The unexpected guest at the IMC party

Maybe I am just of a rare bread, but to me it would seem common sense that two planes 1500 feet apart (if contact has been established with the unknown) should be handled by one ATC. Would have completely avoided the entire problem if the military pilot had a regulation require him/her to switch to the ATC frequency should a situation like this ever present itself again. What do you guys think?

The GCI is one one freq, as it needs to be. You can't be vectoring aircraft in for tight intercepts and military ops on a standard ARTCC freq. Just won't work, it has to be a discreet freq. Plus, with all the different ARTCC freqs, it wasn't known if ARTCC was even talking to the right guy at the time things were going down.

Also at the time, most military tactical jets like the F-4 were only equipped with UHF or two UHF. One for comms and one for interflight.

As cited in my tertiary causal factor:

*Communications- Incompatible- military/civilian UHF/VHF
 
I've never done an air intercept, but when operating in a MOA normally we have a discrete UHF freq for all players in the MOA set into the primary radio (which would probably be used for a GCI controller in this case), and a tac freq for the members of your section/division set into the aux radio. Center is monitored but only on guard, mostly for advisories of non-participating "interlopers" transiting through the area. Maybe MikeD has better info about how an intercept works, and warning area ops that he can add.

Edit: I see he already did :)
 
The GCI is one one freq, as it needs to be. You can't be vectoring aircraft in for tight intercepts and military ops on a standard ARTCC freq. Just won't work, it has to be a discreet freq. Plus, with all the different ARTCC freqs, it wasn't known if ARTCC was even talking to the right guy at the time things were going down.

I didn't mean on the initial intercept, I was referring to when the intercept was taken over by the F-4s onboard radar and no longer needed GCI. The initial intercept is at a distance that wouldn't hold a midair hazard factor nearly as high as that of the 1500/500' intercept.


At this point:

Center advised GCI that he'd identified the target as "the one that's at Juliet Lima's 12 o'clock for 6 or 7 miles." Since there was no flight plan or other information on 7142N in regards to what or who he really was, the GCI senior-director elected to have the F-4s complete the intercept

It was confirmed that they were in contact with them, yet the movements of both aircraft were still not known by any one controller, even though they were operating 1500' apart in IMC. To me, this just seems like an accident waiting to happen. When they initiated the break off, had it somehow been relayed to the ARTCC frequency as to what they were doing the situation could have been avoided.


You sited, "*Communications- Incompatible- military/civilian UHF/VHF," by that were you saying the F-4s are unable to communicate with ARTCC due to incompatible equipment? If that was the case a simple GCI landline call to ARTCC, hey our F-4s are breaking off to the left, keep your guy going straight or whatever.

Like Richard, I by no means am trying to place blame. However, I do see a gap in communication here that could be tweaked. For instance, if an ARTCC frequency is ever in contact with the target, any commands ATC wants to give to that aircraft could be confirmed with GCI or something along those lines. Basically some way for one ATC controller to know the whole picture and not 10 guys (exaggeration) to each have a piece of the puzzle.
 
I didn't mean on the initial intercept, I was referring to when the intercept was taken over by the F-4s onboard radar and no longer needed GCI. The initial intercept is at a distance that wouldn't hold a midair hazard factor nearly as high as that of the 1500/500' intercept.

There's never a time when they no longer need GCI. They're ALWAYS up on the GCI freq even after taking over the intercept, since if they lose radar contact and need to reacquire, GCI is who re-vectors them. GCI also re-vectors them post-intercept. In any event, GCI is running the whole operation anyway.

It was confirmed that they were in contact with them, yet the movements of both aircraft were still not known by any one controller, even though they were operating 1500' apart in IMC. To me, this just seems like an accident waiting to happen. When they initiated the break off, had it somehow been relayed to the ARTCC frequency as to what they were doing the situation could have been avoided.

Not necessarily. There's an accepted risk for operations of this type.....military ops are far different from civilian ops in this case and you need to understand that. You also need to understand that ATC radars aren't instantaneous of aircraft movements....there is a lag to them. GCI knows where their planes are, but that's also why certain restrictions were already relayed to the fighters. It was bad timing, plain and simple.

You cited, "*Communications- Incompatible- military/civilian UHF/VHF," by that were you saying the F-4s are unable to communicate with ARTCC due to incompatible equipment? If that was the case a simple GCI landline call to ARTCC, hey our F-4s are breaking off to the left, keep your guy going straight or whatever.

It means that even if the fighters were up on ARTCC, they could only hear the ARTCC side of any conversation; and I'm referring to their inability to communicate with the target aircraft directly. GCI wouldn't have needed to call ARTCC since they weren't certain ARTCC was working the target they were after, and neither was ARTCC 100% sure at that point either.

Like Richard, I by no means am trying to place blame. However, I do see a gap in communication here that could be tweaked. For instance, if an ARTCC frequency is ever in contact with the target, any commands ATC wants to give to that aircraft could be confirmed with GCI or something along those lines. Basically some way for one ATC controller to know the whole picture and not 10 guys (exaggeration) to each have a piece of the puzzle.

That gap was a result of not having all info at the time. And there's not time to wait and let aircraft further approach the ADIZ. There were a number of challenges and risks going on, but nothing that hasn't been accomplished before in decades of interceptions. The comms were fine overall, and you can't damn a whole system through one bad timing event, like both Richard and you are alluding to.
 
You also need to understand that ATC radars aren't instantaneous of aircraft movements....there is a lag to them.

Yup, 12 sec for ARTCC and 4 sec for TRACON, thanks to "Pilot Error" I was reading down on the beach today. :)


they weren't certain ARTCC was working the target they were after, and neither was ARTCC 100% sure at that point either.

Didn't realize it wasn't 100 percent, seemed pretty sure from your report in that quote I posted, my fault.


The comms were fine overall, and you can't damn a whole system through one bad timing event, like both Richard and you are alluding to.

I by no means am attempting to damn the system, I don't think Richard is either. We are both saying that this event seems to show an area or possibly areas where there could be improvement. In my point, miscommunication, or lack there of.
 
Legal question: do GCI's in civilian airspace fall under MARSA?

MARSA is for military vs military only, so yes MARSA is available. Same as with Air Refueling tracks. MARSA can't be arbitrarily declared however, it must be understood by each participating aircraft.
 
Didn't realize it wasn't 100 percent, seemed pretty sure from your report in that quote I posted, my fault.

No biggie. ARTCC was giving the Baron a turn to clear him out of the Warning Area, as well as get a final confirmation of that being him, so far as the Washington controller was concerned.......which was what the GCI Senior Director was concerned with, that of 100% ID. Had the midair not occurred, I believe this would've played out one of two ways:

1. The turn would've been the confirmation the ARTCC controller needed to know he was, in fact, talking to the Baron; and that would've been relayed to GCI and that be good enough confidence to terminate the intercept altogether.

or

2. If there was still no confirmation or confidence of who the Baron was (lets assume ARTCC couldn't verify anything), they may have tried another intercept or two, and then either trailed the target or depending on fuel, had to RTB and launch the spare alert birds. Where it would've progressed from there would be anyone's guess.

I by no means am attempting to damn the system, I don't think Richard is either. We are both saying that this event seems to show an area or possibly areas where there could be improvement. In my point, miscommunication, or lack there of.

There's always room for improvement. But this was a one-time event, IMO. This particular situation was almost a "perfect storm" of events in the Swiss Cheese model.....a coming together of events that was far more the exception rather than the rule. Hence why I chalk it up to bad timing rather than anything wrong with the system itself or how it was run on that day. In that vein, no one would've been there that day in that place had basic preflight planning and regulation following been accomplished. The whole event would never have needed to occur. Thats the main point from all of this. The collision itself was a lower subset of this.
 
In that vein, no one would've been there that day in that place had basic preflight planning and regulation following been accomplished. The whole event would never have needed to occur. Thats the main point from all of this. The collision itself was a lower subset of this.

What I wondered when reading this, did this guy do this before? It seemed as though he would know all the regulations if he was flying pax he likely made the trip in the past. It would be interesting to find out if he had done this many times and just had it in his head "oh its no big deal I will just fly up this way instead, like I did the last 10 times." Got himself into that, it is illegal/stupid but i survived it last time so...stereotype.
 
Excellent read, even if a little gory!

But 7 in a B55, wow, its tight enough for 4!

Thanks MikeD.

BP244
CFI/CFII/MEI
 
MARSA is for military vs military only, so yes MARSA is available. Same as with Air Refueling tracks. MARSA can't be arbitrarily declared however, it must be understood by each participating aircraft.

Interesting, I looked it up and see that you are correct, yet every instructor I have flown with has insisted that it means that we are responsible to see and avoid civilian aircraft transiting through our areas. Must be some sort of institutional misinformation or something. Good to know!
 
Thanks MikeD!
That was a great read and the discussion so far has brought up several other interesting conversations. There is something to be learned from every tragedy.

I was also wondering why the baron thought he could just go direct. I mean, if I was trying to file direct and was flat out told "No, you are required to stop in FL for customs", that would not be something that would slip my mind. Pretty drastic change in your whole flight planning process at that point. Was he forgetful, lazy, incompetent, sinister, or something else? Strange to say the least...
 
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