Who Should Call, "Knock It Off"? - Brief Article

Tonight was the big night for crossing the century mark on night-vision goggles. The brief and hot-seat went smoothly, but we noticed isolated rain showers and cloud buildup. No big deal. We could get in some good instrument work. We launched into the rapidly fading "pinky time," knocked out our Doppler requal, and requested a CCA pickup. That's where the internal alarms started ringing.

As center vectored us downwind, we noticed the first of a rapidly increasing number of cloud-to-cloud lightning bolts. Suddenly, it was pitch black in front of us, with pouring rain and lightning a couple of miles ahead. Without much prodding from me, my HAC asked the ship for vectors away from the storm or an immediate break-off.

Center cancelled our approach as we turned back into starboard-D, where it was still clear. The lightning had developed in every quadrant now, and we provided a PIREP about the limited visibility and lightning. Tower asked us to come in aided, so we began goggling up. At this point, no Marine birds were off the deck yet, and we could sense the hesitation as they probed us for more weather info.

One crew cancelled for a mechanical problem, but the other three seemed willing to give it a go. By the time we had our goggles on, tower called us in for an uneventful landing. Sitting on deck for a hot pump, we watched in amazement as tower cleared the three Marine helos to lift into the delta for "acclimatization." My HAC called the tower flower and said that if it was up to us, "We'd cancel because of the limited visibility and poor weather."

Now, all the alarms were heads. This far into cruise mission other than night-training best time to be pushing the the final prompt from my HAC, along the feedback from the Marines in the air, enough to convince the ACE CO, who called, "Knock it off."

We constantly struggle to infuse the relatively new Operational Risk Management process into our daily operations. Mindsets are hard to change, and the very nature of our business requires that we often rise above our fears to accomplish our mission. ORM does not give us concrete examples of where to draw the line; it leaves the decision with the aircraft commander.

ORM illuminates possible dangers and tries to minimize them, but the gut-check call is based largely on nebulous factors. After talking with many others after flight ops was secured, we realized everyone was questioning the wisdom of flying in those conditions.

Who should call, "Knock it off"? For me, I know more than ever that it can be anyone, and we all have to guard against the tendency to tough it out or rely on others to make our safety calls.

Lt. Mounts flies with HC-11.

COPYRIGHT 2000 U.S. Naval Safety Center
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group