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Comment by MSFT_Edging | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering what they could have done differently here. The report said it was a 0% moonlight night, extremely dark. No exact position from GPS, and visuals on the landing strip. That mountain peak would have likely been invisible from the pilot's seat.

What would have been the "skill issue" difference people keep mentioning? It's getting really frustrating how reckless the US military is with the skies. They keep putting people in danger. I can't help but think about the DCA crash due to the continuity of government drills.

There's no reason they should have been flying dark for a drill that night.

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This is a judgment issue more than a skill issue.

GPS NOTAM'd as unreliable on a dark, moonless night?

Fly the ILS approach (or fly a visual approach along the track of the ILS approach backing up your visual with the radio signals). That will give you terrain and obstacle clearance all along the route using locally generated navigation signals that will be entirely unaffected by GPS jamming.

https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2607/06922IL24.PDF

Per other comments the ILS approach was not available due to the local weather service being NOTAM'd as unavailable, couldn't set local altitude. The judgment call was effectively whether to take the flight at all, as there was effectively no instrument approach available and the visual conditions precluded VFR.

The ILS approach being not legally usable as an approach due to a missing local altimeter setting does not make it unusable to back up a visual approach [or VFR arrival].

I would 100% (and have) take center's altimeter setting and fly the track of an ILS or localizer rather than "whelp, nothing can be done..." This was VMC; you don't need a local altimeter setting to be safe using the radio navaids; you would need it to legally fly the approach as an ILS approach.

>I'm wondering what they could have done differently here.

It appears there were too many sources of confusion. GPS jamming, moonless night, busy ATC, not planning on VFR before takeoff, 20 minute short flight, instrument approach disabled, young pilots, mountains, and perhaps others.

Flight safety is about removing entropy and there were several steps which could have been taken, including not flying at all because of forced VFR on a moonless night near mountains.

The "skill issue" is that they chose to press on instead of returning to base. Yes, the jamming was a factor, but making a decision to fly a visual into field surrounded by mountains at night is a bad call.

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