A Tale of Two Emergencies
An interesting tidbit I picked up at a review session at a UBC’s UILO (University Industrial Liaison Office) a couple weeks ago: apparently the FAA prevented use of unmanned drones during the post-Hurricane Katrina to perform early reconnaissance of the damage. But the story doesn’t stop there…
Apparently the FAA’s been a bit sticky about use of unmanned drones in civilian airspace, citing safety concerns. When military commanders wanted to use drones to survey the damage, the FAA stopped them on the basis that the drones weren’t certified for civilian airspace. The military responded by proposing to bolt the unmanned drone’s sensor package to a helicopter. Again, the FAA denied the request, noting that bolting the package to the helicopter resulted in a new configuration that would require re-certification of the helicopter.
Sigh.
In the end, the military overcame the objections of the FAA by duct taping the sensor package to the helicopter. Apparently, this configuration would not require re-certification, as the alteration did not result in a permanent change to the aircraft.
Keep in mind that, at this point, New Orleans was a disaster zone – even if the unmanned drone fell out of the sky, it’s doubtful that it would have any worse effect on the population than what had already occurred. A perfect example of bureaucracy run amok and working against those it was designed to help and protect.
Contrast that incident with this video of the response executed by New York’s ferry operators when US 1549 dropped into the Hudson. In less than five minutes, there were not one but three New York Water Taxi ferries picking up passengers from the disabled plane’s wings. One can’t help but marvel at their responsive to the emergency (see the 5:45pm entry):
“Someone came into my office and said a plane crashed,†said Tom Fox, general manager of New York Water Taxi, “and we ran out the door.â€
Fox rode out to within several hundred yards of the plane on one of three Waterways boats that responded, but authorities indicated that additional help was not needed, apparently because most of the people had already been rescued.
It was probably not the smartest thing to do. That response probably violated a lot of the company’s rules. And yet, it was the right response.
Now, it’s probably not fair to compare the two incidents. Katrina was a slow evolving disaster with many facets hidden from plain view, whereas the US Airways crash was a clear and easily understood event. The water taxi manager’s response to the aircraft crash was likely further provoked by more recent experience with disasterous events (I’m thinking 9/11 specifically).
Yet, as I look at the multitude of global challenges we currently face, I hope that we will respond more like the guys driving the water taxis and less like the FAA.
Far be it from me to defend the FAA, which is doing more than it’s fair share of foolish things.
But I’m a pilot, I fly small planes for fun, and I sure do have safety concerns. Part of my safety in the air comes from other planes not hitting me. The main rule of the road for my kind of “Visual Flight Rules” flying is “see and avoid”. More safety comes from air conventions, like flying at certain altitudes when travelling north and east and other altitudes when travelling south and west. Air traffic control is only the third layer.
Right now, unmanned aircraft don’t have a clear way of seeing and avoiding other aircraft in the sky. And while many pilots of unmanned aircraft are trained conventional pilots, I’m reading that the US military is not hiring non-pilots to fly the UAVs. So right now, the way unmanned aircraft are kept from hitting other aircraft is by locking all other aircraft out of the sky.
I’m really nervous about unmanned aircraft flying, say, patrol along the BC-Canada border. That’s right where I routinely fly. I don’t want them up there if they can’t see me and avoid me, and if their pilots don’t follow the conventions of the sky. And I don’t want to be locked out of the airspace for their convenience.
To cite the Katrina example, there were civilian and military aircraft flying over New Orleans after Katrina. Was it worth endangering them by the use of the unmanned aircraft?
Much as I sympathise your eagerness to scorn the government bureaucracy in favour of the agile boat captain, that’s not all there is to it.
Interesting…however, in an emergency situation I would hope that the FAA could be a bit more nimble. Couldn’t they lock out specific areas of airspace (because, to your point, there are likely other emergency aircraft in play) to allow unmanned recon?
My purpose here is not to ridicule the FAA specifically, but rather to identify a major challenge: that the blindly following rules designed to protect us will only undermine our ability to respond to emergencies on a global scale. We need to be more agile, more willing to generate creative solutions, and remove the bureaucratic barriers that impede application of these solutions.
A few thoughts:
1. Thanks again Brendon for coming out to help with those UILO sessions. Your insights were very valuable. It seems like you also got some interesting riffs from the other panellists, if this post is anything to go on.
2. I agree with Brendon that the FAA should be more flexible but I also agree with Jim that I don’t trust remote viewing to be as comprehensive as a human pilot.
3. There is one FAA change on the horizon that might help with these kinds of situations a little – better utilization of GPS in air traffic control:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4219569.html
By 2025, the FAA is hoping to add flexibility to its air traffic control policies by leveraging GPS.