Talk:Investigators blame pilot error for deadly jet crash near Boston

notes

An NTSB press release landed in my inbox and was drawn upon. It has been forwarded to scoop; but, it's public domain so I can also copy the substantive element here:

Series of Errors by Flight Crew Caused Fatal Business Jet Crash, NTSB Says

September 9, 2015

WASHINGTON – The probable cause of the crash of a business jet in a Boston suburb last May was a series of errors by an experienced flight crew, the National Transportation Safety Board said at a public meeting today. Specifically, the pilots failed to perform a flight control check before takeoff then attempted to take off while critical flight controls were locked because a gust lock was engaged. Finally, they delayed rejecting the take-off after they became aware the flight controls were locked.

“This investigation highlights the importance of following standard operating procedures and underscores the significance of procedural compliance,” said NTSB Vice Chairman Bella Dinh-Zarr. “Complacency does not have a place in the cockpit of any aircraft.”

At 9:40 pm EDT on May 31, 2014, a Gulfstream G-IV business jet bound for Atlantic City crashed after it overran the end of runway 11 during a rejected takeoff at Laurence G. Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts. The airplane rolled through the paved overrun area; continued across a grassy area, striking approach lights and an antenna; and traveled through the airport fence before coming to rest in a ravine. A postcrash fire engulfed the airplane almost immediately. Everyone aboard – two pilots, a flight attendant and four passengers – were killed.

During the engine start process, the flight crew failed to disengage the airplane’s gust lock system, which locks the primary flight control surfaces while the plane is parked to protect them against wind gusts.

The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder indicated that neither of the two flight crewmembers, who had flown together for about 12 years, had performed a basic flight control check that would have alerted them to the locked flight controls. A review of the flight crew’s previous 175 flights revealed that the pilots had performed complete preflight control checks on only two of them. The flight crew’s habitual noncompliance with checklists was a contributing factor to the accident.

“This investigation raises troubling questions about how a long-term pattern of noncompliance was allowed to develop for this very experienced flight crew,” Dinh-Zarr said. “More importantly, our investigation asks whether this is a prevalent practice in the business aviation community, and how we can prevent these accidents from happening again.”

About 26 seconds into the takeoff roll, when the airplane had reached a speed of 148 mph (129 kts), the pilot in command indicated that the flight controls were locked, but the crew did not begin to apply the brakes for another 10 seconds and did not reduce engine power until four more seconds had passed. The NTSB determined that if the crew had rejected the takeoff within 11 seconds of the pilot’s comment, the airplane would have stopped on the paved surface and the accident would have been avoided.

The G-IV gust lock system design was intended to limit the operation of the throttles when the system was engaged so that the flight crew would have an unmistakable warning that the gust lock was on should the crew attempt to take off. However, the investigation revealed that Gulfstream did not ensure that the gust lock system would sufficiently limit the throttle movement on the G-IV airplane, which allowed the pilots of the accident flight to accelerate the airplane to takeoff speed before they discovered that the flight controls were locked.

The NTSB said that the Federal Aviation Administration’s certification of the gust lock system was inadequate because it did not require Gulfstream to perform any engineering certification tests or analysis of the G-IV gust lock system to verify that the system had met its regulatory requirements.

Also contributing to the accident were Gulfstream’s failure to ensure that the gust lock system would prevent an attempted takeoff with the gust lock engaged and the FAA’s failure to detect this inadequacy during the G-IV’s certification. As a result of the investigation, the NTSB issued a total of five safety recommendations to the FAA, the International Business Aviation Council and the National Business Aviation Association.

In addition, the NTSB developed a Safety Alert for all pilots on the importance of following standard operating procedures and using checklists to guard against procedural errors.

A synopsis of the accident along with the findings, probable cause and safety recommendations are available at http://go.usa.gov/3MVQd.

The opening and closing statements, presentations and accident animation from today’s meeting are all available at http://go.usa.gov/3MVUm.

A PDF of the complete accident report along with the Safety Alert will be available on the NTSB website in several weeks.
BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 10:59, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Review of revision 3808693 [Passed]

Revision 3808693 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 14:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: This is another of those "OR lite" kind of situations. Got around it in this case because the press release is available on the ntsb site. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

Revision 3808693 of this article has been reviewed by Pi zero (talk · contribs) and has passed its review at 14:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC). Copyright: Passed Newsworthiness: Passed Verifiability: Passed NPOV: Passed Style: Passed Comments by reviewer: This is another of those "OR lite" kind of situations. Got around it in this case because the press release is available on the ntsb site. The reviewed revision should automatically have been edited by removing {{Review}} and adding {{Publish}} at the bottom, and the edit sighted; if this did not happen, it may be done manually by a reviewer.

misleading headline

{{editprotected}}

Headline "in Boston" inaccurate and misleading. Should say "near Boston" or "in Bedford MA." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.69.121.204 (talk • contribs) 13:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Best to wait until the article is archived before fixing this, since renaming a published article can create duplicate entries in some feeds. --Pi zero (talk) 13:34, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

The sources describe Bedford as a suburb of Boston, which if true makes it an outer segment of Boston. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 14:24, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

As en.wp correctly notes (atm), Bedford "is within the Greater Boston area, [...] north-west of the city of Boston." For a local, Bedford isn't "in" Boston, which is why I changed "in" to "near" in the body (but overlooked it in the headline). --Pi zero (talk) 14:54, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Seems to me, btw, this doesn't rise to the level of {{correction}}; it's not even about the location of a current event but about one from over a year ago, it's unobtrusively at the end of the headline, and it's more precisely stated in the lede. 'Twould make sense to me to treat it as a minor clarification of wording. --Pi zero (talk) 15:42, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah, the old local-knowledge-to-show-sources-up technique. <grin> Would a displaytitle be a valid fix? BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 16:54, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Afaik, displaytitle is limited to variants that would still resolve to the current title; it could, say, put part of a title in italics, but couldn't change a word. --Pi zero (talk) 17:14, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Need to be an old-fashioned pagemove then. BRS ^{(Talk) (Contribs)} 21:24, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Done --Pi zero (talk) 00:56, 28 September 2015 (UTC)