UPS MD-11 crash at SDF

I’ll have to respectfully disagree. That information is valuable for learning and prevention. As well as transparency promotes integrity of all parties involved.
You can put me in @ZapBrannigan and @Richman camp here, an executive summary by the investigating agency is all that is needed. I met one of the attorneys that represented Comair in the litigation after the 5191 accident and that CVR wound up on YouTube. He said he can't prove who leaked it but he has his theories that it was one of the plaintiffs.

I am a hard no on cockpit video as well.
 
You can put me in @ZapBrannigan and @Richman camp here, an executive summary by the investigating agency is all that is needed. I met one of the attorneys that represented Comair in the litigation after the 5191 accident and that CVR wound up on YouTube. He said he can't prove who leaked it but he has his theories that it was one of the plaintiffs.

I am a hard no on cockpit video as well.
I always wondered why that one got out there
 
You can put me in @ZapBrannigan and @Richman camp here, an executive summary by the investigating agency is all that is needed. I met one of the attorneys that represented Comair in the litigation after the 5191 accident and that CVR wound up on YouTube. He said he can't prove who leaked it but he has his theories that it was one of the plaintiffs.

I am a hard no on cockpit video as well.

Why? Perspective over perception? State your case with the pros and cons of your position, please? I'm curious.

Before you do, let me expound on a perspective for a moment.

Yes, I was an instructor as Johnson Space Center. Shuttle crews were my focus until the program ended. Big on our agenda was CRM. It was crucial. Time spent in the simulators under worse case "survivable" situations we "SCRIPTED" were critical to building teamwork with the crew. Astronauts had Top Gun mindsets. How do you mold four flight deck crew into a singular united front under less than ideal fllying situations. In the simulator, we had multiple cameras to actually visualize crew behavior. Why? For that obvious reason. . .to observe behavior during both nominal and off nominal situations. It is a valuable tool to observe/evaluate human behavior. The human factors aspects of flying. See and hear?

Had we made this incident a training session? We would have failed to teach. Why? Appeared to me it was a no win situation for the crew. I'm not morbid by any means. I'm believing the crew flew this crippled aircraft to the bitter end. That makes me proud. Makes me be thankful it wasn't a passenger flight.

Mechanical failure? I've no clue. Cameras in the maintenance area? Another source as everyone reverse engineers the sequence of events leading up to this loss of lives?

So, what's your "pushback" on no video or did I misunderstand? On another note, cops love body cams now.
 
Honestly, we need to go all “Canada” style where there’s not even a transcript of the CVR released. A total of 4 people review it, they write their report, and then the media is locked away forever. 0.0 reason for it to be published.

Couldn't disagree more.

First of all, the NTSB doesn't get it right all the time. In fact, sometimes, they blunder investigations so badly that the outcome of the investigation is wrong. Second, having 4 people in charge of it invites corruption and bias and completely eliminates any checks and balances. How differently would the outcome be if 4 people were in charge of the 737 MAX investigations and they just so happened to be bought, and/or employed by Boeing? Come on...

Do you think the Air India investigation is going well right now? Do you actually believe or trust the information put out so far?

I also think there is a required level of transparency in our career field. We are in the public transportation business, and yes, even cargo. We live in a modern digital world, and we have already seen 10 angles of the crash. Release the information and obviously have the NTSB conduct the official investigation, but I want to read that CVR. I want to understand this accident. This is how we learn, and this is how we better equip ourselves as professional pilots. The least we can do for the deceased crew, is to all learn from this, and I think releasing information is paramount to that.
 
I back this. So you can't benefit from airline cvr transcripts just as a non-airline pilot? Strongly disagree.

We can look at the recent Air India accident, lack of transparency is already fueling conspiracy theories that there is a cover up.

I don’t want cameras in the cockpit, or CHR transcripts to be used for ridicule and shame but there is an academic benefit to it, not matter how morbid it may be.

Just like an autopsy, why did this happen? What can we learn from it for preventive reasons?
 
Couldn't disagree more.

First of all, the NTSB doesn't get it right all the time. In fact, sometimes, they blunder investigations so badly that the outcome of the investigation is wrong. Second, having 4 people in charge of it invites corruption and bias and completely eliminates any checks and balances. How differently would the outcome be if 4 people were in charge of the 737 MAX investigations and they just so happened to be bought, and/or employed by Boeing? Come on...

Do you think the Air India investigation is going well right now? Do you actually believe or trust the information put out so far?

I also think there is a required level of transparency in our career field. We are in the public transportation business, and yes, even cargo. We live in a modern digital world, and we have already seen 10 angles of the crash. Release the information and obviously have the NTSB conduct the official investigation, but I want to read that CVR. I want to understand this accident. This is how we learn, and this is how we better equip ourselves as professional pilots. The least we can do for the deceased crew, is to all learn from this, and I think releasing information is paramount to that.
This is pretty much what I was thinking. You have to trust they represented everything accurately.

The NTSB is one of the best investigatory bodies in the world and they are involved all over the world in investigations. That doesn't mean they are perfect.

Allowing all the evidence to exist allows for a type of peer review.
 
I don’t want cameras in the cockpit, or CHR transcripts to be used for ridicule and shame but there is an academic benefit to it, not matter how morbid it may be.
And the thing of it is, not everyone has the requisite clinical detachment (or, in fewer words, 'the stomach') for this sort of thing.

But the CVR transcript is the first place I turn to when the dockets come out.

But hard no on cockpit video.
 
This is pretty much what I was thinking. You have to trust they represented everything accurately.

The NTSB is one of the best investigatory bodies in the world and they are involved all over the world in investigations. That doesn't mean they are perfect.

Allowing all the evidence to exist allows for a type of peer review.
Exactly. We’ve seen previously unthinkable political pressure applied to them in the DC midair investigation. Openness helps keep the process unimpeachable. Aviation accident investigations aren’t pretty but the process is how we continually improve.
 
Honestly, we need to go all “Canada” style where there’s not even a transcript of the CVR released. A total of 4 people review it, they write their report, and then the media is locked away forever. 0.0 reason for it to be published.

Isn't the Canadian government the primary producer and creator of the Air Disasters T.V. show? I agree with you though.
 
Wow. . .you're good. Pick up the pace though. <Mike's a squid> See if you can figure that interpretation of the word.
 
Exactly. We’ve seen previously unthinkable political pressure applied to them in the DC midair investigation. Openness helps keep the process unimpeachable. Aviation accident investigations aren’t pretty but the process is how we continually improve.

Openness is a two-edged sword. The military has long known that anonymity can produce information from folks that would otherwise be reluctant to share info.
 
NTSB briefing just said the #1 engine left the airframe during T/O. I worked as a contractor for UPS decades ago driving the tug pushing the 757 at KBUR every night and that's the closest I've ever been to 121. I'm unsure how they operate now but they ran a very tight ship, nothing was left to chance and there was a policy for everything. The joke was always they had a procedure for urinating, you'd unzip your fly with your right hand, aim with your left hand and anything more than three shakes was considered masturbation. They also had a couple of nicknames, one was "brown tail" for obvious reasons, the other was "cargo nazi" because of how stringently they applied policy and followed regulations. In other words I find it hard to believe they would've strayed (or allowed an MRO to stray) from the manufacturers approved procedures. We'll have to wait and see what caused this, it might be a material failure like the 737 that punched a MLG through the top of the wing at KSNA a few years ago that everyone initially blamed on a hard landing.
 
NTSB briefing just said the #1 engine left the airframe during T/O. I worked as a contractor for UPS decades ago driving the tug pushing the 757 at KBUR every night and that's the closest I've ever been to 121. I'm unsure how they operate now but they ran a very tight ship, nothing was left to chance and there was a policy for everything. The joke was always they had a procedure for urinating, you'd unzip your fly with your right hand, aim with your left hand and anything more than three shakes was considered masturbation. They also had a couple of nicknames, one was "brown tail" for obvious reasons, the other was "cargo nazi" because of how stringently they applied policy and followed regulations. In other words I find it hard to believe they would've strayed (or allowed an MRO to stray) from the manufacturers approved procedures. We'll have to wait and see what caused this, it might be a material failure like the 737 that punched a MLG through the top of the wing at KSNA a few years ago that everyone initially blamed on a hard landing.
All I can say is that when I was doing contract stuff with UPS in SDF during my AMF days UPS was very uncoordinated. I doubt that is the case with their MX but I have had to deal with a range of issues.

A few examples:
Getting assigned ramp spaces were they are storing empty cargo cans.

Having rampers attempt to load my plane without weighing the boxes.

Consistently late arrival of cargo to the plane. Sometimes several hours late.


I get it. My metro was small time compared to a 757 but I would argue this is where you really see how good an operation truly is. If the small stuff runs as well as the big stuff that is to be respected.

Surprisingly DHL in CVG seemed far more consistent.

This was 13 years ago though. Things may have changed.
 
I'm not sure I'd hold the military up as a model of anything in this space, considering some of the unclassified mishap reports/command investigations I've read lately.

In a report about an F-22 crash at Tyndall they laid part of the blame on me (anonymously and non-punitively) claiming I didn’t pass info to the controller working the scope (I was the assist) because it wasn’t on the tapes. They failed to mention that I was sitting right next to him and could talk to him like a human being, or that he said I did tell him and he was fully aware of what I told him but it was contradictory to what the pilot told him. So yeah, my opinion of military accident investigations is…low.

(On check in pilot used the wrong callsign to identify the emergency aircraft, resulting in the non-emergency landing first and the actual emergency getting extended vectors. Neither pilot questioned anything we did while they were in the air, including the non-emergency aircraft given the emergency discreet frequency).
 
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