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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

#211

Post by hnburnsy »

From the NTSB today...

>NTSB Statement: The NTSB is actively investigating the crash of a Beechcraft King Air operating as a medevac flight near Ruidoso, New Mexico on May 14. The NTSB has not yet determined the probable cause or any contributing factors to the accident. NTSB investigators collect, validate and analyze all available evidence before reaching any conclusions. We encourage members of the media covering accidents under NTSB investigation to contact the agency with questions about the process or status of an investigation to help ensure accurate reporting. Read the preliminary report, which contains factual information gathered during the on-scene portion of the investigation, on our website:

https://web.ntsb.gov/investigations/?ntsbnumber=WPR26FA186

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

#212

Post by V99 »

idlewords wrote: post #188
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…

The highest mountain summit in Florida is 105 meters above sea level.

In Florida a) they don't take kindly to that kind of units and b) you should be more worried about the many 1500-2000' antennas than the "mountains".

It's still pretty useful to know where you are and not die hitting an invisible guy wire.

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

#213

Post by tiahura »

alistairSH wrote: post #200
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…

You're not wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean Uncle Sam should be dicking around with GPS jammers as a normal thing (at least not without acknowledging that doing so changes the risk profile of aviation to some extent).

This wasn’t downtown Cleveland.

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

#214

Post by throw0101d »

jjwiseman wrote: post #179

I run GPSJAM.org, have been studying and tracking the effects of GPS interference on aviation for the past 5 years, and I was a source for this article. I'm not a pilot and I don't work for any aviation agency. I'm very curious to see what the final NTSB report says, but their preliminary report along with commentary from other analysts seems to show that this was a crew that made bad choices and died because of it.…

> Saying that this situation is what pilots train for and they should have just used VORs and ILS reveals an overly macho, unsophisticated understanding of aviation safety. We've added GPS, ADS-B, TCAS, GPWS, TAWS, etc. because they make flight safer.

We've also added blind spot warnings, but you're still responsible for doing a shoulder check before changing lanes. We have automatic emergency braking, but you need to stay back as well (if it does not work, or if conditions are slippery).

GNSS also tends to be used with glass cockpits, going back to the late 1990s (e.g., Garmin GNS 400/500), which not only did GPS but also VOR/DME. How transparent is getting a fix between the two and still getting good RNAV?

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

#215

Post by meatmanek »

jeffbee wrote: post #65
fryanyway_swe wrote: post #19

We have a competency crisis that will only get worse and worse. I myself am guilty of it. Modern life is too comfortable, there is no need to fight through and put in the hours to be an expert when you can do 50% and get 90% of the paychecke. Pilots train to navigate without GPS. Or, rather, they should...

There's always a competency shortage in this kind of aviation because the crew are inexperienced people trying to get a higher rating and a better job. The big transport aircraft are so easy to fly now, they should probably switch the rules. They can let some kid fly second seat in a 737, but only crack veterans should be allowed to touch a King Air in the dark.

> They can let some kid fly second seat in a 737, but only crack veterans should be allowed to touch a King Air in the dark.

This is similar to the conclusion from one of the blancolirio videos about this crash[1]:

> The operation that dispatched this flight should have never dispatched this flight in the first place to begin with. There are simply too many variables working against you to accept this flight. And in my opinion, this is another classic situation where we're losing a lot of young pilots just trying to build up flying time to that magic 1500 hours to get on to a better job and a better future with the airlines. In my opinion, we should have never implemented the 1500 hour rule. These kids would have been much better off if they had been hired by the airlines at 500 hours and been trained and kept in a safer, more controlled environment in the right seat of the airline that they're going to work for for the rest of their career while they build up their time there to get to 1500 hours, where they can then get their ATP rating and then upgrade to the left seat; instead of sending all of our young pilots out there to do all kinds of risky flying operations in an effort to build up the magical 1500 hours as required by a knee-jerk reaction by Congress to assuage the family members of the Colgan Air crash victims. Get rid of the 1500-hour rule.

1. https://youtu.be/Dcyup4xVQuM?t=977

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

#216

Post by wat10000 »

inigyou wrote: post #205
wat10000 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they do. Go search recent NTSB reports and you'll see it. Normally it's described a bit more elaborately, e.g. "The pilot’s failure to maintain a proper glidepath during landing which resulted in a landing short of the runway." But there are plenty of modern reports that do nothing but blame the pilot. Certainly it's a lot less common than it used to be. There's a bigger push to find underlying causes that can b…

And why did the pilot fail to maintain a proper glide path? If he was drunk, then sure, pilot error. If he was insufficiently trained, why did he think that he had a sufficient level of training for this flight? If he had too much get-there-itis, is there anything in the training that could help prevent that? Seems there is surely potential training changes relating to GPS dependence.

No reason is given. That quote is the entirety of the "Probable Cause and Findings" from the report in question.

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

#217

Post by TitaRusell »

ifwinterco wrote: post #182
VBprogrammer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPS is not essential to air navigation. It’s nice to have, and there are some approaches that legally require it to be operational in order to fly them (IFR procedures) but aviation has other systems in place to guide aircraft under conditions where visual flight navigation is impossible. This has not been the practical reality for many years for IFR flights (arguably not for VFR flight either but some of the good…

This approach is wrong though, as we’re now seeing. GPS is comically easy to jam or spoof and assuming it will work all the time is just a silly, dangerous assumption. We just happened to live through a brief period where you could believe that

In this case the call was coming from inside the house. Another win for uncle Sam.

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

#218

Post by klaff »

Mawr wrote: post #195
27183 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) the…

> It's probably about right to compare the risk profile to motorcycle riding. I'd say it's probably not, many motorcycle riders deliberately choose a motorcycle because it's "fun", meaning they go around speeding on purpose, so the crash stats are very negatively skewed by those deliberately behaving recklessly, just how driving crash stats are skewed by people driving under the influence. That's a bit of a different…

There are classes of motorcycle accidents that are not a function of rider speeding or otherwise being careless. The one that took the life of a coworker is described as follows: the motorcycle is travelling on a country two-lane road, trees alongside, sunny day, and a vehicle comes from the other direction and turns left across the path of the motorcycle. At closing speed over 160 kph (80- 100 kph in opposite directions) the gap is closing at over 45 m/s and dappled lighting makes it hard to see the motorcycle even with a daytime headlight. Years after my friend's death I read a chapter in a book on forensic engineering which covered the situation in detail (not my coworker's death specifically, but this class of motorcycle accident as a recognized pattern).

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

#219

Post by throw0101d »

PhaedrusV wrote: post #161
Suzuran wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, our government is doing their level best to make GPS the only option for air navigation. After all, we all know that technology NEVER fails, and the sooner we can turn off all those big bad old ground radars and navigation aids, the sooner we can sell all that real estate and use the money for things that the American public desperately needs, like more corporate bailouts and bathroom security cameras.

That's not accurate. Navigationally critical VORs are continuing to be maintained, they're just turning off the podunk redundant ones. VOR Candidate Retention List | Federal Aviation Administration https://www.faa.gov/ato/navigation-programs/vor-retention-li...

See specifically the "MON" concept:

> The VOR MON program is designed to enable aircraft, having lost GPS service, to revert to conventional navigation procedures. This will allow users to continue through the outage area using VOR station-to-station navigation or to proceed to a MON airport where an Instrument Landing System (ILS), Localizer (LOC) or VOR approach procedure can be flown without the necessity of GPS, Distance Measuring Equipment (DME), Automatic Direction Finder (ADF), or surveillance. Any airport with a suitable instrument approach may be used for landing, but the VOR MON assures that at least one airport will be within 100 Nautical Miles (NM).

* https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/at...

2011:

* https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2011/12/15/2011-31...

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

#220

Post by Zak »

SoftTalker wrote: post #148
27183 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) the…

I'm not a pilot but as I understand it, stall/spin recovery practice is not mandatory anymore for a PPL and not all pilots do it, because it requires an aircraft designed for acrobatics and in practice a number of pilots ended up getting killed trying it. So now they learn it by the book or maybe playing with a flight simulator but not in an actual aircraft.

Not a pilot either, but it's my understanding that accidental spins almost never happen at altitudes where they're recoverable. Preventing the spin is the only way to avoid most crashes involving spins.

Stalls, on the other hand are part of standard instruction. Recognizing the beginning of a stall early and preventing it will prevent the spin.

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