically recall hearing of this accident prior to reading the article today. I did probably read the accident report on the NTSB website in the past, however I cannot specifically recall that.
Anyway, after reading the article today I pulled up the final accident report on the NTSB website to gather more information. As an owner and operator of a SkyMaster for the past 9 plus years and being a Chicago Center Air Traffic Controller working the radar every day for my entire career to this point for the past 21 years, I was quite interested to learn what I could about this event.
According to Yodice, the final ruling by the judge put 60% of the blame on the pilot and 40% on the FAA. According to the article, "The judge awarded more than $4 million in damages to the estate of the pilot, apportioned according to the comparative negligence of the parties." I'm not sure I understand exactly what that all means but it sounds like the FAA paid a significant amount of money to the pilot's estate.
Based on this article and after reading the NTSB's full narrative, with all due respect to the pilot and his family, I do not agree with the judge's ruling. It is clear to me that the pilot was fully aware of the weather ahead for at least 16 minutes of flying time prior to the crash according to the time line in the NTSB's report. In Yodice's article, he comments, "he [the pilot] was aware of a SIGMET for a line of thunderstorms along his route of flight."
In Yodice's article he comments, "The judge summed up the controllers' negligence by saying: "With knowledge that [the pilot] was flying IFR in a small plane with limited weather capability, this controller failed to provide sufficient accurate weather information to allow [the pilot] to make informed decisions when requesting deviations. The weather was severe enough and the controller knew or should have known that he needed to issue complete weather information, as required by the Air Traffic Manual.... Compounding that breach of the duty of care, he then failed to provide any navigation assistance when the pilot requested.""
OK, that apparently is what the judge said and based on that the estate of the pilot received money. I do not know if the family feels better for that or not. What I can say, as an air traffic controller in the center environment, which was the case here, we as controllers do not have the capability to do what apparently this judge thinks we should have done. Our weather radar (though getting better over the years) still is not as good as what we can get on our hand held units and MFD's today. Now I realize this stuff was not available in 2005 to this pilot but the point is that the lag time in the display on our radar is substantial just like the lag time on the units of today. Controllers can only tell pilots what we see. According to the NTSB's report, the Palm Beach TRACON controller and the Miami Center controller both informed the pilot of what they were seeing on their radar scopes. The judge, whether he/she realizes it or not, is asking controllers to provide tactical radar vectors to avoid weather. We as controllers cannot do that anymore than we as pilots could do that with our units of today. The controller's radar and the weather units available to us pilots today can only be used strategically to completely avoid areas of weather. Close in tactical avoidance requires the eyes of the pilot or on board quality weather radar. The controllers told the pilot what they were seeing and the pilot requested multiple deviations based on that information and on the information he had obtained himself. The controllers accommodated all deviations requested buy the pilot. It did not work out well for the pilot. When the pilot was in too deep, he was looking for the controller to assign the heading that was going to save the day. In my opinion, as a controller, that heading does not exist.
What I hope to come from this post is that for us pilots to get the message that weather avoidance is 100% the responsibility of the pilot. Controllers can be used as a resource for informational purposes only and you should ask for it. The controller might not volunteer it because he might have higher priorities then you. The decision on which direction to point the nose rests with the pilot. In my opinion, these controllers were in a lose/lose situation as far as liability is concerned. They chose to not specifically tell the pilot where to point the nose until the very last minute when it was apparent that the pilot was in trouble. The controller was guessing on the magic vector. It did not work. The problem becomes that of if the controller would have attempted the magic vector sooner and it still ended the same way, then it becomes 100% the fault of the FAA for assigning the final heading that killed the pilot.
You all be careful up there!
Ed
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