Military accidents
Posted by scubaorbit@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 11 comments
So since my Karma is not good enough to ask this in the comments. Does the FAA and NTSB investigate military accidents as well or is that a military exclusive? And if they do investigate, how do they go about interacting with classified technology?
Zestyclose_Duck_9359@reddit
Military accidents are investigated by the branch itself, not the FAA or NTSB. The NTSB only has jurisdiction over civil aviation, so an F-18 going down stays entirely within the DoD's own safety investigation process. It actually makes sense given the classified tech problem you mentioned, there's no clean way to hand that over to a civilian agency.
CattleDogCurmudgeon@reddit
So, what about a situation like what happened in DC involving both a civilian airliner and military helicopter?
Zestyclose_Duck_9359@reddit
That's the messy middle ground. Since a civilian aircraft was involved the NTSB takes the lead, but the military runs their own parallel investigation on the helicopter side. They share what they can with each other but you basically end up with two separate reports that don't fully overlap, which is exactly as awkward as it sounds.
T33-L@reddit
*DoW 😉
remuspilot@reddit
Buddy, I don’t think they’ll notice you.
T33-L@reddit
Buddy, I’ve done a little edit, just for you. Well, you and the 16 special kids that have a little down vote.
remuspilot@reddit
I thought jokes are meant to be funny?
Dirty_Harry44@reddit
Somebodys still mad about their tea....
remuspilot@reddit
The USAF will do an Accident Investigation Board and Safety Investigation Board.
The SIB is concerned about making sure that it never happens again and does not punish people nor does it try to find people to blame. Many of the interviews can even give safety privilege where your statements are protected and will not be used against you as long as they can be used for advancing safety.
The AIB is the commanders tool to find out who screwed up and how to move forward with it. It doesn’t necessarily try to find blame, but it will make sure that if there is malice or neglect or other similar unfavorable reasons for the accident then what are the career concerns of it to the people who caused them.
However, one should not really think that you are ruined, even if you are to blame for an accident. Generally, there might be some consequences, but your career will likely be very fine. The US Air Force is not trying to ruin people and just because you were partly to blame for it doesn’t mean that you have to pay millions of dollars or that your wings are taken from you.
If your wings would be taken from you that requires an FEB, a Flying evaluation board, that would then weigh what you did against what you could do and how your career has looked like and what are the recommendations of its members. For example, if you have otherwise a good career and you’re not the cause of accidents and you make one mistake then you likely would be OK. However, if your career has a pattern of forgetting the same thing due to lack of training or preparation and now it was the cause of an accident then that could weigh heavily against you, especially if it has happened before and caused an accident.
You would even then likely be OK eventually with some retraining.
Generally, FEB really only takes your wings if you are an absolute fuck up who never learns and doesn’t want to learn, and if you disregard every opportunity to be better. A famous example is flying a hornet over a football game and getting told to not go lower than 500 feet AGL and then purposely flying at 100 feet AGO for a cool show then that takes your wings. There’s no accident here. Just you being a fucking idiot.
scubaorbit@reddit (OP)
Thank you for that explanation.
MeadyOker@reddit
Also important to know, that the military can and has requested help from the NTSB for some investigations. Usually only for really big mishaps that are in the US. The military is looking to leverage the significant amount of experience that NTSB investigators have. This doesn't happen often, and that's mainly due to the security clearances with equipment that is on the aircraft (or the aircraft itself in general).
For the most part, investigations in the Navy/Marine Corps are run by the squadron (or group depending on the severity) with help from the Naval School of Aviation Safety. Other than that ... what u/remuspilot describes for the Air Force is exactly how it goes in the Navy/Marine Corps .. although we call the two things just an Aviation Mishap Investigation (the SIB described above) and the Command Investigation (the AIB described above).