The Flight and Crash of "Blackwater 61"

[sabra]

Source: CBS News

Soldier's Widow Tells 60 Minutes Firm Was Negligent in the Way It Operated the Flight

<snip>

But as we reported last February, it was an accident that never should have happened and you would not be hearing about it now if it weren't for his widow, herself a former high-ranking Army officer, who waged a five-year battle against one of the military's most important contractors.

"He would have liked to have been able to go out, you know, fighting. Not in the back of some plane, somebody else's victim," Army Colonel Jeanette McMahon told "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft.

Col. McMahon was no ordinary widow and in her mind her husband was the victim of Blackwater. Until her retirement a few months ago, the West Point graduate and former helicopter pilot seemed to be a future candidate for general, but her life changed when her husband and West Point classmate was killed on a routine flight back to his cavalry squadron in western Afghanistan.

And while still on active duty, she decided to sue Blackwater's aviation subsidiary for flagrant safety violations and reckless disregard for human life.

"I wanted to understand what happened. For me, if I couldn't be there when he died I felt like I wanted to at least be able to recreate what happened," she told Kroft.

...

English and his co-captain, Butch Hammer, had only been in Afghanistan for 13 days, and neither one of them had ever flown the route between Bagram and Farah. And their inexperience showed: they didn't file a flight plan, and instead of taking the easier route to the southwest with lower mountains, they set off to the north and never seemed to get their bearings.

"I hope I'm going in the right valley," English said on the voice recording.

Flight mechanic Mel Rowe voiced his concern early on. "I don't know what we're going to see, we don't normally go this route," Rowe said.


Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/25/60minutes/main6617750.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.1

[Tippy]

1. This to would have remained a covered up .......

But Col. McMahon, suspected the worse and her fears were realized, I am glad she had the courage to follow through.

[defendandprotect]

2. Another one I hadn't heard of . . . takes a lot of guts to confront Blackwater ....

[PacerLJ35]

3. A couple of things...

I'm not trying to say the Blackwater crew did or didn't do anything negligent, because I don't know any more than what the article provides. But having flown in Afghanistan, here's a couple observations:

- USAF crews start flying missions like these within 3 days of arriving in the AOR, so having been there for 13 days and flying a mission like that isn't unusual.

- No one really files a "flight plan" in Afghanistan, because the only people that care about who's flying around is the Air Operations Center. Any flight scheduled in the AOR is scheduled through the AOC, and that suffices as a "flight plan". Anyone flying in the AOR without approval from the AOC will likely get intercepted by fighters. It's not like flying here in the US, where flight plans detail where you're departing and where you're going...because here in the US you can legally take off and fly almost anywhere you want without prior approval from anyone.

- The route of flight for aircrews in Afghanistan is typically up to the aircrew. There are "typical" routes for pilots to fly, but nothing stating "thall shalt fly this route", with the exception of certain high-altitude routes.

- They weren't the first crew to get disoriented, and they won't be the last. And I'm not just talking about Blackwater crews...that's for NATO/US crews too.

One tenet of aviation is that the buck stops at the pilot in command 99% of the time. The only times it doesn't is for material failure caused by poor maintenance practices or some other institutional problem forcing a crew to make bad decisions. But if a pilot meets the criteria to command the flight, he or she is expected to manage the flight. I don't know the pilots' background, but most of those guys are ex-military pilots with a wealth of experience to fall back on. I don't have access to an accident investigation board report, which is what I would use for my conclusion vice using a third party like CBS, but crashing into terrain they aren't familiar with sounds like poor judgment exercised by the crew.

If you can show that Blackwater lacked a clear safety program and/or had a culture that encouraged or forced crews to operate recklessly, then I'd say she has a case.

But then again, I've seen a case where a guy rented an airplane and possessed only a VFR (visual flight rules) certificate, and then fly off into a snow storm in the mountains, killing himself. The widow sued Cessna, the airplane rental company and a number of other defendants and WON, despite the fact that her loved one made a grave error in judgment. So who knows how this will come out.

[malaise]

4. Watched last night

I don't know why I so shocked and surprised.