Posted for "F. Barry Knotts" <bknotts@buckeye-express.com>:

No flames here.  But I'm really troubled by this crash.

It is my observation, though my experience is limited, that the system
keeps you AND the controller in a box.  I can't deviate from a clearance
unless I'm willing to do some serious paperwork and the controller can't
give me a clearance until he can communicate, I assume often by land
line (I never know), with another controller.  I can't tell you how
often I've been held in icing conditions waiting for higher (or lower).
I avoid getting into ice like the plague.  But in my neighborhood, it
sometimes comes uninvited and unpredicted.  When I start picking up
ice-I want to move, NOW.  (Even with boots, heaters, radar & two
engines.)  The controllers ARE trying to help and get you outta' there.
But they're butt is in a sling, too.  I think when confronted with a hot
request like mine, to say, climb from 9,000 to 13,000 or FL200 or
whatever for icing the controllers try their best.but the system doesn't
respond as fast as ice builds.if you know what I mean.  I sweat bullets
watching the ice (Is it still building?) and hoping the controller comes
back soon to approve an escape route I've suggested without any
information about other traffic.  I've never declared an emergency.but
I've been close.and I've done a 180.  And when is it the right time to
declare an emergency.  When airspeed degrades 5%, 10%, what?

My point is.the system is not designed or operated to fly as many
sophisticated, high speed aircraft as are out there, even on some good
weather days.  Decisions need to be made quickly.  Thirty seconds is a
long way at 250kts not to mention 8 minutes.  The pilots and controllers
now do an amazing job IMHO in avoiding weather and traffic related
mishaps given the technology currently in use.  But there are worlds of
technology not yet in use that would reduce the risk.

Let me ask.I can now get ground based weather radar in my aircraft.  Why
can't I see the traffic radar screen that the controller sees in my
cockpit, too?  Or better yet, a depiction of both worked and
skin-painted targets with respect to my aircraft?  If they are GPS
equipped, why not their GPS positions?  Why not their next cleared fix?
TCAD is only a ghost of the information that is really available.  And
why do I have to wait to talk English to a controller on an asynchronous
language line when he's talking as fast as he can to other aircraft?  A
duplex data link with an English display could maintain in front of you
AND the controller the last clearance, the new clearance,
acknowledgements, expectations, current altimeter setting and any
pending requests.  No need to eliminate the downlink English language,
just fortify it with confirmatory, hard data on the uplink.

As long as I'm dreaming.  Why is it a "Mother-May-I" system at all, if I
can have all the information that the controller has (and more, because
I have eyes to see traffic, eyes to see buildups, uplink and possibly on
board weather radar images)?  Why can't I make as reasoned a decision as
the controller and let him monitor for impending conflicts instead of
choreographing every turn and move?  A pilot in the enroute phase, such
as in the current tragic incident, could not only see the weather he
didn't want to fly into, but also the exit routes that are safe
weather-wise, airspace-wise and traffic-wise.  He (or she) could make an
immediate decision IN the cockpit based on data and not based on verbal
confrontation with a well meaning but boxed-in controller.

In my business this crash would be called a "sentinel event."  A
"root-cause analysis" would be initiated.  Pilot decision making would
not even be considered as a root cause.  The question is, "How can the
system be made better to avoid this incident?"  I'd like to say it's
THEIR (the FAA's) fault.  But I know better.  We also built the system.
We're all part of it, and if there is to be any change, we have to be
part of it.  I think experimental aircraft should be on the cutting edge
of new ways to do things.even new systems.

Sorry to be so long winded.but it's something I think about every time I
don't get an immediate response to a request from ATC. (Poor sense of
delayed gratification.)  And that's too often.

Barry Knotts
LIV-P, Conti TSIO-550, 15%, Toledo, Ohio (Ice capital of the Midwest)
Currently in a slow, metal, Cessna 340