Yes, CRM was bad. Before someone says, "it couldn't happen to me", it can and especially if you are trained the way AMC trains aircrew.

There's more to the story than meets the eye in this accident. AMC re-engined and put new instruments in an airplane and gave and the crews a CBT and a trip across the pond to be trained. (or so I'm told ... I could be wrong about the particulars). Well I think it was supposed to be 12 or 24 hours of flying in the new airplane type with an instructor; however, what was supposed to be in the local pattern doing training turned into flying a trip or two across the pond (to save time and money). AMC is complicit here and in more ways than one.

This accident reveals the huge lack of standardization that exists across the Air Mobility Command. I've argued this point with many active duty pilots in AMC and of course they all disagreed with me. The big picture for example, the Guard does it different than reserves, reserves different than active duty, west coast different than east coast, sometimes different units on the same base do it differently. But the biggest problem is that AMC has failed to adapt industry leading practices. AMC has picked up some things from the civilian sector, but it is behind in many areas.

The C-5 and some other communities for years pulled back engines on local trainers and trained EO approaches and landings. The problem with this is if you have an actual engine failure you're goal isn't to pencil whip through the checklists so as to have them completed before turning base to the visual and landing. This is an emergency that takes time and you need to go hold or fly a long box pattern, take care of the emergency, complete the checklists, and brief the crew on the landing before you land. The proverbial getting your ducks in a row. In the local pattern, you don't have time for that.

In other communities they were forbidden from doing practice emergencies in the airplane because you trained for those in the simulators and you trained exactly the way you would fly them -- some aircraft don't allow you to pull an engine back and experience what would really happen aircraft systems wise in the aircraft. In short, lack of standardization in training.

Then there are the evaluations. AMC doesn't use standardized evaluations. You have to dive into the appropriate 11-2MDSV2 where you get some guidance on evaluations. In some cases, the MDSV2 guidance directs you to 11-202V2 which then directs you back to MDSV2.

For example, one MDS I was qualified in allowed flight examiner provided scenarios for evaluations. As long as the examiner gave you the directed four items to be evaluated (abort, V1CUT, 2-engine landing, go around), additional guidance to the examiner was to give a "random selection of other abnormal and emergency procedures and Boldface."

Each examiner provided evaluations were different, very different. This makes it really difficult to monitor trend analysis, a required item of the STAN/EVAL process. More so, one examiner may be a Santa Claus where another might be Hitler. On my last evaluation in the simulator on active duty (I was an instructor and examiner pilot), the examiner had me down to single engine operations, single hydraulics operating from a windmilling engine, single electrical system operating off of a windmilling engine, in mountainous terrain with weather at the airport. ***. Yes, it was given to me as a challenge to see if we could do it, but it was also an examination and had we screwed something up, my quals (and the other crewmembers') were on the line.

And training and evaluations are only the tip of the iceberg where AMC fails in standardization. You also have the ridiculous endless AFIs that aircrew must comply with. Instead of having an FAA approved Flight Opeations Manual like the airlines have -- a one stop source document on how operations will be conducted, you have a myriad of directives which often times conflict with one another and differ between the different MDS platforms.

But I hear all of the arguments; "we're not the airlines, we don't fly schedule point A point B operations all day" "we air refuel" "we drop stuff out the back" "we fly formation" "we do assault landings" "our airplanes are all different" blah blah blah... It doesn't matter. 90% of what AMC pilots do apply to the airlines and 90% of what we do could be standardized across all AMC MDS platforms.

During the timeframe when this C-5 crash occurred, AMC Stan Eval directed a "back to basics" push. I remember asking aircrew basic UPT questions, "what weather would require you to have an alternate?" "when do you need an alternate" "On this ILS approach, what is the required visibility? What are the minimums?" Etc.etc. It was amazing how ignorant the crew force had become. Part of the problem was the transition to e-pubs and that people weren't reading, highlighting, and managing their own pubs anymore -- a different ball of wax.

Anyways, not shotgunning you windingmywatch. You brought forth more insight as to what happened. However, in my opinion, the crew performed as they had been trained and evaluated in the past and it is AMC's and the USAF's fault.