NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
That's like in ATC where we have the "snitch" now that automatically tells HQ in Washington if you broke sep. and I don't just mean egregious near misses, but like 2.49 miles at the threshold instead of 2.5.
Four A-10 pilots grounded for low pass over Panthers stadium
- Thread starter MikeD
- Start date
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Exact same thing happens on the ground too.
Boss puts out that General Order 1 is in effect. You decided to drink anyway. It's got nothing to do with whether or not you did something dumb because of the alcohol, it's got to do with the fact the head office said X, and you said F the head office. Are there times to take a stand against management, sure.. But a fly over is not the hill to die on.
I agree we should all get treated like adults way more than we do, but at the same time if you take standing rules and procedures and walk on them like they don't really apply that does translate to other real no kidding written in blood rules out there. If that's your attitude (rules don't apply) I don't want you in my flight as a wingman or owning an aircraft and its crew as a PC, and I most assuredly don't need you owning the mission as AMC.
Now maybe some of these people are salvageable, and attitudes can be evolved and educated. That's one area we really screw up, it's either wrist slaps or crucifixion, and not a lot of in between that's recoverable.
Kingairer
'Tiger Team' Member
I can't believe 4 guys thought it was a good idea. Or maybe it's just the lead and the others forced to follow. They were really low, lower than some building downtown.
deadstick
Well-Known Member
Cruise
Well-Known Member
I'm more interested to hear how it is going to work out for these pilots.
I have some, shall we say, personal experience with this type of event. In 2010, a formation of jets from my squadron performed what turned out to be a too-low altitude flyby of an NCAA football game.
USAF rules for flyovers say they have to be at a maximum of 300 knots and a minimum of 1000' over the stadium. As you can see from the video, these T-38s didn't quite that 1000' minimum. I believe the official investigation found they cleared the scoreboard by 58 feet, which was an overall altitude of somewhere around 200 feet. The FAA tapes showed they were doing something in the neighborhood of 400 knots when they crossed the stadium, too.
So, here's how it worked out for these pilots:
USAF leadership found that the four pilots in the formation had intentionally violated flight rules and recklessly operated their aircraft. Initially they tried to court-martial the flight leader, but he was all ready scheduled to separate from the Air Force so he negotiated an extremely stiff administrative punishment and turned in his military wings rather than face losing them in an additional court proceeding called a Flying Evaluation Board.
The three other pilots in the formation received what is essentially career-stunting (or ending) administrative punishment, as well as losing their qualifications as instructor pilots and having the AF-equivalent of a busted checkride "for cause" in their flying records.
Two pilots, who were the non-flying "safety observers" there in the stadium also received administrative punishment and lost their instructor qualifications because they neither waved-off the low pass, nor called back to report the somewhat flagrant violation to USAF leadership after it happened.
I don't know any of the particulars in the Charlotte A-10 situation, but I predict the AF will try its best to nail those pilots to the wall, even if there are innocent circumstances leading to the flyby.
WooHoo...Let's hear it for lawyers (no offense JTrain)!
surreal1221
Well-Known Member
Its all a non-event until it becomes an event...
Lawman
Well-Known Member
And those guys were rightly crucified for their negligence.....
By the way history of that tape. So the PIC was a senior guy who had flown at that post for years early on. The route he was on was an approved NOE route, however it wasn't current on its hazard survey. When the guy had been a junior guy they always flew in between those trees at that field and they were maintained with adequate space the idea being to teach a sight picture of what was in fact the minimum safe space you needed for sneak and peak in the trees flight.... But it wasn't maintained anymore.
That and the rest of the tape has a lot of "ya'll watch this" asshattery.
Now like I've said, time and place plus tactical necessity. I've got video of me being low enough to the ground at speed that the uninitiated would think "that guy is out of his mind!" Hell I've flown that way in front of/with my battalion commander in the aircraft. The reason it's accepted is there is a necessity to perform that maneuver in that mode for training purposes.... A fly over of a football stadium when it's not even planned is never going to meet that smell test. These guys knew what they were doing was dumb but they did it anyway.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
I wouldn't be so quick to assign intent simply from a video and social media from people who get hysterical over things that are ordinary around any military base.
Lawman
Well-Known Member
True, but this is one of those situations where you are forced to take an affirmative defense. Better have a tape full of professional real legit training actions going on or some sort of "oh crap hey guys knock it off" realization to show the head office you weren't out F'ing around. Otherwise it's your word against YouTube, and that doesn't ever end well when there are undoubtedly people several levels above dealing with flack simply for the existence of this video.
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Beefy McGee
Well-Known Member
I wonder if we could get a new departure created over the Panthers stadium to make this legal? PANTR.HOGGG1, first fix is STADM at 500'. And then retroactively clear the A-10 guys of the incident.
deadstick
Well-Known Member
jtrain609
Antisocial Monster
WooHoo...Let's hear it for lawyers (no offense JTrain)!
Don't worry, I probably hate lawyers more than almost anyone here.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Agreed.
It is just a pet peeve of mine, because my USAF flying career was effectively ended by a bunch of folks (leadership and bros alike) jumping to conclusions about something I was involved in (no, not the stadium flyby I posted!) over in Afghanistan that looked bad from a certain angle on the outside of things, but in reality wasn't bad at all.
I, and a couple of my fellow pilots, were hung in the court of opinion based on a sliver of information before being completely cleared in the actual courtroom by the actual complete facts of what occurred. I spent about the last three years of my time in the USAF digging out of a hole that was created by incorrect kneejerk reactions to people seeing a video they didn't understand. It was the biggest calamity of my professional career, and one that I have been dealing with even after my retirement date has come and gone and I'm in the civilian flying world.
So...I'd rather let the facts come out before saying something like, "they knew it was stupid and did it anyway." People said that shi'ite about me a few years ago, and they were wholesale wrong.
PeanuckleCRJ
Poodle Wrangler
I'm reminded of my time in TLH as a CFI shortly post 9/11. I kept getting the cops called on me doing engine out work south of town because "OMG low flying plane, must be TURRISTS!!" The locals' world ended one day when an Air Force 757 came by to practice VOR approaches. Never underestimate the paranoia and knee jerk reactions of the uneducated and the subsequent follow up of politicians trying to look like heros to them.
NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
I know that 757! Used to come to Tyndall for approaches and MOA work all the time
surreal1221
Well-Known Member
Theres a lot of that uneducated'ness going on in TLH...and know for a fact I'm not speaking about FSU students or alumni. Just sayin'
FlyingAccountant
Well-Known Member
Floriderp.
Richman
JC’s Resident Curmudgeon
I'm always reminded of the end of the movie "Casino", where the mob bosses are talking in the back of the courtroom.
They're talking about how so and so is "good" and "solid", 4 of the bosses are good, but the last boss says "eh? Why take a chance?".
And you know how that turns out...
Richman
They're talking about how so and so is "good" and "solid", 4 of the bosses are good, but the last boss says "eh? Why take a chance?".
And you know how that turns out...
Richman
Lawman
Well-Known Member
That zero defect mentality really has infected our system and the upper management grew up with the idea that it's the right way to focus punishment/rewards which is unfortunate.
The Navy has gone completely off the deep end with that crap wholesale firing people over what shouldn't be anything more than a discussion between the next level of leadership saying "get a handle and refocus on X, that can't happen in my command."
What's sad is we are facing huge manning issues where we the military are simply not anywhere near the strength people think because we've combined a system where we run key people down to death/burnout on their GAF meters and they leave and combine that with arbitrary draconian punishments where we crush people who could learn and mature and be the next guys in the head office.
It's like when I see a commander outright destroy a career for an alcohol incident that didn't involve drunk driving. That LTC/COL remembers full and well doing carrier landings in his underwear drunk on soju at some bar when he was a young Platoon leader. The bar owner got compensated damages out of the "flower/fridge fund" after the fact and no big deal. Hell he will want you to come back next month. We play hard because come Monday the unit is training to sharpen the spear just as hard. Now days those same commanders are staying sober at hail and farewells or dinning in/outs to see which guys get a little rowdy and crushing them on evaluations or progressions amongst their peers because failing to meet this warrior monk mentality is why we will lose the next war... Not the fact that instead of guys learning how to do war fighting tasks we've got them spending hours on an arbitrary masters degree or doing yet another "don't kill yourself or rape anybody" class.
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Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
When I first commissioned in the early 90s, a phrase that I used to hear used a lot was, "this is not a 'one-mistake Air Force'." The idea being that it was okay to make a mistake (and they went to great lengths to delineate the difference between a "mistake" and a "crime") so long as you learned from it. I made mistakes as a Lieutenant and Captain, and received course-correcting boots to my arse in appropriate measures. I became a better officer and aviator for it, thanks to Commanders who had a real sense of warrior leadership as well as mentorship for their own subordinates.
Over time, as @Lawman has spot-on observed, that has morphed into that zero defect mentality, especially accelerating in the last 10 years.
After my experiences and what I've observed happen to others, I'm now fond of saying that has become a "perception-of-one-mistake Air Force," because you don't even have to actually make a mistake to be summarily executed by firing squad in front of the troops at dawn. Someone important in your chain of command just has to think that you made a mistake, and believe that their leadership is strengthened by reacting to that perception as harshly as possible.
I don't miss it at all.
Over time, as @Lawman has spot-on observed, that has morphed into that zero defect mentality, especially accelerating in the last 10 years.
After my experiences and what I've observed happen to others, I'm now fond of saying that has become a "perception-of-one-mistake Air Force," because you don't even have to actually make a mistake to be summarily executed by firing squad in front of the troops at dawn. Someone important in your chain of command just has to think that you made a mistake, and believe that their leadership is strengthened by reacting to that perception as harshly as possible.
I don't miss it at all.
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