Rescue 116 Crash at Blackrock, Co Mayo(Mod note in post 1)

https://www.todayfm.com/Sister-of-Dara-Fitzpatrick-Opens-Up-For-The-First-Time-Following-Rescue-116-Tragedy

Sure you do.
For starters, (regarding the obstacle that the aircraft crashed into) :

BoatMad wrote: »

clearly the issue, because cleary they did, whether the report can shed any more light remains to be seen , my own view is it will not

Honestly. How anyone who has ever read an air accident report can come out with a statement like that baffles me.

de biz wrote: »

https://www.todayfm.com/Sister-of-Dara-Fitzpatrick-Opens-Up-For-The-First-Time-Following-Rescue-116-Tragedy

The list of people she thanks at the end is heartwarming, their efforts moving, and the overall goodness expressed by so many uplifting.

Coil Kilcrea wrote: »

I'm enjoying you two going at it, the Professor and the Boatman....with the best of intentions and a smattering of good humour.

I have read many accident reports and find them incredibly well written, insightful and full of learning. And I've every confidence that the AAIU will do a very thorough final report such that we can learn as much as possible from this tragedy.

Blessed be the peacemakers, Coil, wha?

There's been an amount of research done on accidents in multiple fields of human endeavour, and possibly more in the aviation industry than anywhere. An article from 2010 (referring to findings presented at a CHC- sponsored safety & quality summit) suggested that “In a preponderance of accidents, pilots and air crew are set up for failure.”

This is not 'passing the buck' for 'pilot error'; rather it is seeing the reality of a complex set of processes for what it is: not one process but many processes that are interlinked in a chain. Most of the time, all is good and we all marvel that such magnificent technological achievements can be designed by humans to do things that seem to defy natural laws of physics. And when all is good, the designers and engineers are fantastic, the pilots wonderful and the crews who soldier at the edge of human endeavour heroic.

However, at some point in the forging of the chain, a bug creeps in which may seem innocuous on its own. And perhaps another one creeps in later on, and another- all tiny and insignificant in their own right but when they all align on a dark night over unknown waters, something happens and all are lost. The fact is the PIC is the last person to have control of the machine at that point and can too easily become the last person standing in a gruesome form of musical chairs. But the long chain of events - many elements of which were put in place weeks, months or even years before the tragedy - simply ends up in a terrible confluence of all the little things aligning and the last person in charge being left without a chair to sit on.

Couple that with decision-making that may have created fertile ground for all the bad things to impact on each other and you have a disaster. I believe that's what happened on 14th March: the end- point in a cascade of errors and accidents that ended in a disaster. I hope the investigators will be able to tease out all the links and go back far enough to identify all the 'little' bugs that crept in, and establish where the decision- making went wrong, so that those particular issues will be removed from future processes in the interests of safety.

While its very clear at this stage that the R116 crew were left with no chairs when the music stopped, we still need to await the final report to understand the totality of what happened. Anyone who believes right now that they know so much about the decision- making that night and the chain of events that preceded it as to be able to 'foretell' the final report of the investigators, needs to consider how their protestations are only demonstrating an omniscience and arrogance that undermines every word they say.

For anyone interested in some reading material around all this:

https://www.helicoptersmagazine.com/procedures/the-domino-effect-2106#sthash.q61eqAiW.dpuf

http://www.asasi.org/papers/2008/Accident%20Data%20and%20the%20Helicopter%20Offshore%20Safety%20Case%20Presented%20by%20Steve%20Walters.pdf

Tenger wrote: »

You are obviously very experienced in the whole area of naviagtion systems. But over the last while you have been grinding an axe with most people of this thread.
However I dont think anyone is really on the other side of the argument with you in relation to the questions quoted about. Could you try to be a little less forceful about it? Its an anonymous forum, you dont need to prove yourself here.

He is totally correct in his statement regardless of the way he presented it

plodder wrote: »

The first of those articles is an interesting read, but the second one, my god, I work in software, so I know what a flow chart looks like. But, you can't expect humans to operate according to flowcharts (like those ones).

I suppose its a bit of a curate's egg. I found parts of it hard to follow, but that's possibly because in its debut performance, it had some skinny aircrafty dude making a presentation and he was just using the slides as backup for what was probably a scintillating presentation. However,there are few of the slides in the presentation that don't contain some very useful thinking (albeit requiring some study). But, if they don't float your boat, that's OK. There's loads of other stuff out there that deal with multi- dimensional causation when it comes to a specific event. These 2 are just 2 I found interesting and shared because of that.

For me the ould flowchart is a great resource to schematically represent complex decision making and process flows. However, I fully agree with your point that no human being should operate according to flowcharts; I know in any area I've ever been involved in, they would only ever be used as 2 dimensional best-case attempts to illustrate/describe such complexities as mentioned. After all, without them, the communication of such complexities are difficult if not impossible in the printed word.

TomOnBoard wrote: »

Which one? There were sooooo many!

Avionics

I must say I am impressed with the owner/crew/skipper of the Gearadoin (spelling). Their effort, along with many, many more is outstanding.

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

The fact that Blackrock is was only about 200 metres wide from the direction they were approaching makes its radar return pretty small I would imagine. From 1 NM away that would subtend and angle of just 6 ° on the screen, which seems not much bigger than the sea clutter returns on that image.

The give away would be the lack of returns from behind the return - its often more useful than the return itself.

ProfessorPlum wrote: »

The give away would be the lack of returns from behind the return - its often more useful than the return itself.

Yes but with such a small target the shadow behind it would be minimal and scarcely noticeable, I'd imagine.

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

Yes but with such a small target the shadow behind it would be minimal and scarcely noticeable, I'd imagine.

Not quite. The lack of returns will fan out in an arc behind the return, so unless there's nothing else on the screen it would be noticeable as it would be a very well defined arc. I don't use radar for ground mapping, but I'd imagine if you were, you'd be scanning down to include ground clutter, so a lack of ground returns should ring some warning bells.
It'll be interesting to see how the radar was set up and what was likely to be displayed on screen.