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. That's why aircraft and pilots have redundancy to work around any single possible point of failure and why you practice it until it becomes natural. Because of the NOTAM I'd already have a VOR tuned in, and once the GPS went inop I just fine tuned it to get a radial fix on the VOR. Also tried to never lose my bearings with my MK I Eyeballs either. No big deal.
I feel bad for everyone that lost their lives here, but this is why competence is critical. There's a litany of errors the pilots made. And the article tries to pin a bit on the controller, but no, ultimate responsibility is on the pilot in command, FAR/AIM is clear on that.
If these allegedly instrument rated pilots had been properly drilled by their CFI's and properly grilled during reviews and such this should've been an easy flight.
Also, "just ask Kennedy". Wired bringing that into the conversation is perhaps relevant but not in the way I think they intended. JFK Jr lacked basic airmanship skills. His aircraft was 100% functional until the moment it impacted the ocean.
Some professions simply can't be go-along-to-get-along social clubs. Safety culture centered on competence and performance is key.
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.
This is unnecessarily dismissive and pre-judgmental of a situation you can't actually know very much about. Wait for the NTSB report before replying, essentially "get gud"
It's pretty clear they're laying out that this is pilot error, unlike the article's intent to blame parties other than the pilot. The poster is trying to correct that, from an obvious place of knowledge and experience most of us do not have, and isn't being rude about it either.
It's important to understand why things happen in order to prevent them, and to counter the narrative of the opinionated article. And if we should wait for the NTSB report, then so should the article.
Maybe you are just aren't aware that military GPS jamming is extremely routine around the US. It affects airplanes more than cars because the curvature of the earth can not help you and at typical flight altitudes you have easy line of sight to the jammer.
You're not sure? It's pretty clear they're laying out that this is pilot error, unlike the article's intent to blame parties other than the pilot. The poster is trying to correct that, from an obvious place of knowledge and experience most of us do not have, and isn't being rude about it either.
It's important to understand why things happen in order to prevent them.
The pilot is literally the one who holds most of the blame here.
This is a pilot-error accident. They flew a perfectly functioning airplane into rising terrain on a visual approach.
The pilot requested, and was cleared for, a visual approach. Among other things that that imposes upon on the pilot is an obligation to maintain visual contact with the airport (or the preceding aircraft to follow; not applicable here) and to maintain terrain and obstacle clearance.
The primary probable cause will be found to be something like "The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain while on visual approach." with additional notes of "Contributing to the accident were the dark moonless night and NOTAM'd unreliability of GPS signal in the area requiring the crew to revert to other navigation methods and the pilot's decision to fly a visual approach rather than the ILS instrument approach."
The passengers were blameless, but the flight crew was not.
Is it not possible for a victim of something to carry some blame for the situation they're in?
Is it inappropriate to discuss why Mussolini got lynched?
Flying with GPS out is something a pilot should know how to do. Jamming isn't the only failure mode; much more mundane mechanical/electrical issues occur all the time.
> At 0000:26, the ARTCC controller advised the flight crew that the airplane was at 13,000 ft msl, 1,000 ft above their assigned altitude. The pilot responded that they were correcting their altitude and that the airplane had lost GPS capability. The pilot stated they would need a heading
> About 0005 the ARTCC operations supervisor contacted [the military] to stop jamming and at 0007:34 ADS-B data recording returned to 2-3 second intervals.
> The flight crew again reported they “[have] a visual on Ruidoso” at 0008:30 and that they could “go visual.”
> About 0010, the ARTCC operations supervisor informed [the military] that the airplane was on a visual approach and that they could resume jamming.
> The airplane impacted terrain about 250 ft southwest of the last recorded data point at an elevation of about 9,950 ft, and about 730 ft east and 230 ft below the Capitan Mountains Summit Radio Facility, located at an elevation of about 10,180 ft.
The image of the map from the report really helps me understand the path. It seems like the aircraft began visual approach and didn't know where it was, or didn't know about the mountain.
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.
In this case, IMHO, the pilots had become complacent and lax in their navigational rigor because of the fact that GPS makes a lot of the slightly less automated systems unnecessary, and people get used to that workflow.
If the flight crew had been looking at their map and using it to inform them about the mountains in their path, fixing position by the VOR and DME, or even just a stopwatch and compass heading, they would have easily known they needed to be at a higher altitude. Not being precisely sure of their exact position, they should have at least been maintaining the minimum safe altitude for the area they knew they were in.
But unfortunately, people get so used to looking at the shiny screen giving them effortless situational awareness that they forget all of the rules and habits that kept pilots alive for the last century before glass cockpits were a thing, and they forget that mountains are the tigers of the air, always waiting to catch pilots unaware.
This is a useful cautionary tale not only for pilots, but increasingly for humans in general as we become accustomed to a new kind of instrument that allows us to offload a great deal of our cognitive focus to a tool that may sometimes fail.
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...
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.
The final information on the crash almost reads like they hit the very top of the mountain - according to NTSB, they were about 200-250 ft from the summit, so it is possible they did still have visual with the airport until right before the impact. Whether or not GPS could've helped with this, I'm not sure - it might've allowed them to see where they were relative to the mountain better, since it was the middle of the night and so they probably couldn't see the mountain very well..
Your GPS enabled flight computer will indeed yell at you VERY LOUDLY if you're about to hit a mountain. It will not allow you to get particularly close to terrain without noticing.
I'm wondering what they could have done differently here. The report said it was a 0% moonlight night, extremely dark. No exact position from GPS, and visuals on the landing strip. That mountain peak would have likely been invisible from the pilot's seat.
What would have been the "skill issue" difference people keep mentioning? It's getting really frustrating how reckless the US military is with the skies. They keep putting people in danger. I can't help but think about the DCA crash due to the continuity of government drills.
There's no reason they should have been flying dark for a drill that night.
GPS NOTAM'd as unreliable on a dark, moonless night? Fly the ILS approach. That will take you down to 203 feet above terrain and guarantee terrain and obstacle clearance all along the route using locally generated navigation signals that will be entirely unaffected by GPS jamming.
Makes one think about "flying cars". How well designed they will be for losing such system? How reliable any systems would be in such eventuality. For both safety of the craft and anyone near them or on ground... Especially if there is other things going on like weather conditions. Say both heavy fog and rain.
After reading the story, it seems like lack of training. I think training should assume GPS goes out (which it does), in this case they didn’t pull up when they saw “lights going out” as a mountain became between them and the airfield.
I have absolutely no love for the US Army under its current Secretary of "war", but here the problem was with the air ambulance pilot(s). Sorry to blame people who died, who do important service for remote places under hard time constraints, but there has been fundamental errors on their side:
I find it a bit shocking they'd be caught by surprise by a planned GPS outage. The exercise happened as intended, and all aircraft in the affected areas should have received warnings BEFORE they even took off. These are not drug smugglers - they filed a flight plan before leaving the ground.
The automated weather service was also out. This made it difficult or impossible to use the ILS because they can't set the local altimeter. This was a swiss cheese chain of events. It was a moonless dark night so the mountains weren't visible.
Would they take off if they knew GPS would be jammed midway through the flight?
Had they known they wouldn't be able to rely on GPS, all that back and forth with ATC would not be needed, and they'd already have a plan B and a plan C for navigating.
It's unfortunately all slices of swiss cheese aligned perfectly, but I'd still blame the military for poking extra holes on the GPS slice.
SRR is serviced by two instrument approaches, the ILS or LOC RWY 24 and the RNAV (GPS)
RWY 24. Both instrument approach plate notes section contain the following statement: “When
local altimeter setting not received, procedure NA (Not Authorized).”
IFR approach was not possible, the flight plan was unrealistic.
It's very relevant because it otherwise would have been plausible that they were blaming the pilot to unfairly divert blame away from an entity they had a bias for.
But that's what we train for. That's why aircraft and pilots have redundancy to work around any single possible point of failure and why you practice it until it becomes natural. Because of the NOTAM I'd already have a VOR tuned in, and once the GPS went inop I just fine tuned it to get a radial fix on the VOR. Also tried to never lose my bearings with my MK I Eyeballs either. No big deal.
I feel bad for everyone that lost their lives here, but this is why competence is critical. There's a litany of errors the pilots made. And the article tries to pin a bit on the controller, but no, ultimate responsibility is on the pilot in command, FAR/AIM is clear on that.
If these allegedly instrument rated pilots had been properly drilled by their CFI's and properly grilled during reviews and such this should've been an easy flight.
Also, "just ask Kennedy". Wired bringing that into the conversation is perhaps relevant but not in the way I think they intended. JFK Jr lacked basic airmanship skills. His aircraft was 100% functional until the moment it impacted the ocean.
Some professions simply can't be go-along-to-get-along social clubs. Safety culture centered on competence and performance is key.
It's important to understand why things happen in order to prevent them, and to counter the narrative of the opinionated article. And if we should wait for the NTSB report, then so should the article.
Your main point is the most valid - wait for the final report. But you should be saying the same to the article as written.
Prelim report: https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/G...
Out of my scope to infer.
It's important to understand why things happen in order to prevent them.
This is a pilot-error accident. They flew a perfectly functioning airplane into rising terrain on a visual approach.
The pilot requested, and was cleared for, a visual approach. Among other things that that imposes upon on the pilot is an obligation to maintain visual contact with the airport (or the preceding aircraft to follow; not applicable here) and to maintain terrain and obstacle clearance.
The primary probable cause will be found to be something like "The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain while on visual approach." with additional notes of "Contributing to the accident were the dark moonless night and NOTAM'd unreliability of GPS signal in the area requiring the crew to revert to other navigation methods and the pilot's decision to fly a visual approach rather than the ILS instrument approach."
The passengers were blameless, but the flight crew was not.
> If any of yer ancestor's last words were "Hey, ya'll! Look at this!", then you jest might be a redneck.
- Jeff Foxworthy
[0] https://darwinawards.com
Is it inappropriate to discuss why Mussolini got lynched?
Flying with GPS out is something a pilot should know how to do. Jamming isn't the only failure mode; much more mundane mechanical/electrical issues occur all the time.
> About 0005 the ARTCC operations supervisor contacted [the military] to stop jamming and at 0007:34 ADS-B data recording returned to 2-3 second intervals.
> The flight crew again reported they “[have] a visual on Ruidoso” at 0008:30 and that they could “go visual.”
> About 0010, the ARTCC operations supervisor informed [the military] that the airplane was on a visual approach and that they could resume jamming.
> The airplane impacted terrain about 250 ft southwest of the last recorded data point at an elevation of about 9,950 ft, and about 730 ft east and 230 ft below the Capitan Mountains Summit Radio Facility, located at an elevation of about 10,180 ft.
The image of the map from the report really helps me understand the path. It seems like the aircraft began visual approach and didn't know where it was, or didn't know about the mountain.
In this case, IMHO, the pilots had become complacent and lax in their navigational rigor because of the fact that GPS makes a lot of the slightly less automated systems unnecessary, and people get used to that workflow.
If the flight crew had been looking at their map and using it to inform them about the mountains in their path, fixing position by the VOR and DME, or even just a stopwatch and compass heading, they would have easily known they needed to be at a higher altitude. Not being precisely sure of their exact position, they should have at least been maintaining the minimum safe altitude for the area they knew they were in.
But unfortunately, people get so used to looking at the shiny screen giving them effortless situational awareness that they forget all of the rules and habits that kept pilots alive for the last century before glass cockpits were a thing, and they forget that mountains are the tigers of the air, always waiting to catch pilots unaware.
This is a useful cautionary tale not only for pilots, but increasingly for humans in general as we become accustomed to a new kind of instrument that allows us to offload a great deal of our cognitive focus to a tool that may sometimes fail.
Pilots train to navigate without GPS. Or, rather, they should...
It was a visual approach at a moonless night at an airport in high terrain, this was pilot error unfortunately.
What would have been the "skill issue" difference people keep mentioning? It's getting really frustrating how reckless the US military is with the skies. They keep putting people in danger. I can't help but think about the DCA crash due to the continuity of government drills.
There's no reason they should have been flying dark for a drill that night.
GPS NOTAM'd as unreliable on a dark, moonless night? Fly the ILS approach. That will take you down to 203 feet above terrain and guarantee terrain and obstacle clearance all along the route using locally generated navigation signals that will be entirely unaffected by GPS jamming.
https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2607/06922IL24.PDF
Air traffic control also failed here.
* https://futurism.com/science-energy/us-military-gps-jamming-...
https://youtu.be/Dcyup4xVQuM?is=n0w5_tLCxEkYGtt9
https://bsky.app/profile/mikeblack114.bsky.social/post/3mrux...
Had they known they wouldn't be able to rely on GPS, all that back and forth with ATC would not be needed, and they'd already have a plan B and a plan C for navigating.
It's unfortunately all slices of swiss cheese aligned perfectly, but I'd still blame the military for poking extra holes on the GPS slice.
In any case the news (and ntsb report) points that they are tied, not responsibility.
SRR is serviced by two instrument approaches, the ILS or LOC RWY 24 and the RNAV (GPS) RWY 24. Both instrument approach plate notes section contain the following statement: “When local altimeter setting not received, procedure NA (Not Authorized).”
IFR approach was not possible, the flight plan was unrealistic.
Questions must be asked about how and why we got here rather appeal to submission.