Four U.S. Crashes Highlight Very Different Oversight Systems
A total of four aircraft crashes in the U.S. over a four-day span might seem to be an example of one safety wave. However, a more productive aviation-related conclusion will rather be opposite: these incidents have nothing in common with one another because different aircraft classes, different missions, and different oversight structures have been involved in each of them.
This detail is crucial for proper assessment of the situations. Namely, two military F/A-18 Hornet fighters have crashed during flights in Washington state, one Pacific Aerospace P750 skydiving aircraft in Missouri, one B-52 Stratofortress bomber at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and one NetJets-operated Cessna Citation Latitude in Texas have gone down. Two of these aircraft were military, two others were civilian; none of them was overseen as commercial passenger jets.
According to Flight Safety Foundation president and CEO Hassan Shahidi, these crashes appear to be independent and to be unique in respect to their nature (operation or aircraft type). This statement is the right approach for analyzing what has happened and what we can learn from this.
Different machines, different missions
In particular, the crash in Washington involved an F/A-18 fighter, which conducted its mission in a routine training flight. The pilot ejected and was found alive by local police forces but got some minor injuries. The crash also caused wildfire leading to evacuation in the nearby areas.
As to California, the B-52 crash had taken place at Edwards Air Force Base when the bomber made an attempt to take off for test mission aimed at radar modernization program implementation. All eight crew members were killed in this accident. According to Air Force, the crew consisted of military personnel, government civilians, and contractors.
These two accidents should be analyzed within the framework of military mishap systems and not under the FAA airline-related oversight system. As far as military aviation goes, the immediate attention should be paid to the issues of evidence preservation, causality determination, and feedback into the process of preparation, maintenance, training, and design.
Two remaining crashes also differed from one another. In particular, in Missouri, one Pacific Aerospace P750 used as a skydiving aircraft crashed next to a highway during takeoff. Twelve people were killed in this accident. The witnesses claim that the plane could not climb properly, it turned left, stalled and then fell. At the moment, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating this incident.
As to Texas, the Citation Latitude business jet crashed on a highway two miles away from Laredo airport while diverting there because of in-flight malfunctioning. The data mentioned in the press reports claim that the normal descent to the airport was observed but then the plane changed its course toward a highway and then crashed hitting the car. Six people were on board, one of them died but the others have been saved due to bystanders and law enforcement activities.
Why oversight is not one-size-fits-all
It is easy to combine these four accidents into one general story related to commercial airlines. However, the real picture of the U.S. aviation oversight is completely different. First of all, military aircraft such as F/A-18 and B-52 bombers are overseen via their service-specific safety and mishap investigation systems. For instance, the Air Force system of mishap investigation presupposes three elements such as evidence preservation, event classification, and a safety investigation process aimed at prevention of the event recurrence. This process is separate from civil accident investigation process and is mainly oriented towards readiness instead of airworthiness of the aircraft.
The Missouri skydiving aircraft falls into another category. The fact is that skydiving planes are normally overseen within the framework of FAA Part 91, the regulation which differs from airline-type rules. However, the operators conducting air jumps have additional requirements; however, according to FAA, these requirements deal more with conducting of the skydiving itself and not with making of flight compliant with airline-type rules.
This issue has been discussed for many years. In particular, NTSB had insisted on stronger oversight for parachute operations while FAA has stated that regulation development here requires balancing between safety goals and reality of small operators. However, none of this explains what was the cause of the Missouri crash but helps to see the reason why skydiving aircraft is not overseen like airliners.
As to Texas Citation Latitude, this plane has also flown not as part of major scheduled airliner but as a business jet operated by NetJets. This aircraft has also been overseen under FAA regulations but it also did not belong to the transport-category airliner category associated with Part 121 operators.
Same headlines, different safety lessons
However, even the operating environment was different. Tactical fighter on training, bomber on test mission, skydiving aircraft taking off with jumpers onboard, and business jet diverting after in-flight malfunctioning are not similar in respect to maintenance requirements, crew composition, flight frequency, and regulatory assumptions.
This is why hasty conclusions about reasons of such accidents are inappropriate. As to these cases, the Marine Corps will find out the cause of F/A-18 crash while Air Force will investigate B-52 accident. In turn, the NTSB is now investigating skydiving accident in Missouri while it is going to go to the Texas crash scene as well.
What is the common feature of all these accidents? It is the timing of their occurrence but not necessarily the mechanism of failure. For aviation readers, the main lesson from this is structural: in the U.S., “aircraft oversight” is not one system but rather the patchwork of different systems depending on mission type, operator category, and use case. Four crashes happening close to one another show this difference.
In aerospace, the machine is important but oversight architecture is also crucial. The above accidents remind us that safety findings will probably be obtained via different channels, according to different rules, and on different time frames. To treat them as one story is emotionally reasonable but technically inappropriate.
By David Whitaker — Associate editor for AMI’s aerospace and drone systems desk, translating flight systems, aircraft programs, spaceflight, and UAV developments into accessible technical stories.
