Pilot Crashes After ATC Denies Access...

[RotorPilot]

Pilot Crashes After ATC Denies Access...

A pilot who said he ran out of fuel while circling outside the Washington, D.C., ADIZ, waiting for ATC to find his flight plan and clear him to enter, crashed four miles short of the runway on Sunday. The pilot and his two passengers suffered minor injuries. The Cessna 172 went down near Baltimore''s Martin State Airport shortly after noon, according to the FAA Preliminary Report (scroll for Record 10). "The controller told me they couldn''t find me in the system," pilot Dale Roger told the Baltimore Sun, and he kept circling for about an hour, waiting for an OK to enter the ADIZ so he could land at Martin Airport. Roger told the Sun that he had filed a flight plan, but the FAA said they had no record of it. "We''ve had continuous problems like these," AOPA spokesman Warren Morningstar told the Sun. "Flight plans are lost every day."

[Swingline]

Who knows what really happened, but an hour is a very long time to keep stooging around like that.

[flythenumbers]

Okay, I likely would have diverted to an alternate airport rather than having circled for 1 hr and run out of fuel. If I could not have diverted, I think I would have just declared an emergency and landed the plane at the airport, again before I ran out of fuel. But I guess if it''s Washington, you run the risk of getting shot down.

 

From the report, here is the Metar:

 

METAR KMTN 291645Z 15010KT 10SM SCT034 28/21 A3015

 

Good weather to divert in, and would you not have an alternate airport planned in situations like Washington? Makes me wonder if he did file a flight plan.

 

(I just realized I likely sound like the NTSB/TC people, blaming the pilot for everything...)

[helicopper]

maybe now he''ll get licenced on a REAL aircraft!!

[RotorPilot]

Pilot Error, But...

Authorities Start Probe Of ADIZ-Related Crash...

The pilot involved in the D.C. ADIZ flight plan-related fuel starvation and subsequent encounter with trees last week four miles from Martin State Airport in Maryland has recognized his role in running out of fuel. "Ultimately, the pilot is responsible for what happens," Dale Roger told The Baltimore Sun after he was released from the hospital where he received stitches for a gash in his head. But while Roger nurses the sore head (he and his two passengers suffered only minor injuries) fingers are pointing in a myriad of directions over Roger''s one-hour-long wait for ATC to find his flight plan. For one, although he did not declare an emergency, Roger did let air traffic controllers know he was short of fuel 20 minutes before the prop on the rented 172 stopped spinning. As AVweb reported Thursday, Roger was kept circling just outside the 30-nm Washington, D.C., Air Defense Identification Zone for more than an hour because ATC couldn''t find the flight plan necessary to allow him to enter the ADIZ and land at Martin. FAA spokesman Jim Peters told the Sun that Roger warned ATC he was low on fuel at 12:15 p.m. and by 12:35 p.m. the plane was nose-down in a bushy area of White Marsh. The NTSB has vowed to get to the bottom of it all. "We''re going to sort through it," NTSB investigator Luke Schiada told the Sun. "A big part of this is going to be the air traffic control information -- the timing aspects, what was said and when it was said." Schiada said it will take six months to pull all the information together.

..."Inevitable?" Not So, Say Controllers...

The mishap has prompted calls for the easing of the Washington flight restrictions and some opining. AOPA''s Warren Morningstar told the Sun that lost flight plans are a common occurrence and a mishap of some sort was inevitable: "Because of the inability of the system to handle all the aircraft, it was only a matter of time ..." Jim Crook, vice president of operations for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), disagreed, saying, "I don''t think they''re [ATC installations] understaffed." Meanwhile, David Wartofsky, who operates Potomac Airfield within the ADIZ questioned the rationale behind all the flight planning, transponder codes and ATC attention. "Anyone can get a clearance within the 30-mile ring, so why even ask them for it?" AOPA and other groups have long maintained that the extra workload imposed on ATC by the flight planning and identification requirements of the ADIZ is too much for ATC staff to handle. In the end, AOPA''s stance as voiced through Morningstar that "The air traffic control procedures have reached pointless overload" is in rather sharp disagreement with Crook''s perception ... and neither presents an immediate solution. For that, it seems we may have to wait at least for the results of the formal investigation.

...And Computers Could Solve It All?

And while the various constituencies discuss the human factors that led up to this incident, a scientist at the University of California in Berkeley has come up with a system he says keeps the pilot out of the security loop. Edward Lee proposes somehow modifying the avionics and flight-control systems of aircraft to cause them to steer clear of restricted areas and prevent pilots -- or hijackers -- from overruling them ... with control inputs, anyway. The system (which has drawn the support of Boeing''s Phantom Works) would pinpoint the boundaries of restricted areas and any attempt by the pilot to breach the so-called "soft walls" would be met by active resistance from the airplane itself. The airplane would simply refuse to cross that line in the sky. Lee, who is apparently not a pilot, says he''s surprised by the negative reaction of those who do fly. "In general, pilots are openly hostile," he said. Lee said he can''t understand the pilots'' position given the alternatives, which might include being reprimanded or even shot down for straying into restricted airspace. However, Boeing Phantom Works is sufficiently interested in the system that it is helping Lee test it on high-fidelity simulators and is asking the Pentagon for money for further research into the concept.

 

http://www.avweb.com/newswire/9_28a/complete/185269-1.html

 

[Commodore64]

The system (which has drawn the support of Boeing''s Phantom Works) would pinpoint the boundaries of restricted areas and any attempt by the pilot to breach the so-called "soft walls" would be met by active resistance from the airplane itself. The airplane would simply refuse to cross that line in the sky. "

 

knowing how well my computer''s software is written, is it any wonder why pilots would be " openly hostile" about the idea!!

 

hahahaa! reminds me of an airbus joke:

 

how can you tell the difference between an inexperienced airbus driver and an experienced Airbus driver?

 

one says "What''s it doing now??!"

the other says "Dammit, it''s doing ''it'' again