1. Regarding solutions: This airport does not have a tower, so its up to the pilots to use the radio to announce intentions etc. To me, the core problem is that this does not loop in the boats and so there is no way to communicate. I think having the boats or some third party announce when a crossing is occurring would help. I also think, in response to this accident they moved the runway a few hundred feet further from the channel.
2. Regarding blame the NTSB actually ruled it pilot error, but I think that is myopic and only because there wasn't really anything else they could say since their jurisdiction doesnt extend into the rules of boats. Technically it is pilot error, but there were other errors as well from each side that all combined.
3. In terms of fear of flying, im actually okay. I had to fly twice per week for work for many years following this. Sometimes i'd have some flashbacks or bad thoughts, but overall don't have an issue. I've also been back up in a small plane just to do it. That said, I view commercial airplanes as completely safe and have no real fear with them. With small planes theres just so much can go wrong. The planes are not the issue, they are safe themselves. However, because of many small airports not having a tower, the lack of safety comes from having to deal with many other factors at play. I want to fly again later in life, its amazing and I have a love of planes. At this point though I feel like it would be pushing my luck so don't really do it.
In what way do you (or drzaiusapelord, if you see this) think that the boat operator was in any way at fault? There doesn't seem to be any indication of that in the NTSB report[1], and the newspaper report states that the boat was in the channel.
I don't really place blame with any one thing, but a mix of a bunch of factors. For the boat, they were motoring much closer to the side with the runway, instead of the side further away. Its not technically wrong, but if they were exercising any caution at all would have been farther away and likely out of our glideslope. On our side, we should have checked more deliberately that nothing was in our path. On base, I saw nothing, but the time we were on final I guess the boat had moved and was then in the way of the runway and neither I nor the pilot in command saw it.
Mostly though, I think there just should have been much more regulation given the number of parties operating in the same space.
It seems that an exclusion zone could and should have been established in the vicinity of this approach, but to say that the boat operator was not "exercising any caution at all" is quite a stretch. Boats traveling in channels have a set of regulations to follow, which include keeping to the side when not crossing.
1. Regarding solutions: This airport does not have a tower, so its up to the pilots to use the radio to announce intentions etc. To me, the core problem is that this does not loop in the boats and so there is no way to communicate. I think having the boats or some third party announce when a crossing is occurring would help. I also think, in response to this accident they moved the runway a few hundred feet further from the channel.
2. Regarding blame the NTSB actually ruled it pilot error, but I think that is myopic and only because there wasn't really anything else they could say since their jurisdiction doesnt extend into the rules of boats. Technically it is pilot error, but there were other errors as well from each side that all combined.
3. In terms of fear of flying, im actually okay. I had to fly twice per week for work for many years following this. Sometimes i'd have some flashbacks or bad thoughts, but overall don't have an issue. I've also been back up in a small plane just to do it. That said, I view commercial airplanes as completely safe and have no real fear with them. With small planes theres just so much can go wrong. The planes are not the issue, they are safe themselves. However, because of many small airports not having a tower, the lack of safety comes from having to deal with many other factors at play. I want to fly again later in life, its amazing and I have a love of planes. At this point though I feel like it would be pushing my luck so don't really do it.