Reply to Plane crash DCA?

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "Plane crash DCA?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Did people read the NYT article yesterday?  I understand there were many things that went wrong that night, including understaffing in the tower, but why the hell was a pilot with inferior flying skills in the area that night?  I was struck by the description of her lack of talent as a pilot.  I’m sorry if that is hurtful to her family.[/quote]

Can someone paste the relevant part, or post a link to the article?[/quote]

[url]https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/us/politics/dc-plane-helicopter-crash.html[/url]

....That same week, Mr. Eaves, assigned to give her the annual flight exam, told his girlfriend that he feared Captain Lobach was unprepared for the flight, according to an N.T.S.B. interview document.
Captain Lobach, recalled the girlfriend, was described by Mr. Eaves as “not where she should be,” according to the document. It was the girlfriend’s impression, investigators said in the document, that Mr. Eaves “thought the other pilot was not grasping things they should have understood by that point in her flying career.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Eaves was professional and even jovial during the Jan. 29 flight, according to a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder.....

....He appeared to try to soothe Captain Lobach’s embarrassment over a directional mistake by joking that he was “all game” to blow by a town at low altitude but that they would have to make a “blood pact” not to discuss it with anyone later.
She appeared to have recognized the tongue-in-cheek suggestion, replying, “Nope, right.”
But the exam did not go smoothly.
More than an hour before the crash, during a portion of the flight with choppy winds, Mr. Eaves took the flight controls from her, according to the transcript.
At another point, when they were evidently practicing landing and other maneuvers on a rural airfield, she was forced to “go around” one landing area on short notice — a tactic that is often used when an aircraft cannot land safely, aviators told The Times. When Mr. Eaves asked her about the mistake, she blamed the height of her chair, according to the transcript.
She also erroneously turned left when she should have gone right to avoid winds, and turned northward toward Great Falls, Va., when she should have been heading south to return to the Army base, prompting Mr. Eaves to ask her where they were going, according to the transcript.
At one point, the transcript says, she described herself as “dizzy,” but quickly added that it was “not too bad.”

Little missteps might be relatively forgivable on a deserted airfield or at thousands of feet in elevation, where there is less traffic. But once the Black Hawk entered the Washington area’s airspace — known as Class B, the busiest grade — there was very little margin for error when problems emerged.[/quote]
So it's the supervisor's fault because at that point, he should have taken over the controls.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics