Comment by mikegreen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikegreen | Hacker News Reader

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"Also, how responsible is a civilian pilot for climbing through an instrument approach near a military airfield without radio contact?"

Other than responsible for not seeing a fast moving jet rear-end him, not very responsible. Even if he was under radio control and his head on a swivel, it would have have been near impossible to see the jet coming from behind and left at that speed. He wasn't "near a military airfield" - he had taken off from a general aviation airport just north of Charleston's International airport (CHS), also shared with military, however FAA ATC and rules prevail in this airspace. There is no "military airfield" difference around CHS. The F-16 was on a practice approach to CHS, just as anyone could do a practice approach to CHS by requesting to do so from ATC. One major contributing issue to this was the controller descending the F-16 to such a low altitude so far out (1600' at 34 miles out) [1]. This is well below any slide glope and frankly, as a pilot who flies IFR and no-radio-VFR, I would never expect to see a jet on an approach that low even 15 miles out.

The incident did not occur in the military operation areas (MOA) north of CHS.

[1] http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=...

My main point is that there are likely multiple factors and a headline titled “Can the ‘Right Stuff’ Become the Wrong Stuff?” with speculation and hand picked comments doesn’t help the investigation or preventing accidents in the future. It does drive traffic and revenue for James Fallows and the Atlantic though.

If you fly GA, I’d recommend you know where nearby airports are (and thirty miles isn’t that far for jets), where instrument approaches are, where MOAs are, where low level routes are, etc. I’d also recommend using flight following. You can say that these things aren’t your responsibility, but I don’t think that’s a good attitude.

Also, I’m not sure how you interpret that the Cesna was rear ended. Reading the NTSB report it sounds like the Cesna was heading southeast (135) and climbing and the F-16 was heading west (265) and turning south (180). Seems closer to head-on or perpendicular with the Cesna climbing into the F-16’s altitude and the F-16 in a belly up turn with no visibility.

Regarding the Tacan, I don’t see any mention that the F-16 was below altitude or off course. So just because you wouldn’t expect a plane there, doesn’t mean that one won’t be there. Again, maybe this is a bad Tacan with nearby civilian airfields and should be axed, but it doesn’t seem any rules were broken.

We don’t know the results of the investigation, yet all the blame is being put on the F-16 driver. It sounds like small failures from all involved resulted in a tragic outcome. There may be lessons learned from this incident that can help prevent another in the future, but placing blame without the facts and pointing fingers in the media isn’t how we figure them out.

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