Reckless pilots a problem for U.S. military

Reckless accidents, which happen every year, frustrate senior military commanders because these typically occur during training flights and are considered easily avoidable. Air Force crews are encouraged to announce, “Knock it off,” when a pilot begins to fly unsafely.

“There will be repercussions,” the head of Army aviation, Brigadier General E.J. Sinclair, said in an interview with the AP. “If someone goes out there and does that and it’s observed, I usually hear about it from another pilot.”

At the same time, Sinclair said, the Army is rewriting rules to specify which maneuvers are allowed and teaching pilots aggressive new aerial techniques that push helicopters closer to their engineering design limits.

“We make it very clear, this is not something you go out and do on your own,” Sinclair said.

For training, the Army uses a dramatic cockpit video from the crash of an Apache attack helicopter at Fort Campbell, Ky. It shows the co-pilot yelling, “Yeehaw!” during one maneuver banned as unsafe by the Army.

‘Ye of little faith’
The tape also shows the pilot and co-pilot debating whether they can fly safely between tall trees while traveling nearly 90 miles per hour at 16 feet above ground.

“Think I can make it in between there?” the pilot asks.

“Nope,” the co-pilot answers.

“Oh, ye of little faith. Look how big that is,” the pilot says.

Seconds later, the Apache’s rotors struck a huge limb, shattering one blade as the pilot struggled to land safely. “C’mon, get it under control, Mark!” the co-pilot shouts. Both crew survived. The 1997 accident caused $1 million in damage.

Marine Lt. Gen. Mike Hough complained last summer in a memorandum to his aviation commanders: “We are killing more aircrew in training mishaps than during combat missions. ... I will not tolerate the blatant violations and lack of leadership I am seeing from our aviators.”

Hough’s tough message came weeks before a Hornet fighter crash in Quantico, Va., that the Navy blamed on “unacceptable” flying.

But serious criminal charges such as those against Rogers are unusual. Prosecuting pilots in public deeply divides military aviators, who more commonly face quiet administrative proceedings that include warnings and temporary grounding.

“As long as they don’t embarrass the government or hurt anybody, they’ll typically be counseled and that will be the end of it,” said law professor Michael Noone at Catholic University. The retired Air Force colonel has prosecuted and defended pilots in crash investigations.

Investigators said the helicopter pilot who was court-martialed rejected an earlier request by Marines for acrobatics during the flight. But he agreed to a second request and radioed, “Taking room to maneuver,” after a demonstration for Marine Gen. James L. Jones, the supreme allied commander for Europe and commander of the U.S. European Command, was delayed 10 minutes, according to an Army report. Crew chief Daniel Lee Galvan, 30, died in the crash.

Rogers, a veteran pilot with a reputation in the 25^th Infantry Division as an able flier, would not talk about the accident when the AP contacted him at home in Hawaii. He said his lawyer also would not comment.

Question of accountability
Other Army pilots said such requests for acrobatics are common from passengers.

“I’ve been asked that; I always felt like I had to enforce the rules,” said Herb Rodriguez of Clarksville, Tenn., a retired Black Hawk pilot who won the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism in the Somalia deployment in 1993. “I was like a parent.”

On a memorial Web site dedicated to her husband, the widow of Daniel Lee Galvan described her young children’s grief and lying atop her husband’s grave. She said she hoped Rogers “lives with the guilt of taking my beautiful angel away from his family.”

“I just don’t want this pilot to think he can do this again, to hurt anybody else,” Sonya Galvan of Lubbock, Texas, told the AP before the court-martial in Hawaii.

“At some point or another,” she said, “they need to make someone accountable.”

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