Why do planes fall? Why do planes crash? Rating of the safest airlines
Do not worry. If you have a trip ahead, don’t hesitate to choose it. Airplane crashes happen extremely rarely, mainly due to a fatal combination of various circumstances. What reasons can lead to a plane crash?
Many people are afraid to fly because they supposedly have no chance of surviving a plane crash. This is nothing more than a myth. The probability of surviving is approximately 95%. Thus, even if, by incredible chance, your plane gets into an accident, you will have a good chance of survival. Now that we have calmed down a little, we can move on to the causes of plane crashes.
Most of the plane crashes occur in a fairly short time interval. This is the first 3 minutes of flight and the last 8. In aviation parlance, this concept is known as “Plus Three/Minus Eight”. 80% of all aviation accidents happen exactly in these 11 minutes. The cause may be any of the following factors, or a combination of them.
Causes 22% of plane crashes. Despite the most thorough technical inspections before each flight, there is always a minimal probability of failure of any of the components of the most complex unit. To understand how tiny this probability is, imagine the work of flight attendants. They have been flying daily for many years, but their profession is not even close to being among the most dangerous.
A technical malfunction may result from a bird strike. But, again, such a probability is extremely small. It is not for nothing that a classic example of such an accident is still considered to be the 1962 incident where a swan hit the engine of a United Airlines plane.
2. Pilot error
Humans tend to make mistakes. That is why the pilot’s participation in the control of modern aircraft, thanks to technology, is reduced to a minimum. Despite this, the notorious “human factor” causes 50% of aircraft accidents. This could be either overconfidence or a sudden heart attack. 
3. Weather conditions
Heavy winds, fog, and snow are the cause of 12% of plane crashes. Despite the most accurate algorithms, weather forecasters' forecasts sometimes turn out to be wrong. In most cases, the maximum that threatens passengers is of varying degrees, however, in rare cases, the consequences can be more severe.
4. Deliberate actions
In 9% of cases, planes crash, like in detective thrillers. This includes terrorist attacks, hijacking attempts, planted explosive devices.
5. Other reasons
7% of plane crashes occur due to other factors. These are air traffic control errors, aircraft collisions, navigation errors, insufficient calculation of fuel reserves...
Now you know why planes crash, as well as the fact that it happens quite rarely. So, fly to your health.
It's all the fault of old planes
The release date of the aircraft becomes the subject of close attention of both the common man and the authorities after each accident. Most often, the age of the airliner is estimated at several decades, and this gives rise to a seemingly obvious conclusion: “They lifted a wreck into the sky - and it fell apart.” The logic is clear: sales managers bring junk from Arizona dumps, drive them along routes in the tail and mane until they collapse. The authorities, in turn, receive a basis for fighting old aircraft, most often of one particular brand or another. So, after the accident in Petrozavodsk on September 19 of this year, Dmitry Medvedev raised the question of removing all Tu-134 aircraft from flights, and after the Yaroslavl tragedy, he doubted the flight fate of all Yak-42s.
How widespread is the myth?
Extremely.
What really
Fedor Borisov, senior advisor at EPPA Russia:
The first reaction after any aircraft accident is usually very painful and sharp, but, as a rule, it has nothing to do with the nature of the event. Remember the old army expression: now I’ll deal with it properly and punish whoever I can? So, after a plane crash, everything is usually the other way around - they punish just anyone, and only then sort it out. And this is very bad, because it takes us away from looking for the real problem.
The first false trail that people usually follow is precisely old planes. It is false because there are no old planes. There is no such definition in nature. For example, I recently flew in Holland on an airplane designed in 1931 and produced in 1943. Yes, of course, it was repaired many times, a lot of things were changed inside, but I flew it wonderfully, and it is not old. An airplane manufactured both 50 and 70 years ago is safe in itself if it meets flight safety requirements. If all your components are certified, if you monitor its condition, then the problem of an old aircraft is not safety, but solely its economic efficiency: how profitable it is for the airline to operate it.
Vasily Savinov, partner of Strategic Aviation Solutions Int. (SASI):
I would give the following example for the common man. On our street there are a lot of three-year-old cars imported from abroad. And if you look at the absolute statistics, the number of accidents in Russia is strikingly higher than in the same Western Europe. But this is not because our cars are three years old, and they have new ones - they drove them and gave them to us so that we could crash in them. It depends more on the driving culture and the condition of the roads.
The situation is similar in aviation. If an imported aircraft is 10, 15, 20 years old, this is not an indication that it is in poor condition. A simple example. China buys exclusively new aircraft. After five years, they begin to get rid of these cars, but no one takes them. Because after five years of operation by the Chinese, a new car can become in such a state that it is unprofitable to continue operating it: you will spend more on repairs than you earn. At the same time, we are now taking a car from 1985 for our project in one of the CIS countries. It is in excellent condition, because it was operated by TNT, and for them, one minute of delay in departure is already considered late, for which they are sorted out. Accordingly, one can imagine the condition of this machine - it works better than a Kalashnikov assault rifle. That's the difference between a 5 year old car and a 25 year old car. Everything depends only on the hands that supported her.
Alexey, pilot of one of the leading Russian airlines:
From the pilot's point of view, there is absolutely no difference how old the plane is - a year, ten, twenty. In any case, the pilot himself makes the final decision whether to fly or not. Because he, just like the passengers, wants to return home to his wife and children and under no circumstances will he fly with some serious malfunction.
There is, let’s say, a list of faults officially approved by the manufacturer that can cause a crash. But if the commander does not feel confident that he will fly with this malfunction, he will not fly. For example, autopilot. Imagine: you are driving a car and your cruise control has failed. This is problem? In general, no. But from the pilot’s point of view, if the flight is long, far, and manual piloting is an additional burden on the crew, the commander may simply refuse.
Yes, such malfunctions occur more often in older aircraft, but the decision always remains with the pilot.
Conclusion
Fedor Borisov:
We must proceed from the fact that planes are divided not into Western and non-Western, good and bad, old and new, but into those ready to fly and those not ready. Everything else is a matter of airline economics alone.
Correspondence of myth to reality
Does not match.
Myth 2
It's all the fault of bad pilots
Investigations into almost every air accident find human factors among the causes. At best, this is crew fatigue from the workload, at worst, alcohol, as was the case in the plane crash in Perm in September 2008. Passengers' trust in the person at the helm has been declining lately. Well-known arguments: the pilot training system is bad, new good pilots are not being trained, and the old good ones are all leaving for foreign companies, while the worst remain on regional airlines.
How widespread is the myth?
What really
Competition and desire to learn
Pavel, pilot instructor:
Only a Russian citizen can be a member of the flight crew of a Russian airline. This situation has remained since the times of the USSR, and the Russian pilots’ union lobbied for its preservation at one time. But there are more and more planes in the country, but they don’t have time to train pilots. There was a time, about ten years ago, when people simply did not go into aviation, and at the same time trained pilots went, say, into business. There are a lot of them. Now there are enough young people, but they also come out very green, nothing, they need to be taught a lot.
And many college graduates come to airlines without the desire for self-training. At the same time, the salaries are huge, disproportionately large. Even a young pilot now gets a lot, and at the same time he does not have to fight for his place. The shortage of personnel is such that in any case, if they are kicked out of one company, they will take them to another.
On the one hand, this is good, because it is pointless to put pressure on a pilot so that he takes off with some kind of malfunction, because you won’t scare him by firing him - how can you fire a person if you have a list of “required” hanging, and there are pilots, pilots, pilots. And you will fire the person you are running around looking for?
On the other hand, this state of affairs relaxes pilots. If Russian airlines allowed to recruit foreign pilots, as is done in many countries of the world, this would immediately eliminate many problems, including safety ones. In addition, it would be easier to master the new generation of aircraft.
The level of education
Pavel, pilot instructor:
Training must be adequate and up-to-date. Well, why does a person graduating from college need to know the power engineering of the Tu-154 B2, of which there are only a few left? Why learn these numbers by heart if he is going to a Boeing 747?
There are people over sixty in the institutes. And not because they are such good teachers, but because they have nowhere to go. But there are no young teachers.
There are a lot of "masters" old school"and among pilots. If you look closely, you can see that some of our major airlines Boeings take off like Tupolev, slowly and slowly. Because there is a commander sitting there who says: “It was like this on the Tu-154, so here we will take off the same way, and that’s all.” Because he’s over fifty, why does he need to keep up with books and technology? And the young co-pilot sits on the right and will not contradict him. Our people don't know how to listen. If you politely said to someone: “I would pay attention to this problem,” they will look at you and say: “So, what kind of young upstart is this?
Sit and be silent."
If you start teaching such a “master” something new, he will send you, because, well, he is a master. People react negatively to the message that someone might know something better than them. Although this is the norm. And a true master is able to perceive new things. We have not developed this culture.
About alcohol
Vasily Savinov:
Let us remember the disaster in Perm. As stated in the IAC conclusion, the aircraft commander was “not in the mood to fly,” and the qualifications of the co-pilot did not allow him to pilot the aircraft. As a result, when the commander, being “not in the mood to fly,” tried to take control of the aircraft, he simply turned it over, put it into a dive and stuck it in the ground.
But I can say that now this is a relative rarity. Compared to Soviet times drunkenness at the helm has clearly subsided. Because in Soviet years alcohol controls on board were significantly less.
In addition, alcohol is perhaps the only thing that can get you kicked out of work today. At least in a responsible company, alcohol is the exit door. And the market is tight. Everyone knows everyone. Therefore, as soon as a person with such a diagnosis flies out of the company, it’s like a wolf’s ticket for life.
About maybe
Fedor Borisov:
Almost every disaster that occurred in Russia in last years, is a human factor, and almost every one is where it was said mentally or out loud “maybe we’ll slip through.”
But this is not a problem for aviation, but for the country as a whole, which lives by the principle “I want the law to be respected, but I’m always ready to make an exception for myself.” It’s the same with some pilots: I have a rule, I know it’s dangerous, but I’ll still fly. Not because I have a bad manager standing over me who will deprive me of something, but simply because I need to return home because my wife is at home. And I’m a master, and since I’m a master, it means I can cope with this task, because I’ve already taken off ten times in such a situation, and everything is fine. And the eleventh time, a small additional factor was added that no one expected - and that’s all.
This maybe sits in a person’s head, and you won’t do anything about it until his co-pilot says to this person: “Sorry, father-commander, I’m now going to the authorities and reporting that I won’t fly with you.” , because you want to kill me and you want to kill these wonderful people behind our backs. And what you are doing is unacceptable.” And when he is not afraid to hear in response “Oh, you young informer,” when he is not the only one, but when there are two, ten, fifty of them, then it will become a system.
Although positive change began, and it happened, in my opinion, when the airlines that either fly to the West or enter into global alliances simply realized that changing this culture suited their goals. The same Aeroflot began to move in this direction not yesterday, but when it was on its way to joining SkyTeam as planned.
Conclusion
Vasily Savinov:
Seventy to eight percent of the causes of disasters are, in one way or another, the human factor. People who relied on chance. It is this, and not old aircraft and individual spare parts, that is the main and main reason that needs to be eliminated.
Moreover, the human factor is not necessarily the crew. It's a long chain. For example, the same blatant case with Perm. The commander was, to put it mildly, out of shape. But, besides this, there were violations in the training of pilots: after training, they flew their old planes for some time, and did not immediately switch to new ones. And they lost their new flying skill. That is, people were not very ready to fly on this plane. Secondly, the plane was released with defects that, in principle, were unflyable: it had different engine thrust. This all together is the human factor, and not just “captain”
got drunk and killed everyone.”
Correspondence of myth to reality
Compliant to a large extent.
Myth 3
Blame old airports
Infrastructure problems are remembered when accidents occur at provincial airports. Experts agree: only Moscow airports are technically equipped at the current level, plus more
three or four across the country. When, for example, a plane crashed in Petrozavodsk, it turned out that local airport there is no modern landing system. In turn, most older Soviet and Russian aircraft are not equipped with modern ground proximity warning systems. At the same time, poor runways do not allow new aircraft to be received.
How widespread is the myth?
What really
Vasily Savinov:
Poor runways are largely a problem for airlines, which are forced to invest more in landing gear repairs and change tires more often. But this does not cause disasters. The airline simply makes a decision: we fly to this airport, but we don’t fly to this one. For example, Aeroflot does not fly to Norilsk. Although, believe me, this flight is very cost-effective. But at some point the airline decided not to fly: the landing gear would be more expensive. There is a bad strip there, it is known for being very humpbacked and broken. The airport does nothing about it, and the carriers vote with their feet. So they voted.
Lighting and navigation equipment are also not the most important thing. I can give you an example. I was one of the top managers of Karaganda airport for about a year and a half. This is a category "B" airport. There are much better equipped airports in Kazakhstan - Almaty, Astana. There is equipment and radars - everything is there. But weather it's always worse there. Therefore, when the weather is bad, all superclass planes go to land in Karaganda, where the equipment is worse, but the weather conditions are better.
Conclusion
Alexey, pilot:
This issue needs to be looked at comprehensively. Of course, it’s good to have good infrastructure, it’s good to have a third lane. But this does not affect flight safety.
Correspondence of myth to reality
Does not match.
Myth 4
Levitin is to blame for everything
The question of Igor Levitin's resignation from the post of Minister of Transport is raised after every plane crash. As well as the question of the competence of all officials managing aviation - they were not built, they were overlooked, they were not controlled. Since civil aviation does not exist in a vacuum, and everything in our country is riddled with corruption, it also explains why our planes crash: because someone paid and supplied the wrong part. And how can we now determine how much of a plane crash is personal responsibility and how much is collective?
How widespread is the myth?
What really
Vasily Savinov:
The current state of aviation is not a one-man problem. If you change the chief traffic cop in Moscow, will the cars stop beating? Of course not. Maybe something will change, maybe somewhere out there, in a separate place, they will become a little better roads. But in general the situation will not change radically. Now the same Levitin in the Ministry of Transport does not have a team, there is no concept that would show what it should be Russian aviation in five years, in ten years, that is, a clear understanding of where we are going, what we need to change.
Yes, there are plans to build up the country with new runways. But this is not a concept. This is a story about how regional budgets receive a lot of money and then use it. But this has nothing to do with security.
Fedor Borisov:
Security consists of three components. The first is regulations, which regulate safety. And in principle, in Russia the regulatory documents are normal. Something can probably be corrected, but they do not contain anything that would program the murder of its own citizens.
The second is effective control. That is, this is the same official who will come and check the execution of this document. And here we have some difficulty with this. Because there is a basic law: people commit violations when they are allowed to commit violations. For example, when it was said that small companies should leave the market because they are unsafe, in fact the state signed off on its failure as a market regulator. Because it raises its hands and says: “Guys, we can’t control it, because apparently there is corruption there, and that’s why they are breaking the law.” But it's a little funny. Because guys, you regulate this market yourself. And now you say, "We'll shut them down because we can't handle regulation." Or, translated into Russian: “We take bribes, and therefore we will close them, because, sorry, we cannot not take bribes.”
And third is the airline management culture. We are making progress with this, but the Federal Air Transport Agency and the Ministry of Transport have nothing to do with this at all. Progress is achieved at the expense of large companies, and they were led to this by global alliances, which they need to join in order to win in world markets.
Vasily Savinov:
In addition to flight safety, aviation authorities have another important task - to help their country's airlines develop the market and help people develop their business. But they can't do it. Because in their understanding, business is kickbacks. Let’s say you allowed airline “A” to fly to Antalya, but airline “B” did not allow it, and grateful airline “A” told you Thanks a lot. This is what they can do remarkably well. But what can be done to make Russian airlines feel good, so that they can develop, so that they can compete on equal terms with foreign carriers and expand their market share - this is something few of the aviation authorities know. But this should be part of national policy.
Conclusion
Fedor Borisov:
Planes are not crashing because of Levitin. It is just one element of the overall chain. What Levitin is guilty of as a minister is that when you fly on airplanes, you pay twice as much. If you fly around Europe, you are probably wondering: why does a ticket from Munich to Rome cost half as much as a ticket from Moscow to Krasnodar? The first thought that comes to your mind is that airlines are bastards. But a study of all the costs of airlines, the structure of the market, how it is formed, will convince you that, of course, airlines also take an active part in this system, but aviation authorities make a significant contribution. They are the ones who provide small monopolies on various aviation routes, where people scoop up all transportation for themselves and dictate prices.
WITHcorrespondence between myth and reality
Partially compliant.
Myth 5
It's all the fault of the "little bastards"
Small airlines bear the brunt of almost every accident. After Petrozavodsk and Yaroslavl, on behalf of the President, the Federal Air Transport Agency and the Ministry of Transport are preparing documents that, starting next year, will force out of the market those air carriers that do not have ten, and in another year - twenty aircraft.
How widespread is the myth?
What really
About purchasing new aircraft
Vasily Savinov:
The decision to purchase new aircraft should not be imposed from above, it should be the decision of the airline itself. You can’t force me to buy a McLaren - my Saab is enough for me, it suits my budget, my wishes and driving style. And if they tell me: “By presidential decree, you must sell everything and buy a McLaren for a million,” I say: “Guys, I’m sorry, I can’t,
I physically can’t.”
The biggest problem of most of our regional airlines (except UTair) is that they are companies of two, three or four small aircraft. It’s hard for them to even maintain these planes in proper condition. Therefore, when they are told: tomorrow you must buy a new Boeing, which costs 120 million (or even 10 million), where will they get it? No bank will give them a loan: they have nothing to put as collateral.
And even if they find the money for the plane, they need to spend half a million dollars to retrain one crew.
About regional transportation
Vasily Savinov:
It’s easy to kill small airlines, in five minutes - just revoke the certificate or not renew the certificate of airworthiness for the aircraft. Yes, from the point of view of the aviation authorities, a woman with a cart is easier for a mare. But then how will all the locals fly around the taiga?
Fedor Borisov:
There are places where there is no railway connection at all. Or, like on Lake Baikal, there are points to which a plane can fly in two hours, but the train ride takes six days. And at the same time, an airline flies there that has five An-24s in its fleet, and their total cost is 2–3 million dollars, no more. Accordingly, in order to buy one foreign car, they need to sell everything they own and something else.
Therefore, if we ban the An-24 and Yak-42, this will have the most unpleasant consequences. In reality, this will be the collapse of the regional game. Because there is no one to replace them. Large companies, firstly, they will not come to these routes because they do not have enough planes and pilots even for profitable flights - why would they divert resources to almost planned unprofitable ones? The same Aeroflot will do this only in one case - if they call it from the place where other planes have been banned and say: they need to plug the hole.
But what does it mean to “plug a hole”? Regional transportation will likely have to be subsidized. So, you have to get it from somewhere great amount money. And we seem to be facing a new crisis, we are talking about the need to cut the budget in all areas. But they will still get the money, because people in villages or towns will crawl out into the square with posters and say: we have been cut off from the mainland.
Then they will call Savelyev (head of Aeroflot - RR) and ask: “Can you do it?” And here is the second stage. They will find money for him to subsidize, and he will say: “But I don’t have planes that can fly there. I have a Superjet, but it won’t land there, because only the An-24 turboprop can land there.” Where can we get the An-24? And nowhere - everything is mothballed, and the airlines are disbanded.
In addition to the subsidy option, there is the option of launching a monopolist and giving him the opportunity to set prices himself. I’ll explain what will happen with an example. Murmansk and Apatity are two neighboring airports. Four airlines fly to Murmansk - I don’t know how it is now, but last year was the most cheap ticket one way cost 3 thousand rubles. Moscow - Apatity - one carrier, Nordavia. And the ticket there is 20 thousand one way. Moreover, Apatity is 100 kilometers closer to Moscow.
So if the smaller airlines go into liquidation, we will have three things. Some routes will definitely be closed. Others will be flown less frequently - not every day, but once or twice a week. Well, the third thing is, of course, the increase in tariffs. Because small regional airlines make a huge contribution to the price situation, these “live little ones” fly quite well and create competition.
Conclusion
Fedor Borisov:
Yes, of course, we are talking about the fact that large airlines have better quality of service, security control is perhaps more reliable. But the problem with the quality of service cannot be cured by amputation, just like an abscess on the leg.
So we want to integrate into the world economy, and in Moscow every second person speaks English, because the city lives by business, here you need to know English. And in the villages no one speaks English, because there is a problem with teachers. So let's cut out all of them there and remove this problem - they will have a good reason not to speak English. The second solution is to send teachers there. My point is that we need to educate these small regional airlines. Yes, it is difficult, just as it is difficult to take a village boy and make him a university graduate. This is more difficult than taking a Muscovite who studied in a special school, but it still needs to be done.
Correspondence of myth to reality
Does not match.
IN last days news feeds are literally full of news about tragic incidents in the American army. Of course, emergencies have happened to the Stars and Stripes before, and like everywhere else, they happen regularly. But so much at once!
A U.S. Navy aerobatics pilot was killed in an F-18 crash in Tennessee. On the same day, an F-16 of the Thunderbirds aerobatic team crashed in Colorado: the pilot survived, having ejected in time.
At the same time, information arrived that three servicemen were killed and six more were missing in the area of the Owl Creek training ground in Texas. The incident occurred when an army truck fell into the river.
The American military is also unlucky outside the country. Thus, in Estonia, where large-scale Baltops exercises started the day before, even before the start of the maneuvers, the first emergency occurred: one of the three American B-52s did not reach Tallinn due to a breakdown. Fortunately, there were no casualties here.
Colossus with feet of clay
The US Army positions itself as the strongest, most powerful and invincible. According to the Global Firepower Index portal, which regularly analyzes the state of military power of 126 countries, the United States actually ranks first in the ranking of the most militarily powerful states (Russia is in second place, China is in third place) . GFI experts, as a rule, evaluate the state of the armed forces in accordance with the total population, the economic state of states, and also compare specific indicators of the technical equipment of the army and navy.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time that signals have appeared indicating that these rating studies do not correspond to real situations. The “colossus” of the American army is increasingly showing its “feet of clay.” Thus, at recent hearings in Congress, the alarming situation in military aviation and concern was expressed about the increasing number of aircraft accidents.
The head of the Armed Services Committee, Congressman Mark Thornbury, was straightforward: in his opinion, the troops are not ready to fully implement the US military strategy. In 2016 alone, Marine Corps aviation recorded 3.96 accidents for every 100,000 flight hours, down from an average of 2.15 over the past decade. The number of various incidents in ground forces aviation has also increased significantly.
Moreover, these incidents were not always associated only with pilot errors. The American military notes that in a number of cases problems arose due to poor training of equipment, insufficient level of maintenance, lack of repairs and upgrades to the required extent. And this is in aviation, but what can we say about the ground forces!
Brent Scowcroft Center for International Security researcher James Hasick pointed out in a recent article for the National Interest that due to a lack of funds, the US Army has no realistic plan to replace Abrams tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Paladin self-propelled guns before 2030. The analyst quoted in his publication the words of General David Bassett, who is responsible for the procurement of ground weapons for the army: “many years ago we were limited by technology, today we are limited by lack of money.”
Money down the drain
Generals are generally not particularly diplomatic, are not experienced in the subtleties of politics, and tend to “cut from the shoulder.” Thus, speaking recently before a House of Representatives committee as part of the discussion of the new defense budget for 2017, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, frankly stated: in the coming years, they will not be able to withstand the threats that the country may have to deal with. all types of armed forces.
He explained the problems with combat readiness (and the general had them in mind) due to years of “unstable financial conditions.” In particular, according to Dunford, the Navy and Marines will not be ready to operate at the required level until 2020, the Air Force until 2028.
However, analysts are convinced: the state of combat readiness, and especially training, is not always personnel, are associated only with the “infusion” of money, which American military leaders traditionally demand. The US defense budget already exceeds that of other continents, reaching exorbitant amounts.
At the same time, as The Economist magazine notes, countries such as Russia and China, if not superior to the United States in defense investments, are certainly superior in terms of the efficiency of these expenditures. In the Russian and Chinese armies, the magazine draws attention, various weapons are being improved, and a special emphasis is placed on personnel training.
And yet, the US military never tires of repeating: the problems in their army are caused precisely by budget cuts. Thus, retired Major General Robert Scales recently said that the US Army has been “broken” for the third time since the mid-20th century. According to the general, cuts in military spending led to a sharp decline in field exercises and untimely renewal military equipment, reducing combat effectiveness. All this has a detrimental effect on the morale of military personnel, in connection with which Robert Scales called the leadership in Washington “ungrateful, ahistorical and strategically deaf.”
An army of suicides and rapists?
Indeed, there are many facts that indicate the other side of the problems in the state of the American army. It's about about poor training of personnel, an extremely low level of moral readiness, indiscipline, and the dominance of crime.
In recent years alone, shooting incidents have been recorded at the Lackland Air Force Base in Texas (two servicemen were killed here), at the Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas (two wounded), at the Fort Lee base in Virginia (killed female soldier).
Three soldiers were killed and two were wounded as a result of a shootout with each other at the Fort Hood base in Texas (the shooter committed suicide). Two National Guardsmen were wounded as a result of the “battle” at the Millington base in Tennessee. The fire even opened in the US Navy complex in Washington, where an employee dismissed from service for inappropriate behavior killed 12 people and injured 8 people. The attacker himself was later shot dead by the police.
Human rights activists from Human Rights Watch recently presented a shocking report revealing another secret side of the life of American military personnel, which affects the morale of the army. It turns out that recently thousands of military personnel have been subjected to sexual abuse.
Human Rights Watch employees in their report emphasized that the Pentagon is aware of the problem of violence, and US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter even calls on his subordinates to “bravely report all such incidents that undermine the foundations of the American army.” However, as human rights activists note, those who dared to report such incidents to the command were hastily fired under various pretexts.
Is it possible to embrace the immensity?
However, American leader Barack Obama considers all talk about the decline of the country and the weakness of its armed forces to be “political chatter.” This is how he characterized the current rhetoric that “our enemies are getting stronger, and America is getting weaker.” According to the head of the United States, such statements are “the work of Republicans aspiring to the presidency, who say that the United States is losing its position in the world, while its opponents are strengthening.”
In his last State of the Union address to the US Congress, Obama once again stated, “The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth.” As for the state of the country’s army, then, according to the American leader, “the United States spends more on its armed forces than the next eight powers combined.” “No country attacks us or our allies because it knows it will be destroyed,” Barack Obama emphasized in his message.
But be that as it may, the opinion of experts about the situation with the country’s military power is far from being so enthusiastic. Many of them are inclined to give a predominantly negative assessment of Obama's activities as commander-in-chief. In particular, according to James Carafano, a leading expert at the Heritage Foundation research center (a strategic institute that studies international politics), in recent years the United States has not only experienced a decline in the number of personnel in the armed forces, but also a decline in combat effectiveness compared to what was present in as of September 11, 2001.
According to an expert who cites the index of US military power calculated by the Heritage Foundation, the ability of the US army to dominate at least two fronts of combat operations is currently assessed as “extremely weak.”
It is the insufficient attention of the country's leadership to the issues of real development of the army, improving its technical component and - especially - increasing the level of training of personnel, as analysts believe, that ultimately leads to a sharp jump in the number of accidents and incidents.
According to experts, including the already mentioned James Carafano and retired General Robert Scales, the situation is also affected by the large-scale involvement of the US military in events outside the country, including constant participation in hostilities. Attempts to “embrace the immensity” lead to the fact that the soap bubble called the “US Army” is increasingly bursting with deafening force, leading to unnecessary casualties and losses...
Dmitry Sergeev
I recently attended a friend's birthday party. In the midst of the fun, the birthday girl took plane tickets out of her purse and proudly announced that her husband had given her a ticket to United Arab Emirates. Congratulations poured in. Then one of the men asked: “Aren’t you flying to Dubai?” - "And what?" - “Do you know that our pilots there are so stupid from the heat that they forget to lower the landing gear?” The birthday girl turned pale and fell silent. Meanwhile, the guests began to remember the New York shopping mall and the recent well-aimed shot by Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunners. In general, the plane flew to the Emirates without my friends. “It’s not about terrorists,” the birthday girl’s husband later explained to me. “I just figured it out - there’s been so many of them lately!”People and hardware
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“Airplanes have been flying for about a hundred years,” says Vsevolod Ovcharov, deputy head of the MAK department and chief specialist in “human factors”, Doctor of Technical Sciences, test pilot 1st class. “During all this time, aviation technology has been constantly improved and updated, including including in Russia. It’s safe to say that we fly in fairly modern, reliable, fast and comfortable machines, but we took up the problems of the person who sits at the helm forty years later.”
Of course, a lot has been done in 60 years, but even today science cannot boast that the professional, psychological and physiological capabilities of a pilot have been sufficiently studied. The fact is that a pilot, unlike, for example, a taxi driver, does not just control a moving vehicle, but is the operator of a high-tech multi-component system. In addition to the pilot himself and the most difficult modern aircraft equipped with an automatic piloting device, it includes a co-pilot, a navigator, a flight engineer, ground technicians, dispatchers, hydrometeorologists, and radio operators. External factors can also lead to the failure of this system - unexpectedly difficult weather conditions, terrorists, unscrupulous managers who forced the pilot to take extra cargo. As the past year has shown, a civilian aircraft is not immune even from missile fire, but the main cause of accidents, according to experts, is still not external influences, but problems arising within the system itself.
People and people
Often an accident occurs due to a violation of the interaction between the commander and the crew. It is clear that pilots rarely conflict with flight attendants. Therefore, when speaking “commander-crew,” experts, first of all, mean the relationship between the first and second pilots. After all, they actually control the plane together: their two steering wheels are mechanically connected to each other, like the pedals for the trainee and instructor, which are equipped in training cars. And the engine control levers are most often shared between two people: they are located between the pilot’s seats. Therefore, the safety of passengers ultimately depends on how harmoniously this or that couple behaves in a critical situation. The same applies to the “pilot-navigator” and “pilot-flight engineer” pairs.
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Aviation psychologists can make a forecast about the psychological compatibility of pilots. But the trouble is that the system of special psychological tests, developed even before the time of the first space flights and today quite advanced, has still not been able to be introduced into civil aviation. This is opposed, first of all, by the pilots themselves and their leaders (“How can I, a pilot with twenty years of experience, answer the stupid questions of a twenty-year-old idiot psychologist!”). Meanwhile, it is not so rare for pilots who have passed a psychological examination with low results to become involved in aircraft accidents. A timely conclusion about the personal incompatibility of pilots would help to “seat” one or another pair of pilots and prevent trouble.
Here is a typical story. At the end of the 80s, the civilian An-12 took off from the runway of the Sverdlovsk airport. The commander, as expected, began to release the gas after takeoff. It turned out that the right engines did not obey and continued to operate in takeoff mode - the control system had failed. The commander, having discussed the problem with the crew, decided to turn off the right engines altogether and return to the airport: the An-12 could land on the two remaining engines. The co-pilot did not take part in the discussion, and already during landing, without informing the commander, he decided to take the car for a second circle: he added thrust to the running engines. As a result, the plane, which at that time was a few centimeters from the ground, could neither rise nor land - it fell onto the runway. Everyone survived, but the liner burned down. Aviation psychologists from the Academy civil aviation We found out that in this crew the second pilot, being an informal leader, demonstratively did not monitor the controls when the first was at the helm, considering it beneath his dignity.
Psychological incompatibility between the pilot and the flight mechanic was the cause of the accident of the Mi-8 helicopter in Dagestan in 1990. The first pilot, experienced but without strong leadership qualities, wanted to land at a site in the mountains. The attempt was unsuccessful: the helicopter slid along the wet grass into the gorge. It was possible to make a second approach - only precise actions were required. But, when the pilot was about to start the turn, the flight mechanic, inclined to lead, suddenly shouted to the pilot: “Turn around faster, ... your mother!” The pilot hesitated, missed a few seconds and lost the opportunity to turn: the gorge narrowed. The helicopter crashed. People escaped with bruises, but since then this flight mechanic and commander were categorically forbidden to fly together.
An example of another kind of incompatibility can be considered the crash of the Russian An-124-100 supertruck that occurred at Turin airport in 1996. During the landing approach, the airliner was controlled by two pilots of the highest qualifications, but with different flying specialties. The ship's commander had extensive experience in flying heavy aircraft, and his partner, a former cosmonaut, had flown supersonic fighters all his life. The commander entrusted him with planting the “heavyweight”. The landing proceeded normally, but at the very last moment it seemed to the commander that they did not fit the length of the runway and that they should switch to takeoff mode and make a go-around. While he was trying to convince the co-pilot of this, there was a time crunch. As a result, the plane, having lost speed, landed not on the runway, but on a village located behind the airfield. Four, including the crew commander, were killed. As the results of the examinations showed, any of the pilots’ decisions in this situation would have been correct: they could have landed safely, or they could have risen unhindered. If only they didn't interfere with each other.
People and devices
MAK experts consider failures along the “man-machine” line to be the second group of problems. Even the most modern device can bring harm rather than benefit if its developers did not take into account the peculiarities of human perception. The most striking example of an unsuccessful design, according to MAK, is a device that shows the pilot the position of the aircraft relative to the horizon (the pilot most does not see time).
There are two fundamentally different types attitude indicators - the American one, invented in 1929, and the Soviet one, created thirty years later. On our planes, naturally, the “native” one was initially installed. Its difference from the American one is that the pilot sees in front of him on the instrument always a motionless horizontal line of the earth's surface and the silhouette of an airplane swinging above it: the car has gone into a left bank - and the silhouette on the attitude indicator rolls to the left. The plane fell to the right - the same thing happens with its silhouette. “Soviet” attitude indicators were used in our country until the American Collins fell into the hands of a high aviation official in the mid-70s. It is designed differently - the fixed element on the screen is the silhouette of the aircraft, and the moving element is the surface of the earth (see figure). Collins was very beautiful and the official liked it - the American attitude indicator was set in motion. Since then, it was a model similar to the Collins that began to be equipped with Soviet, and then “Esengesh” civil aircraft, although this device is extremely inconvenient. If at small roll angles the pilot easily navigates using any of the instruments, then in a situation where the roll is high, the pilot quickly navigates using the Soviet attitude indicator.
A classic example of Collins’ “cunning” is a plane crash that occurred in December 1995 in the Khabarovsk Territory. Shortly before landing, the airliner began to list to the left side and, in order to balance it, the flight engineer began to perform a procedure sometimes used in such cases - pumping fuel from the tank located in the left wing to the right. Before starting the descent for the approach, the flight engineer was distracted by the standard procedures in such cases. As a result, he and the pilot forgot that fuel was still being pumped. They only realized it when the airliner, unbalanced by overfilled fuel, was already in a deep right bank. “The plane could still be pulled out of the roll,” they say at MAK, “but the commander, who had never seen such a “picture” on the attitude indicator in his life, did not understand the instrument and turned the steering wheel further to the right. As a result, the plane entered a deep spiral, from which he was never destined to come out." Eight crew members and 90 passengers of the liner were killed.
A similar situation arose in Irkutsk on July 3, 2001 with a Tu-154M aircraft of Vladivostokavia airlines, on board which were nine crew members and 136 passengers. The plane was performing its third turn and was in a left bank. The situation was complicated by the fact that at a speed less than recommended, the high angle of attack alarm went off, which occupied the pilots’ attention for some time. When the commander finally paid attention to the instruments, it seemed to him that the car, on the contrary, was tilting to the right. The problem of psychological compatibility also played a role here: the co-pilot, as follows from the printout of the conversations of the deceased crew, understood that he needed to “move out” to the right, but did not show persistence.
The western attitude indicator bears its share of the blame for famous disaster near Mezhdurechensk, which occurred in March 1994. It is believed that the passenger Airbus A310 was then destroyed by a teenager, whom his father, the commander of the ship, “gave to steer.” In fact, when 13-year-old Eldar took the helm of the airliner running under autopilot, nothing catastrophic actually happened. The situation did not become critical even after the boy, having “overpowered” the autopilot, switched the car to manual control. The danger began to increase along with the roll to the right, into which the plane gradually went. And here we should think not about the boy, but about why the three pilots in the cockpit noticed what was happening only when the right bank was 95° and the second pilot from the cockpit saw the ground. To the commander, the right bank seemed to be to the left, and he sharply turned the helm to the right. Only a test pilot could have brought it out of the flat spin into which the plane fell.
People and professionals
According to experts, in almost all of the situations described above, a professional test pilot could have avoided the disaster. “Even on a heavy civil aircraft you can get out of both a spiral and a flat spin,” says Honored Test Pilot of the USSR Viktor Aleksandrov. “But this needs to be specially studied. A private driver has been driving his Zhiguli car around the world every day for thirty years.” on the same road from home to the dacha. Yes, the mileage has exceeded a million. But if you ask this driver to take a snowy turn at a speed of 80 km/h, what result will he show? The same goes for pilots: maybe even ten? “sleep” for thousands of hours under autopilot, this will not add professionalism.”
MAK experts also agree with Viktor Alexandrov on some points. “Test pilots are the flying elite,” says Ovcharov. “But they also “cost” accordingly. They joke that a 1st class test pilot costs as much as his life-size statue, cast from pure gold, costs. Periodic training of civilians In practice, pilots are reduced to training in simulators with a very small number of training flights. Of course, they are offered a certain set of so-called special situations or flights in “extreme” modes (and even then only during retraining). new type), but the simulator is always poorer than reality - everything that can be encountered in real life cannot be taken into account on it."
As a result, pilots are forced to educate themselves. For example, in the late 70s, a passenger Tu-134 came in to land at Samara airport. The weather was simply ideal, and the pilot decided to practice an instrument approach, for which he closed the cockpit windows with special curtains. About a kilometer from the runway we had to open the curtains, but they were stuck. The pilot, instead of landing, began fiddling with the jammed mechanism. The airliner landed at too high a speed, overturned, and several passengers died.
International flights require special skills. For example, just three months ago, an Aeroflot Il-86 landed on its belly at Dubai Airport (UAE). The pilots were let down by the difference in landing patterns adopted at Russian and foreign airports. Our plane first extends the landing gear, and then the flaps, but with them it’s the other way around. Accordingly, when our planes land abroad, the pilots are constantly disturbed by a blaring siren, which the pilots rudely call “bitch.” It signals that the flaps have already been set to the landing position, but the landing gear has not yet been extended. When landing in Dubai, the pilots turned off the siren in advance, which is strictly prohibited by the instructions, but is done all the time. But that wasn’t even fatal. While the second pilot was landing the car, the first, instead of controlling the actions of the crew, was teaching his partner how to land at foreign airports. As a result, the flight mechanic asked himself the mandatory questions before landing and answered them himself. “Airport frequency? Such and such, set. Airfield pressure? Such and such, set... Landing gear? Released,” he said, forgetting to actually perform the operation. There were no casualties, but the damage caused by the airfield downtime - the crashed Il-86 was removed from the runway for many hours - amounted (according to MAK estimates) to about $10 million.
People and money
Finally, when trying to understand what is happening to the pilots, there is no need to discount the social aspects - our aviation is not rich.
For example, about a year ago, during a training flight near Anadyr, the flight mechanic of the Mi-8, instead of one engine, as stipulated by the assignment, turned off both at once. The pilots, fortunately, were able to land the helicopter softly enough, so the damage was limited to a broken landing gear. When they began to deal with the flight mechanic, it turned out that he had been living in a hostel for many years, his family was hundreds of kilometers away.
This also includes overload, haste—in general, various attempts to save money. Of course, the management of a large, well-known airline will not force the pilot to take extra or even worse cargo, but in remote areas of the country, where the main carriers are small private airlines with only two or three airplanes or helicopters, this is common everywhere.
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| Flight recorder of a crashed plane. In fact, this is not a “black box” at all, but rather an “orange box”. There are two of them on an airplane: speech and parametric. The first one records conversations between pilots. The second one automatically reads and saves technical flight parameters. The “boxes” in which the devices are packaged are not afraid of water and can withstand the impact of a fall from a great height. Only a very strong fire can destroy flight recorders. The device shown in the photo was also caught in the fire. How high the temperature was is evidenced by the molten aluminum stuck to its wall. But the film removed from this “box” turned out to be of quite acceptable quality |
Helicopter pilots have such a concept as “clinging to the ground,” that is, flying as low as possible. The fact is that at low altitude the pilot can control the flight visually without using the services of dispatchers, and therefore his company will not have to pay an air navigation fee for control air traffic. The amount saved is quite significant - about 20% of the total cost of the flight, but the risk of getting into an accident is several times higher.
Similar reasons led to the Yak-40 crash at Sheremetyevo-1, in which the head of the Top Secret holding Artem Borovik, the head of the Alliance group Ziya Bazhaev and seven other people died. The point is not only that, in order to save money, the plane was not treated with anti-icing fluid. VIP passengers boarded the plane literally two minutes before the estimated departure time, and the pilots had to hurry so as not to fall behind schedule. Taking off in a hurry, they made a number of mistakes that became fatal: they calculated the take-off parameters for a car weighing two tons less than the actual one, they tore the front landing gear off the ground too early, deflected the flaps by 11° instead of the required 20°, took the helm too sharply yourself, bringing the aircraft to supercritical angles of attack.
The ways to solve all these problems are, in general, obvious. The training system for flight personnel needs to be improved, the training base expanded, the professional and psychological selection of pilots needs to be tightened, the results of accident investigations must be listened to, etc., etc. IAC experts conscientiously recommend all this every year. And the planes are fighting.
SERGEY DUPIN
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04.06.2016, 09:42
In recent days, news feeds are literally full of news about tragic incidents in the American army. Of course, emergencies have happened to the Stars and Stripes before, and like everywhere else, they happen regularly. But so much at once!
A U.S. Navy aerobatics pilot was killed in an F-18 crash in Tennessee. On the same day, an F-16 of the Thunderbirds aerobatic team crashed in Colorado: the pilot survived, having ejected in time.
At the same time, information arrived that three servicemen were killed and six more were missing in the area of the Owl Creek training ground in Texas. The incident occurred when an army truck fell into the river.
The American military is also unlucky outside the country. Thus, in Estonia, where large-scale Baltops exercises started the day before, even before the start of the maneuvers, the first emergency occurred: one of the three American B-52s did not reach Tallinn due to a breakdown. Fortunately, there were no casualties here.
Colossus with feet of clay
The US Army positions itself as the strongest, most powerful and invincible. According to the Global Firepower Index portal, which regularly analyzes the state of military power of 126 countries, the United States actually ranks first in the ranking of the most militarily powerful states (Russia is in second place, China is in third place) . GFI experts, as a rule, evaluate the state of the armed forces in accordance with the total population, the economic state of states, and also compare specific indicators of the technical equipment of the army and navy.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time that signals have appeared indicating that these rating studies do not correspond to real situations. The “colossus” of the American army is increasingly showing its “feet of clay.” For example, recent congressional hearings examined the alarming situation in military aviation and expressed concern about the growing number of aviation accidents.
The head of the Armed Services Committee, Congressman Mark Thornbury, was straightforward: in his opinion, the troops are not ready to fully implement the US military strategy. In 2016 alone, Marine Corps aviation recorded 3.96 accidents for every 100,000 flight hours, down from an average of 2.15 over the past decade. The number of various incidents in ground forces aviation has also increased significantly.
Moreover, these incidents were not always associated only with pilot errors. The American military notes that in a number of cases problems arose due to poor training of equipment, insufficient level of maintenance, lack of repairs and upgrades to the required extent. And this is in aviation, but what can we say about the ground forces!
Brent Scowcroft Center for International Security researcher James Hasick pointed out in a recent article for the National Interest that due to a lack of funds, the US Army has no realistic plan to replace Abrams tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Paladin self-propelled guns before 2030. The analyst quoted in his publication the words of General David Bassett, who is responsible for the procurement of ground weapons for the army: “many years ago we were limited by technology, today we are limited by lack of money.”
Money down the drain
Generals are generally not particularly diplomatic, are not experienced in the subtleties of politics, and tend to “cut from the shoulder.” Thus, speaking recently before a House of Representatives committee as part of the discussion of the new defense budget for 2017, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, frankly stated: in the coming years, they will not be able to withstand the threats that the country may have to deal with. all types of armed forces.
He explained the problems with combat readiness (and the general had them in mind) due to years of “unstable financial conditions.” In particular, according to Dunford, the Navy and Marine Corps will not be ready to operate at the required level until 2020, and the Air Force until 2028.
However, analysts are convinced that the state of combat readiness, and especially the training of personnel, is not always associated only with the “infusion” of money, which American military leaders traditionally demand. The US defense budget already exceeds that of other continents, reaching exorbitant amounts.
At the same time, as The Economist magazine notes, countries such as Russia and China, if not superior to the United States in defense investments, are certainly superior in terms of the efficiency of these expenditures. In the Russian and Chinese armies, the magazine draws attention, various weapons are being improved, and a special emphasis is placed on personnel training.
And yet, the US military never tires of repeating: the problems in their army are caused precisely by budget cuts. Thus, retired Major General Robert Scales recently said that the US Army has been “broken” for the third time since the mid-20th century. According to the general, cuts in military spending led to a sharp decline in field exercises, untimely renewal of military equipment, and a decrease in combat effectiveness. All this has a detrimental effect on the morale of military personnel, in connection with which Robert Scales called the leadership in Washington “ungrateful, ahistorical and strategically deaf.”
An army of suicides and rapists?
Indeed, there are many facts that indicate the other side of the problems in the state of the American army. We are talking about poor training of personnel, an extremely low level of moral readiness, indiscipline, and the dominance of crime.
In recent years alone, shooting incidents have been recorded at the Lackland Air Force Base in Texas (two servicemen were killed here), at the Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas (two wounded), at the Fort Lee base in Virginia (killed female soldier).
Three soldiers were killed and two were wounded as a result of a shootout with each other at the Fort Hood base in Texas (the shooter committed suicide). Two National Guardsmen were wounded as a result of the “battle” at the Millington base in Tennessee. The fire even opened in the US Navy complex in Washington, where an employee dismissed from service for inappropriate behavior killed 12 people and injured 8 people. The attacker himself was later shot dead by the police.
Human rights activists from Human Rights Watch recently presented a shocking report revealing another secret side of the life of American military personnel, which affects the morale of the army. It turns out that recently thousands of military personnel have been subjected to sexual abuse.
Human Rights Watch employees in their report emphasized that the Pentagon is aware of the problem of violence, and US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter even calls on his subordinates to “bravely report all such incidents that undermine the foundations of the American army.” However, as human rights activists note, those who dared to report such incidents to the command were hastily fired under various pretexts.
Is it possible to embrace the immensity?
However, American leader Barack Obama considers all talk about the decline of the country and the weakness of its armed forces to be “political chatter.” This is how he characterized the current rhetoric that “our enemies are getting stronger, and America is getting weaker.” According to the head of the United States, such statements are “the work of Republicans aspiring to the presidency, who say that the United States is losing its position in the world, while its opponents are strengthening.”
In his last State of the Union address to the US Congress, Obama once again stated, “The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth.” As for the state of the country’s army, then, according to the American leader, “the United States spends more on its armed forces than the next eight powers combined.” “No country attacks us or our allies because it knows it will be destroyed,” Barack Obama emphasized in his message.
But be that as it may, the opinion of experts about the situation with the country’s military power is far from being so enthusiastic. Many of them are inclined to give a predominantly negative assessment of Obama's activities as commander-in-chief. In particular, according to James Carafano, a leading expert at the Heritage Foundation research center (a strategic institute that studies international politics), in recent years the United States has not only experienced a decline in the number of personnel in the armed forces, but also a decline in combat effectiveness compared to what was present in as of September 11, 2001.
According to an expert who cites the index of US military power calculated by the Heritage Foundation, the ability of the US army to dominate at least two fronts of combat operations is currently assessed as “extremely weak.”
It is the insufficient attention of the country's leadership to the issues of real development of the army, improving its technical component and - especially - increasing the level of training of personnel, as analysts believe, that ultimately leads to a sharp jump in the number of accidents and incidents.
According to experts, including the already mentioned James Carafano and retired General Robert Scales, the situation is also affected by the large-scale involvement of the US military in events outside the country, including constant participation in hostilities. Attempts to “embrace the immensity” lead to the fact that the soap bubble called the “US Army” is increasingly bursting with deafening force, leading to unnecessary casualties and losses...
Dmitry Sergeev
News Media2
Mediametrics.ru
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