Originally Posted by
ORAC
So let me summarise my, non-pilot, understanding of what occurred.
OK
1. The original training system did not cover tactical low level flying, or the limits of the aircraft performance envelope.
What are you talking about? Are you claiming that, in a syllabus that teaches students to fly and has ONAV as an element of flying that they don't teach that?
? Did you read the syllabus.
Did you read the NATOPS manual?
Did you read the FTI?
The NATOPS qual i nmodel covers performance limits of the aircraft. That's before you get trained and earn the qual in a given stage of training. (Instruments, deck landings, ACM, etc).
According 2nd tour pilots, including from non-tactical tours, were considered as suitable instructors.
What is a non tactical tour? Please explain your terms.
Here's a note for you: just as over 50% of the primary instructors (ab initio training, before one can get to the jet pipeline in the T-45) are fleet or FMF helicopter pilots. They teach fixed wing ab initio students.
Now, you need to understand something.
E-2C pilots have to go through the T-45 so that they can earn a deck landing qual.
You have to learn how to fly the T-45 before you get to fly the E-2C.
Do You Understand?
Any Of You?
Deal with it. That's reality. If I were to believe the foolishness in this thread, in the past 10-12 years every E-2C pilot who went to a T-45 squadron should have died in a flaming wreck on an ONAV hop. Funny old thing, though, That's Not What has Happened.
The T-2 Buckeye used to be the car qual bird for the E-2, but that stopped over a decade ago when the T-2 went away.
2. Somewhere along the line the syllabus was expanded to include elements of tactical flying.
No. Tactical flying has always been in the T-45 syllabus. (Sadly, a bit over a decade ago, Guns went away "to save money." )
No review of instructor background or experience was included and IPs without the required skill levels were appointed and neither given the required training or supervision for their duties.
Incorrect. No review of Instructor Background? Horse Apples. Where do you come up with this?
The required training is in the syllabus, but whether the
standards of training were upheld is to me a question that has been answered in the negative. Here's a clue for you: there's been more than one E-2C pilot who has instructed in a T-45. Just sayin' ... and some of them do not pursue, for example, the ACM qual. I knew a few who did, but it's been some years ... huh, they didn't end up as smoking holes either. Fancy that.
3. Perhaps due to the undefined nature of the additional tactical training required
-- ONAV has been in the T-45 syllabus for as long as I can remember ... OK, thanks, ORAC, I am now reliving the hell that is a curriculum conference. Arrrgggghhhhh
How a wing selects and qualifies its IPs to teach that will include how many IP's are there and who qualifies in that stage as an IP. If the IP can't meet standards, the qual should not be earned, or it should be pulled if standards are not maintained. Failing to adhere to the syllabus/FTI constraints appears to be a core problem, which is informed by your next point ..
4. IPs... encouraged by the ethos around them, and without adequate supervision, are now performing training both outside the syllabus and their own training, and perhaps ability, without realising the danger - and without knowing it
. Possibly true, and it would not surprise me. The report you have access to lays some serious lumber on that core point. That some IP's strayed (as in more than this particular IP) looks to have been a norm that a blind eye was turned to, rather than the boot up the arse I mentioned previously. Stuff like that is why you have (are supposed to have) Stan departments, to rid herd on that.
5. The inevitable happened.
If enough people are, during dual hops, teaching and doing things
beyond the curriculum limits, and in this glaring case beyond their own capability, the chances go up for it to end in tears.
Two questions immediately arise.
Firstly, were any flags waved by anyone in the training system prior to the accident.
Good question. If flags were raised, were they addressed and corrected? It appears not.
Secondly, was the failure caused by a fault in the training design/review system or someone overriding the system
?
What do you mean to 'someone overriding the system' ... not making sense here.
Breaking the rules, particularly at high speed and low altitude is called flat hatting. It's been forbidden for a long time. People (can) get their wings pulled for that. (I knew personally of five cases that I can remember with ease (in terms of I knew the pilot personally) in both the fleet and in the training command where flat hatting led to a loss of wings).
Was this a case not over a cocky IP killing his student, or a fatally flawed system killing both an IP for the tasks he was attempting to perform and his student?
You keep using that word
unqualified
It doesn't mean what you think it means. It's like me trying to describe neurosurgery, ya see ...
Let me spell this out for you. To get your NATOPS qual, and your instrument card, and to be assigned to fly instructional hops for VT-7 (in this case) you have to qualify in the aircraft. Secondly, to teach in each stage of training, you have to earn and maintain your qualification and currency in that stage.
That is what qualified means. What you flew in the fleet is somewhat irrelevant if you can show that you are able to teach the required maneuvers. (The VT squadrons used to be picky about who the ACM instructors were, for example. For good reason).
Let me illustrate the word qualified:
I was a qualified primary aerobatics instructor for about two years, and a standards instructor in that stage for about a year.
(I flew helicopters in the fleet, none of which were aerobatic aircraft). I was qualified to fly and teach the maneuvers that were in the syllabus. I was not qualified to do airshow flight demonstrations, eh? I was not qualified to do low level high energy maneuvers, nor to teach them.
Some fools in this thread would assert that, due to me having flown helicopters in the fleet, I was by default not qualified to teach aerobatics, which is in fact a wrong assertion.
What we were teaching to the students was nothing fancy:
loop, wingover, aeileron roll, half Cuban eight, barrel roll, simple inverted flight straight and level ... things like hammerheads and tail slides were strictly verboten. VFR, must have visual reference on the ground.
The system could not help me, for example, if I had gone out on my own and tried to do aerobatics in IFR conditions; if I had done aerobatics below the minimum 5500' ceiling, or had been teaching those maneuvers over an overcast layer, or tried to pull a lomcevok maneuver in that aircraft (it wasn't made for such things).
If this mishap IP was performing, and even worse teaching, maneuvers at altitudes and angles of attack not within the curriculum standards, the system can't help him unless it discovers that he's doing it, gets his attention, and then does one of two things:
1. Pulls the qual (temporary or permanent; in the former case ...)
2. Retrains to standards and "get his mind right."
That the command climate element, not bringing people back into the fold when they stray, was a significant contribution here seems to be a solid finding.
Oh, by the way, ONAV wasn't invented last year. It's been in the T-45 syllabus for something like 20 years. This is not to say that it never changed.
Training gets tweaked a lot. That's part of the system also.