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Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

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Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#121

Post by 27183 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #114
27183 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heavy weather and an instrument approach or confounding factors? Not accurate imho. Then what are you supposed to do when your GPS craps out on approach in low visibility and heavy weather? Obviously the answer is "fly the airplane". Which means you look at your artificial horizon, set trim and power for max climb, get to a safe altitude and figure it out. If you're paying attention you already have your chart fold…

It's very easy to write this comment when you're not the one getting behind the plane in the middle of the night with multiple simultaneous challenges (speaking from experience; I can feel the anxiety writing this comment from similar "white knuckle" experience), and I agree, keep flying the plane. Systems fail, that is the point of investigating incidents to improve systems. Humans are always the weakest link. I agr…

I've been in this situation too. But I was trained for it and had a mental checklist to follow. I never had a GPS, though. It seems from the details of the article, which you rightly highlighted, that the pilots were using their GPS as a crutch and had no ability to fall back on basic dead reckoning. It seems they didn't know where they were. That's pretty inexcusable, like embarrassing even.

I don't fly anymore, but I see similar behaviors developing on the water. People who use chartplotters for navigation don't have a very good understanding of what's going on around them. If you're just interactively following a computed lay line or a plotted course you don't really need to know what the currents are doing. You don't need to know what the hazards are. You're not actively engaged in navigating the boat.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#123

Post by MarkusQ »

EA-3167 wrote: post #104
ceejayoz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN threads on aviation are always a bit goofy to anyone who's actually flown a plane, yeah.

HN threads are goofy for anyone with domain expertise in the domain being discussed, except for web development.

No, it's just as bad for web development.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#124

Post by raverbashing »

rootsudo wrote: post #75
raverbashing wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pilots complaining about automation: several Pilots unable to fly with all the bells and whistles and getting their ass handed to them when anything falls out of the ordinary: too many

Automation because of safety, latest recent example, Boeing MCAS, cost savings led to airliners crashing, pilots didn’t complain enough then nor had the proper safety because Boeing. You are not supposed to need all the “bells and whistles” to fly, a plane is a plane and a pilot is in left seat meaning to fly the plane. There are checklists and minimum equipment lists that state what is possible and how to handle fai…

Yeah I wouldn't call MCAS automation, and that was 99.9% not on the pilots (that 0.01% was because for good or bad Boeing did have a stab trim runway procedure in place - but even then that barely was enough for the trainwreck that MCAS was)

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#125

Post by rob74 »

Unfortunately I can't access the article, but this video by Juan Browne (IMHO one of the most knowledgeable and no-nonsense aviation YouTubers) also provides a very good summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcyup4xVQuM

What I found shocking is that there are so few road ambulances in that region that medevac flights are routinely ordered for transporting patients to keep ambulances available in case there is a road accident (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcyup4xVQuM&t=95s). Seems like a huge waste of resources to me...

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#126

Post by [deleted] »

jatora wrote: post #37
mrngld wrote: post #15

When I used to fly in Florida in the 2005-2015ish timeframe, NOTAMs for GPS interference (it didn't say that exactly but that's what it meant) were an everyday occurrence along my path, it became boilerplate. I experienced it a few times. One moment the GPS thinks you're plodding along next to Ocala, next moment it thinks I've teleported a thousand miles away, and then it'd just quit. But that's what we train for. Th…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#127

Post by bogzz »

The ridiculously criminal government of the Banana Republic of Serbia last year used this technique to prevent drones from being able to take video of a 300,000+ person protest in Belgrade. They spoofed the GPS signal to make the drones think they were flying near the Nikola Tesla Airport nearby so that they would autonomously land.

https://ground.news/article/lazni-signali-rusili-dronove-avi...

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#128

Post by SoftTalker »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #114
27183 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heavy weather and an instrument approach or confounding factors? Not accurate imho. Then what are you supposed to do when your GPS craps out on approach in low visibility and heavy weather? Obviously the answer is "fly the airplane". Which means you look at your artificial horizon, set trim and power for max climb, get to a safe altitude and figure it out. If you're paying attention you already have your chart fold…

It's very easy to write this comment when you're not the one getting behind the plane in the middle of the night with multiple simultaneous challenges (speaking from experience; I can feel the anxiety writing this comment from similar "white knuckle" experience), and I agree, keep flying the plane. Systems fail, that is the point of investigating incidents to improve systems. Humans are always the weakest link. I agr…

> General aviation (GA) is significantly less safe than commercial air travel

Since I've been paying attention from the peanut gallery, watching Blancolirio videos, etc. I would never fly on a small private plane. Seems like once a week there is a crash of a small GA craft somewhere, often with fatalities, due to loss of control (i.e. nothing wrong with the aircraft). Pilots seem to become overconfident or complacent, make bad decisions instead of "gettimg out the credit card and booking a hotel" as Juan likes to say -- if you can afford to fly your own plane you can afford a night at a hotel. They can't handle loss of visual flight conditions. They don't recognize when they need to ignore their inner ear and trust the instruments. They can't recover from stalls or upsets (and actual practice isn't required, because that too caused a lot of crashes). Worse, they often take family and friends with them.

There's a reason a lot of life insurance policies specifically carve out private aircraft operation or travel as an exception to coverage.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#129

Post by 27183 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #128
toomuchtodo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy to write this comment when you're not the one getting behind the plane in the middle of the night with multiple simultaneous challenges (speaking from experience; I can feel the anxiety writing this comment from similar "white knuckle" experience), and I agree, keep flying the plane. Systems fail, that is the point of investigating incidents to improve systems. Humans are always the weakest link. I agr…

> General aviation (GA) is significantly less safe than commercial air travel Since I've been paying attention from the peanut gallery, watching Blancolirio videos, etc. I would never fly on a small private plane. Seems like once a week there is a crash of a small GA craft somewhere, often with fatalities, due to loss of control (i.e. nothing wrong with the aircraft). Pilots seem to become overconfident or complacent…

When I was training 20yr ago we practiced stalls, spin recovery, simulated random engine-out scenarios.. do they not do that anymore?

I was pretty confident barring some catastrophic mechanical failure I could probably get it on the ground or into the water (or trees) in one piece. The big question remains though: what now? If you're knocked unconscious (likely--lap belt, big flat instrument panel at face height) then two things can happen:

(1) if in the water, you drown before you can get out.

(2) if you're on land, the fuel tank right underneath that instrument panel or the ones up in the wings might torch you before you can get out.

It's probably about right to compare the risk profile to motorcycle riding.

Re: Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

#130

Post by toomuchtodo »

PhaedrusV wrote: post #58
rbanffy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess GPS jamming was not routine for them. Had they been aware of any NOTAM regarding GPS interference, they'd be prepared, and, like you said, would have VOR setup prior to leaving the ground.

Checking NOTAMs is important.

I've taken to checking https://gpsjam.org/ as part of preflight and inflight when connectivity is available. Cannot always trust the NOTAMs in this regard if those jamming or degrading GPS don't communicate intent or actual, so one must rely on direct observation and reports. I recommend other aviators do the same, the cost is free.

(sites surfacing this information are obtaining it from actual automated observations from aircraft ADS-B broadcasts that contain GPS accuracy and positioning information, treating the entire commercial air traffic system as a GPS/GNSS observatory sensor network, which is very cool imho)

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