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Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking

wired.com

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

#251

Post by jrflowers »

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.…

I love this post because of how clear it is.

Lack of GPS isn’t a critical safety issue, it simply causes critical safety issues. It’s the pilot’s fault that they crashed but they wouldn’t have crashed if GPS wasn’t jammed. It’s overly macho to say that pilots train for this but I posted an animation showing how incredibly common this is on Twitter. I am not a pilot. I do not work for an aviation organization. I have a website.

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

#252

Post by inigyou »

_moof wrote: post #240
inigyou wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, aviation investigations haven't concluded with "pilot error" for over half a century, or else there would be a lot more accidents as we never fixed any of the actual causes and just blamed the dead pilots.

I'm sorry, what? Pilot error is absolutely a factor in contemporary accidents. It's the most common one, in fact, because we've rooted out almost all the other risks.

And why did the pilot make the error?

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

#253

Post by dmitrygr »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #198
dmitrygr wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Europe not have VORs?

Of course - though many of them have been decommissioned or are in the process. Though recent developments have probably reduced the enthusiasm for removing them so quickly. However, that doesn't change the fact that the intersection that ATC are flying you towards are actually now defined as coordinates, not radials or distances from nearby VORs. If an ATC tells you "direct OKSAW" they won't give you a VOR radial to…

When you file your flight plan, there is a box for "equipment". Put "O" there and they will not do that to you anymore. "DO" if you have DME.

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

#254

Post by Blazara »

inigyou wrote: post #175
seatac76 wrote: post #35

The loss is tragic but I’m sorry GPS jamming was not a factor here. There was a NOTAM indicating it’s going on, the pilots should have been aware and it appears when they reached out with a request the jamming was stopped. It was a visual approach at a moonless night at an airport in high terrain, this was pilot error unfortunately.

Luckily, aviation investigations haven't concluded with "pilot error" for over half a century, or else there would be a lot more accidents as we never fixed any of the actual causes and just blamed the dead pilots.

German Wings 9525 was labelled pilot "error" tbf

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

#255

Post by WheatMillington »

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…

Everyone seems to agree that if the GPS hadn't been inop everyone would still be alive. So to happily dismiss the deadly decisions the government made to place blame on the pilots is kind of disgraceful.

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

#257

Post by cmurf »

dpe82 wrote: post #231
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.…

Another thing to add to all this is FAA has been steadily removing from service non-GPS navigation aids.

Yes, but…

They are enhancing the navaids that remain. Greater range, and a documented network of airports serviced by ground based instrument approach procedures.

The shrinkage of total number of navaids concerns me from a rural support perspective but less so as a pilot. What does concern me as a pilot is even the MON navaids are having maintenance issues resulting in outages.

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

#258

Post by K0balt »

K0balt wrote: post #245
boscillator wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that their are no multi-GNSS receivers certified for aviation, so Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou are out.

Sure, but every pilot has an iPad, basically, and an iPad with foreflight might have saved their lives. You even get synthetic vision.

Late revision.. either these pilots weren’t using one, or the military was jamming everything. Probably the latter. I can say from my personal experience that it’s really, really easy to get so used to using GPS that you are utterly unprepared to really deal with an alternative. You need to integrate those failure modes into your flight planning, and not just figure you’ll remember everything when your back is against the wall.

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

#259

Post by VBprogrammer »

dmitrygr wrote: post #253
VBprogrammer wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course - though many of them have been decommissioned or are in the process. Though recent developments have probably reduced the enthusiasm for removing them so quickly. However, that doesn't change the fact that the intersection that ATC are flying you towards are actually now defined as coordinates, not radials or distances from nearby VORs. If an ATC tells you "direct OKSAW" they won't give you a VOR radial to…

When you file your flight plan, there is a box for "equipment". Put "O" there and they will not do that to you anymore. "DO" if you have DME.

This won't work in the UK/Europe. B-RNAV has been a requirement since 11 April 2011 at all ATS controlled routes and levels (previously only above FL95). The only reasonable equipment is a IFR capable panel mounted GPS.

Of course the UK is extra weird because you can fly IFR in class G airspace which is quite extensive outside of terminal areas. More realistically this is VFR in IMC, with the pilot being responsible for his own terrain and traffic separation (somewhere between relying on the "big sky" theory and these days, hopefully, some TCAS system). We even have a special sub-ICAO IR(R) rating which allows a pilot to punch holes in clouds and even to shoot an approach at a airport but not to access the class A TMAs / airways.

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

#260

Post by CodeWriter23 »

jjwiseman wrote: post #193
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting how neither you nor the article affirm or deny if they plane was flying in restricted airspace either before or during the crash.

It's not interesting: they were not in restricted airspace at any point during the flight. If they were, probably the NTSB, a YouTuber, or I would have mentioned it.

The NTSB has published their report? Because they don’t lead with speculation. Ever. I do however expect so-called experts to be aware of announced no-fly zones where the military is jamming.
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