Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

Agree, they’d have to go of NAVs and say in thank you and pull up, get back in queue.

Maybe someone with tons of DCA experience would have done that. Just assumed it was too risky with any helicopter traffic oncoming or below it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump forced the faa director to quit.

This airport and ATC standards have been a problem for a long time. It didn’t suddenly fall apart Jan 20. The hiring freeze has nothing to do with current ATC

Trump’s acute harassment of federal workers this week absolutely could have contributed to reducing performance by the military crew and FAA. It’s literally what he planned to do - “torture” federal employees. People undergoing torture don’t perform at their peak.

+1 during the last 10 days Trump has intentionally created chaos across the government and told workers they are an embarrassment and he wants to fire them. Of course, people who support Trump insist his actions are simply cutting waste because they DGAF about the numerous things that the government does that keeps society running. One of those things is preventing aircraft from colliding with one another.

But let's say the insanity of the last 10 days has nothing to do with this particular crash. How can people be okay with the way Trump treats the very people who work day and night to keep people healthy and safe?

Anonymous wrote:Just getting caught up, and I am absolutely disgusted by Trump’s response. He is a sick man. He barely uttered his condolences before blaming everyone he could think of:

Biden/Obama
Pete
Disabled
Minorities
Women

He is a child. He acts like an actual child. In this moment, it is not appropriate on any level to start pointing fingers and passing blame. People are grieving. People need reassurance that it is safe to fly.

The way he shook up the entire government on day one makes it absolutely absurd for him to blame Biden for anything at all. Nothing is as he left it. Trump had already wreaked havoc on every agency and procedure involved. He owns this.

Not to mention his flippant response when asked if he would visit the site - “You want me to go swimming?”

Egg update: prices still increasing

Behavior scientist here. We actually see “blame” (basically a form of aggression when you can’t be physically violent) across multiple species when they perceive another animal has something they don’t. Example, if you have 2 rats together, and one has to press a button more than the other to get food, the one that has to press more will attack the one who has to press less. And if it can’t attack, it’ll often find other ways to behave aggressively. Even if it doesn’t result in more food for it.

This is what goes on with trump and trump supporters. The see others getting things they don’t or in greater amounts (jobs, money, etc) and the gut instinct is to attack those people, especially if they are lower on the social hierarchy (in monkeys, they will attack lower status monkeys but groom higher status, which is why people fawn over Trump and Musk). It’s the whole crabs in a bucket thing.

When logically trump’s solution make no sense. He says we need to have geniuses as pilots and ATC. This is one of his usual responses - we need better people, geniuses. But there just aren’t that many geniuses to fill every role he says need them. Military especially, which typically attracts people from low income families who don’t have many options.

You can show trump or his supporters all the data in the world and it won’t matter because they are operating on a base level instinct to attack others. And in fact that typically makes things worse because you are taking away the one hope they have of their own lives improving.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Came out last night that the sidestep to 33 was because ATC had put multiple jets on final for 1 too close. The whole event started long before, with at least one plane refusing to switch to 33. Still primarily the helicopter fault but having 1 tower ATC was a large contributing factor. Many of us in the aviation community have felt this is the exact scenario the multiple near collisions over the last 24 months would bring.

Runway 33 is perfect for regional jets.

200 seaters can’t use it.

Not a big deal. Usually.

That's fine but that wasn't the original flight plan - the tower ATC had multiple landings spaced too closely and needed one of them to move from the pattern (landing on 1) to landing on 33. This is normal, but it shouldn't be normal - there should be enough ATC capacity so that the tower doesn't get behind the queue. Like everything else by itself it's fine, but it's another hole in the swiss cheese that led to this disaster. Just like having see and avoid. Just like night vision goggles. Just like conflicting traffic patterns. None of these on their own was the only cause. They all had to line up together and they did tonight. The public has no idea how close things have been.

I strongly disagree with the "all had to line up together" argument. There is one issue that is one major violation of protocol that trumps everything: the altitude of the helicopter.

You can discuss that there should be a better procedure in place and many would agree with you. But here is one that was in place and was violated. Everything else is a contributing factor.

Disobeying the command from ATC to wait until the plane passed in front of them was probably the bigger failure.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do these helicopters need to go by this airports landing area? Or any airports landing area if they aren't landing or taking off from there?

No fly zones over downtown cities like DC, NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc.

No fly zones over pentagon in Arlington VA too

Then maybe helicopters aren’t a great transportation option for the military in DC. If there’s an emergency, fine, but to bring someone home faster out of mere convenience?

They were practicing a night time extraction exercise, is getting the prez or CIA somebody out of the city.
Flying down the east bank of a river at 200 ft should be easy. Even past the airport.

Major and fatal problems ensue when they go to the middle or the river, and fly at 300-400 feet past the open airport, and don’t triple confirm runway 33 jets.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People please watch this or one of the other great explanation videos posted before asking any more questions. Most of your questions will be answered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3gD_lnBNu0

Thank you—this is super informative. Thinking of everyone involved.

yes informative. And really drives home the multiple errors.

To me it drives home multiple potential factors but one glaring (and avoidable) rule breach: the helicopter flew at 400 ft in an area that was restricted to 200 ft. The other factors may well have contributed but ultimately this is the one that matters and the rule is already in place. The military helicopter didn't follow the rules.

Maybe the military helicopters often break that rule, maybe they make their own rules... ok, that takes away the helo pilot's (or the crew's) personal responsibility. But from all of these helpful explanations what has become clearer is that there is a system in place to prevent this from happening and the military helicopter was at fault.

A second important question is whether we should improve safety in other ways that people here are mentioning. But I agree with PP that it is crucial to understand the specifics of this accident to prevent future tragedies. And the fact remains, if both aircrafts had followed the rules, this would not have happened.

Re altitude at 350 by airport passing and not 200


This really builds distrust of military exercises in DC.

They never follow the altitude rules and can’t be bothered to.

Then layer in this gross negligence and incompetency or “total brain farts” and here we are.

agreed. If a big change comes out of this tragedy, I hope it's that helicopters have to take a completely different route.

Absolutely. Helicopters shouldn't be flying through the DCA approaches.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People please watch this or one of the other great explanation videos posted before asking any more questions. Most of your questions will be answered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3gD_lnBNu0

Thank you—this is super informative. Thinking of everyone involved.

yes informative. And really drives home the multiple errors.

To me it drives home multiple potential factors but one glaring (and avoidable) rule breach: the helicopter flew at 400 ft in an area that was restricted to 200 ft. The other factors may well have contributed but ultimately this is the one that matters and the rule is already in place. The military helicopter didn't follow the rules.

Maybe the military helicopters often break that rule, maybe they make their own rules... ok, that takes away the helo pilot's (or the crew's) personal responsibility. But from all of these helpful explanations what has become clearer is that there is a system in place to prevent this from happening and the military helicopter was at fault.

A second important question is whether we should improve safety in other ways that people here are mentioning. But I agree with PP that it is crucial to understand the specifics of this accident to prevent future tragedies. And the fact remains, if both aircrafts had followed the rules, this would not have happened.

Re altitude at 350 by airport passing and not 200


This really builds distrust of military exercises in DC.

They never follow the altitude rules and can’t be bothered to.

Then layer in this gross negligence and incompetency or “total brain farts” and here we are.

This is what my spouse who works in infrastructure and has to deal with the US military a lot says.

They don't follow rules designed to promote cooperation among agencies/entities -- they view their mission as more important, always, and think they can make their own rules.

But if someone violates *their* rules, even accidentally, you will be punished in some way because everyone is just supposed to know how the military operates internally.

It's a problem of them feeling like they are above the law and that everyone should defer to them. Even though in this case, obviously this helicopter doing an unnecessary training run near an airport handling millions of passengers a day should have been deferring.

To be clear, I'm not blaming the crew of the helicopter here but the culture of the military that led the people on that crew to think they can break standard procedure and it will be fine. Helicopters constantly fly above 200ft through that corridor and ATC is constantly having to tell them to go down, and planes have frequently had to abort landings to accommodate that. It's ridiculous. The military is not more important than FAA or NTSB, yet they the rules from those agencies don't apply to them. And as a result 67 people died for no good reason.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Came out last night that the sidestep to 33 was because ATC had put multiple jets on final for 1 too close. The whole event started long before, with at least one plane refusing to switch to 33. Still primarily the helicopter fault but having 1 tower ATC was a large contributing factor. Many of us in the aviation community have felt this is the exact scenario the multiple near collisions over the last 24 months would bring.

Runway 33 is perfect for regional jets.

200 seaters can’t use it.

Not a big deal. Usually.

That's fine but that wasn't the original flight plan - the tower ATC had multiple landings spaced too closely and needed one of them to move from the pattern (landing on 1) to landing on 33. This is normal, but it shouldn't be normal - there should be enough ATC capacity so that the tower doesn't get behind the queue. Like everything else by itself it's fine, but it's another hole in the swiss cheese that led to this disaster. Just like having see and avoid. Just like night vision goggles. Just like conflicting traffic patterns. None of these on their own was the only cause. They all had to line up together and they did tonight. The public has no idea how close things have been.

I strongly disagree with the "all had to line up together" argument. There is one issue that is one major violation of protocol that trumps everything: the altitude of the helicopter.

You can discuss that there should be a better procedure in place and many would agree with you. But here is one that was in place and was violated. Everything else is a contributing factor.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

In some of the near miss examples, it seems the planes had alerts / alarms telling them another plane was too close and they chose to manouever away. I wonder what we will hear on the black box for both.

Do we know the helicopter made a sudden change in movement near the end? I thought they were just flying straight into the plane.

I bet the plane had no idea and didn’t see it coming at all. It certainly didn’t look like the plane suspected anything out of the norm and was just following course. It also looks like the helicopter turned last minute and flew directly into plane. But who knows. A lot of details unknown

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

In some of the near miss examples, it seems the planes had alerts / alarms telling them another plane was too close and they chose to manouever away. I wonder what we will hear on the black box for both.

Do we know the helicopter made a sudden change in movement near the end? I thought they were just flying straight into the plane.

Both aircraft would have had alerts for conflicts but the audio is disabled and conflicts for arriving aircraft are common. The tower had a Collision Avoidance alert that blared for 16 seconds before impact. Was the tower controller distracted doing 2 separate jobs? Likely.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Came out last night that the sidestep to 33 was because ATC had put multiple jets on final for 1 too close. The whole event started long before, with at least one plane refusing to switch to 33. Still primarily the helicopter fault but having 1 tower ATC was a large contributing factor. Many of us in the aviation community have felt this is the exact scenario the multiple near collisions over the last 24 months would bring.

Runway 33 is perfect for regional jets.

200 seaters can’t use it.

Not a big deal. Usually.

That's fine but that wasn't the original flight plan - the tower ATC had multiple landings spaced too closely and needed one of them to move from the pattern (landing on 1) to landing on 33. This is normal, but it shouldn't be normal - there should be enough ATC capacity so that the tower doesn't get behind the queue. Like everything else by itself it's fine, but it's another hole in the swiss cheese that led to this disaster. Just like having see and avoid. Just like night vision goggles. Just like conflicting traffic patterns. None of these on their own was the only cause. They all had to line up together and they did tonight. The public has no idea how close things have been.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The dashcam footage shows the helicopter seemingly moving too fast to have avoided the collision.

Someone up thread said around 30+ minutes had elapsed between ATC communicating with helicopter for first time about the plane and if they had sight and when collision happened. That’s seems to be plenty of time to gain bearings and avoid the plane.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

In some of the near miss examples, it seems the planes had alerts / alarms telling them another plane was too close and they chose to manouever away. I wonder what we will hear on the black box for both.

Do we know the helicopter made a sudden change in movement near the end? I thought they were just flying straight into the plane.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The dashcam footage shows the helicopter seemingly moving too fast to have avoided the collision.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump forced the faa director to quit.

This airport and ATC standards have been a problem for a long time. It didn’t suddenly fall apart Jan 20. The hiring freeze has nothing to do with current ATC

Trump’s acute harassment of federal workers this week absolutely could have contributed to reducing performance by the military crew and FAA. It’s literally what he planned to do - “torture” federal employees. People undergoing torture don’t perform at their peak.