#6: Considering how the media covers a plane (or helicopter) crash

In case you missed it, a helicopter crashed in Iran on Sunday killing 8 people including the country’s president. Some of the media coverage was less than stellar.

[This photo from WANA via Reuters shows the foggy conditions at the crash site.]

This article, from the BBC, is actually very well done. It provides information on the occupants, the helicopter, as much as could be determined about the accident (weather, contact with the other helicopters in the group, etc.) and then moves on to the political ramifications. The problem is when the media tries to get more out of an accident then what can be known in the initial hours and days. That is what happened with the Washington Post which published this article on the history of the Bell 212 helicopter. First, there’s the headline which is reaching for an obvious political angle:

They were clearly grasping for straws when they decided the 212’s accident history - going back 50 years - was relevant:

A database maintained by the Flight Safety Foundation lists about 430 Bell 212 accidents since 1972, including the Iranian president’s helicopter crash, with 162 of them — just under 40 percent — involving fatalities.

They also included this tidbit which is the sort of thing that appears in major media after almost every accident. They always want to tell us the last time an aircraft of the same make and model crashed, but they don’t tell us anything about why that might, you know, matter to the current crash.

The last fatality involving a Bell 212 occurred in September, when a helicopter on a training flight crashed off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

One of the most egregious examples of the media misfiring while covering a plane crash involved the 2019 midair in Ketchikan, Alaska. The two companies involved, Taquan Air Service and Mountain Air, were flying cruise ship passengers on flight seeing flights. For reasons I will never understand, the NY Times did not take the time to question the NTSB or FAA about the companies operating the aircraft when they published this article one day after the accident. Here is how wrong the article was:

The Taquan Air flight was a commercial flight, while the smaller plane was what is known as a “general aviation” flight, which is how the F.A.A. categorizes flights that are not on commercial airlines. Commuter and charter flights both fall into this category, which is known as “part 135.” Private planes owned by individuals belong to “part 91” and regional and major airlines belong in “part 121.” The “parts” refer to different parts of the Federal Aviation Regulations, and the categories help to determine the level of training required for pilots.

The smaller plane, was flown by Mountain Air which was a Part 135 operator, just like Taquan Air. Both of these flights were commercial. Here’s a bit from the accident report:

Did you see that? “Both airplanes were operated as Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 135 on-demand sightseeing flights.”

The NY Times didn’t just have the one erroneous paragraph - nope, the reporter went with the incorrect information and kept writing more about it.

Private planes typically do not have extra engines, backup navigation systems or co-pilots. Many have one engine. They are not required to supply designated flight paths for those on the ground to follow. Rules and regulations pertaining to smaller, private planes tend to be less stringent than those affecting commercial planes, because they do not put the same number of lives at risk.

I’m not even going to ask what “extra engines” is supposed to mean. (And for the record - both the aircraft involved were single-engine as are a TON of other commercial aircraft flying under Part 135.) As to the simplistic definition of “private planes” or those flying under Part 91, well, even jets can be Part 91. And about the different degrees of training for pilots based on the “part” they are flying under - be aware that a Part 135 pilot can be Part 135 for one leg and then Part 91 for the next. Same pilot, same plane, same day.

Yeah, it’s complicated.

For the Guardian Flight accident in Nevada last year, several news reports noted that it was the third fatal accident for the company in a relatively short period. That type of information makes sense. But USA Today, which did not mention the company’s history of recent crashes, went in this direction:

Medical planes and helicopters can get patients to hospitals faster than traditional ambulances. But aircraft, especially helicopters, are more susceptible to bad weather compared to on-the-ground vehicles, according to providers at Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio.

In case you were wondering if aviation is faster than cars, but has issues with bad weather, now you know! (You knew this already, didn’t you?)

Let’s talk about flying in helicopters without doors

I understand that reporters are facing deadlines and need to get information out there fast, but other than providing the basic facts and more detailed information on survivors (or deaths), I think a lot of the fast coverage is a waste. Now, if reporters have time to really look, they can come up with important reportage like what Vertical Magazine did on the New York FlyNYON accident in 2018 which resulted in five fatalities.

This was the accident involving the helicopter company that removed its doors and had passengers hang out the side with a harness so they could get pictures of the city. Here’s a screenshot from one of the company’s promotional videos where they called themselves “the birthplace of the #shoeselfie” for obvious reasons.

The Vertical Mag article, written by Elan Head (who is now a senior editor with The Air Current), went deep into how the company actually operated. A big problem was the relationship between FlyNYON, which was chartering another company, Liberty Helicopters, to fly a lot of its passengers. FlyNYON’s CEO, Patrick Day JR, enlisted his father to serve as the Director of Operations for FlyNYON - while Patrick Day SR was also serving as DO for Liberty. (The DO is a FAA mandated position with heavily documented standards and requirements.) This resulted in a lot of confusion over who was making the flight safety rules and a lot of the time JR seemed to be the most powerful voice in the room. You can see in this passage, where JR is the Day who is mentioned, how things were going wrong:

In early January, a conflict arose after a Liberty pilot delayed a flight due to a passenger’s ill-fitting harness. FlyNYON had two different styles of harnesses in use at Kearny Point: the standard yellow fall-protection harnesses, which retailed for around $50 each; and a limited number of the blue harnesses that had been recognized by the FAA as being compliant with technical standard order (TSO) C167, and which retailed for $525.

The blue harnesses had been acquired only recently (in mid-November 2017, emails indicate). Not only were they FAA-approved, they were, as a FlyNYON pilot observed, “far superior to the yellow harnesses in terms of comfort and fit,” and could be adjusted to fit a wider range of body sizes. In the case of the delayed flight, a small female passenger had arrived at the aircraft in a yellow harness that was “falling off her body,” according to the pilot who had made the “judgment/safety call” to delay.

At the next pilots meeting, it was agreed that blue harnesses should take priority over the yellow harnesses. According to meeting minutes emailed on Jan. 17, “This means that if there is one flight of five passengers and the harnesses are not being used elsewhere, all five passengers should arrive at the aircraft with blue harnesses on. If they don’t, the pilot may query why the harnesses are not being utilized.”

That’s when Day responded to say that “the pilot may not query about the harness.” In a subsequent response, he elaborated, “the blue harnesses are FAA approved but that isn’t a requirement for a doors off flight. The yellow harnesses are just as legal/safe as the blue.”

FlyNYON’s terminal manager chimed in, “We’ve been using, tightening, and securing yellow harnesses on pax — big or small — for years. . . . Let’s work together to get pax up on time. Rules can’t be made on the ramp. Rules can’t even be made in the weekly pilots’ meeting. Rules can be proposed in the pilots’ meeting but must be approved by Pat, at the end of the day.”

So, why would the CEO of FlyNYON be involved in flight safety for Liberty? Why would he be able to weigh in on what a pilot has to say about harnesses and safety? There is no good answer to that question and it’s only the tip of the iceberg - you really need to read the whole article!

And now, why I bring this particular article up. Vertical and Wired actually reviewed a series of internal FlyNYON emails at the same time - you can read the Wired article here. (It focuses more on the passengers’ inability to escape the harnesses after the helicopter crashed in the water. Only the pilot was able to get out.) There is clearly also a ton of other research that went into their pieces. The NY Times also received the same internal documents but it’s article, which came out the same day as the Vertical & Wired pieces, is far less in depth and draws heavily from public statements. It skims the surface of investigative journalism whereas Vertical gets hard into the aspects of aviation safety. Since this was a New York accident, I don’t see why the local paper didn’t do a lot more. (I’ll leave it to you to read the articles and compare them. The NYT piece is similar in ways to the Vertical piece that I’m not entirely comfortable with.)

I’m going to post these pictures here (from google) because I’m still freaked out that people were dong this.

Why does so much of the major media coverage bother me?

Generally, I’m sick to death of how aviation safety is covered by the media. Part of the problem is that I’ve been obsessed with Watergate for a couple of years now (don’t ask - I blame Garrett Graff’s outstanding book, Watergate: A New History, for sucking me in.) The big thing I’ve learned from reading about that is how long so many of the reporters involved stayed with the story. Not just Woodward & Bernstein but many others as well. When a plane or helicopter crashes, we get immediate details, maybe some mistakes or pointless filler and then, because investigations into serious accidents take more than a year, we get nothing. (When the NTSB releases the final report we get articles that basically summarize the final report.)

Very very few journalists do what Vertical (& Wired) did on FlyNYON. Nobody stayed with Taquan Air - when I had my article on everything that was going on with that company published two years after the midair, I was it. Everyone else had moved on and yet there was A LOT more about that story that needed to be told. (Read it here - it’s one of the best things I’ve ever researched and written.)

The political ramifications on the Iranian crash are huge and certainly the biggest part of the story. But I would love to see someone follow-up on questions about how sanctions impacted the acquisition of parts for the Bell 212 (and how Iran could have been getting around the sanctions). I could list a dozen big pieces that I wish were written about recent accidents all of which would take time and space for the reporters to research them. Dominic Gates has been doing that for Boeing for a long time over at the Seattle Times but he’s the exception. Who’s writing the big FOIA-rich piece on Guardian Flight’s multiple fatality crashes? I did an overview of cargo accidents last year but there is so much more on that subject that needs investigating. As for why the industry publications aren’t all over this sort of work, well, they are hit or miss. Flight safety (that isn’t Boeing), is not always the biggest story for them either. (Especially when it’s Part 135.) (Really especially when it’s about Alaska.) (You can tell how I feel about that.)

I’m not holding my breath on answers to what happened in Iran because it’s Iran. But I am getting ready an article into the 2021 Challenger crash in Truckee, CA. Yes, it was a stall. But there was more to this accident then what happened in the cockpit. It’s taken some FOIAs and reviewing court documents but it’s a bigger story than has been reported anywhere else and I’ll have that for you next month.

(And also, hopefully, something on mountaineering in Alaska from the archives at Princeton!)