Originally Posted by
Sport_Pilot
No! Don't put words in my mouth. I only stated that the airline pilot should be trying to avoid the sUAV. Not that he did not have right of way. In the first instance it is unknown if he had time, the second it looks like they did not. But there have been others where they had time but the article did not say they aborted or otherwise avoided the sUAV. Just pointing out that even if you have right of way you have the duty to see and avoid. BTW in the PSA flight 182 the airline pilots were ruled as violating the "see and avoid" statute even though they had the right of way.
PSA Flight 182 NTSB transcripts: The PSA pilots reported that they saw the Cessna after being notified of its position by ATC, although
cockpit voice recordings revealed that shortly thereafter the PSA pilots no longer had the Cessna in sight and they were speculating about its position. Lindbergh tower heard the 09.00:50 transmission as "He's pass
ing off to our right" and assumed the PSA jet had the Cessna in sight.Actually, the Cessna was directly in front of and below the Boeing, and the PSA plane was descending and rapidly closing in on the small plane, which had taken a right turn to the east, deviating from the assigned course. According to the report issued by the
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Cessna may have been a difficult visual target for the jet's pilots, as it was below them and blended in with the multicolored houses of the residential area beneath; the Cessna's fuselage was yellow, and most of the houses were a yellowish color. Also, the apparent motion of the Cessna as viewed from the Boeing was minimized, as both planes were on approximately the same course. The report said that another possible reason that the PSA aircrew had difficulty observing the Cessna was that its fuselage was made visually smaller due to
foreshortening. However, the same report in another section also stated that "the white surface of the Cessna's wing could have presented a relatively bright target in the morning sunlight."
A visibility study cited in the NTSB report concluded that the Cessna should have been almost centered in the windshield of the Boeing from 170 to 90 seconds before the collision, and thereafter it was likely positioned on the lower portion of the windshield just above the windshield wipers. The study also said that the Cessna pilot would have had about a 10-second view of the Boeing from the left-door window about 90 seconds before the collision, but visibility of the overtaking jet was blocked by the Cessna's ceiling structure for the remainder of the time.
Flight 182's crew never explicitly alerted the tower that they had lost sight of the Cessna. If they had made this clear to controllers, the crash might not have happened. Also, if the Cessna had maintained the heading of 70 degrees assigned to it by ATC instead of turning to 90 degrees, the NTSB estimates the planes would have missed each other by about 1000 feet (300 meters) instead of colliding. Ultimately, the NTSB maintained that regardless of that change in course, it was the responsibility of the crew in the overtaking jet to comply with the regulatory requirement to pass "well clear" of the Cessna.
Approach Control on the ground picked up an automated conflict alert 19 seconds before the collision but did not relay this information to the aircraft because, according to the approach coordinator, such alerts were commonplace even when there was no actual conflict. The NTSB stated: "Based on all information available to him, he decided that the crew of Flight 182 were complying with their visual separation clearance; that they were accomplishing an overtake maneuver within the separation parameters of the conflict alert computer; and that, therefore, no conflict existed." They can only avoid what they can see or believe they see.