Why Pilots Hate the Idea of Cameras Watching Them Fly

Bill, you wrote: "The commuter accidents you mention have been sorted out without video." Let's look at one of those accidents, Lexington, Comair, in August 2006. Was this REALLY sorted out without video? I do not think so, and if you read the NTSB report and the news articles about this accident, I think you will agree.

As a short recap, the Comair flight took off from the wrong runway, and the transcript shows the tower controller had roughly fifty seconds to just look out the window and see what was happening. There were fatigue issues for both the pilots and ATC, but they all sounded quite alert and clear on the ATC tapes. This accident happened shortly after 6AM on a Sunday morning, and the departure was the last of a group of three that the controller worked, a short flurry to start the day as is common at many lesser airports. The workload was not complex, the clearances were all crisp and made routine by the weekly and daily repetition of these short departure flurries. There was NOTHING abnormal about the events of 8/27/06, and NOTHING complex that would explain how the controller would fail to see and act on what became a lethal pilot error. Of course, relevant to this discussion, there was no video, but there could have been; and, had there been video in the tower cab, it clearly would have provided important factual information for the investigation. With video, we would have answers to these critical questions: (1)did the controller ever look out the window, and when? (2)what was the controller doing for the fifty seconds from when he issued the takeoff clearance to when the pilots pushed power forward? (3)when the controller heard the power (as he would have, given the close proximity), what was the controller doing during the first 10-15 seconds of takeoff roll, that prevented his looking and alerting the departure and saving the accident? (4) did the controller actually look, see the problem and elect to do nothing, believing nothing bad would happen?

For Comair 5191, there was a full minute for the controller to just look out the window and say 'whoa, he's on the wrong runway, and an unlit runway, too!', then key his mic and cancel the takeoff clearance. Done. This did not happen. 49 died and only the co-pilot survived. To this day, the widow of the pilot is still pushing for a real and objective investigation. Hundreds of others were impacted by direct loss of family or friends, and then there are those indirectly impacted, plus the loss of confidence in the airlines, in ATC, FAA and NTSB. NTSB managed this accident so as not to include a full Public Hearing, which served only to fuel public distrust of NTSB and their conclusions. Another time NTSB pulled this 'no public hearing' was when the Minnesota freeway bridge collapsed on 8/1/2007, killing 13. Generally, when NTSB opts to NOT have a public hearing, the accident has a higher probability of failure by a federal agency.

The investigation led by NTSB included parties such as NATCA, the union representing the tower controller. I have heard that the controller was ready to tell his story, a from-the-heart statement of what he traumatically experienced, but the NATCA officials played lawyer and shut him down and delivered the managed statements to the investigative process. On top of this, NATCA then created a bogus presentation that the controller was distracted counting paper strips at the end of his shift. There were 14 strips, and this is a VERY routine task, that most controllers would spend less than ten seconds doing. Us former controllers know this is just spin by NATCA.

So, to your statement. I think it is incorrect. IF WE HAD THE VIDEO, we would have strong evidence of exactly what happened in the tower cab during that one crucial minute when the accident should have been stopped. Or, even more likely, we would have had no accident, because the controller would not want a video capturing him watching a DVD movie, a TV, texting, napping, or otherwise not doing his job.

One of the chronic problems in aviation, and mostly sourced at FAA, is a tendency to frame solutions far in excess of what is really, basically needed. So, they thump the chest and say it has to withstand 105 G's and 5000 degrees. But that is not needed, obviously.

Think for a moment about Malaysia 370. The aircraft was already fully equipped to transmit via satellites, as needed to perform in oceanic non-radar airspace. A few hundred dollars worth of video camera gear could easily be configured, and set to flash a shot say every three minutes via satellite, bounced on through to the airline dispatch and to the ATC service providers. Software identifies a non-image or an irregular image and flags that something irregular is on the transmitted video for MH370. Both dispatch and ATC are positioned to initiate timely actions. Worst case scenario for MH370 is ATC determines within five minutes that the flight is NORDO. Appropriate Defense authorities are immediately notified. A scramble has an intercept in effect within 10-20 minutes. And CNN has nothing to report, beyond that first day. Maybe, just maybe, if the theory that the pilot was suicidal is true, or if another theory that the pax were killed and the aircraft was essentially pirated and landed somewhere is true, well, maybe this simple and potentially very inexpensive system would have prevented it from happening.

My view is that each of these larger commercial aircraft in operation is easily worth a few hundred million $, in equipment and in life $-equivalents (as sick an idea as that is, but hey, to the airlines and the insurance companies it is just business). We have proven time and again that both pilots and controllers can and will lower their personal professional standards. We should pay all of these people like true professionals, and we should install technologies that not only ensure they perform like true professionals, but that also protect the Public. It is selfish and irresponsible for ANY pilot or controller to cry for their workplace morale and/or privacy as an excuse to not do what we can cheaply do to help protect the Public. When MH370 happens again (and we all know that it could), we will have failed to prevent it.