Originally Posted by
PilotdadCJDCMD
I am putting myself in their shoes. I wonder if they were scanning really trying to acquire the aircraft and lost concentration on altitude. I was a hawk driver in a previous life and it takes just a smidge of back pressure on the cyclic to get a pretty good climb going. Further, maintaining 200 feet would require whoever is on the controls to be looking inside on the instrument panel quite a bit. Focusing outside for an extended amount of time would definitely cause the altitude to drift, and 100-200 feet is nothing.
You know, this has made me think at all of the times I made a mistake or got away with something while flying. Anyone who has flown for more than a day knows that all of us have had our share or screw ups, some small and some big. The more I look back the more I realize that at times it was dumb luck that kept me alive. So tragic for all involved.
Spot on. I posted below on the other thread. To those of us that have done it, it's pretty clear how it could have happened. It's hard to explain how I felt when I first saw the video - like I had been there before. The bright lights, the halos, inside, outside, the chatter on the ICS and radio, trying to scan for traffic while maintaining exact lateral/vertical. Reading what you wrote, I instantly can tell you've been there as well. It's tragic and horrific. I was never assigned there and only flew in there a handful if times while at my regional, so had no knowledge this minimal separation was a thing. In hindsight it's amazing to me that there weren't better backstops to prevent something like this from happening.
--------Hindsight is 20/20, but the separation is mind boggling. The old 200' talking to, 300' phone number. But here we're comfortable with 100'-200' separating catastrophe... WTF. Anyone on here who's flown low level NVGs in high light/traffic areas can all probably relate to this incident - scanning for traffic, thinking you're looking at the traffic called not one of the numerous others in the vicinity, the visual illusions, through the NODs, under the NODs, inside, outside... I fart wrong , apply a little aft cycling and begin an unintentional climb...
To the lay person it's like WTF - how can anyone just fly right into a jet? (cue all the nut job conspiracies). To those that have done it, I think we see the fragility of what was going on in that airspace.------