[HN Gopher] Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter n...
___________________________________________________________________
Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan
airport
Author : mzmzmzm
Score : 600 points
Date : 2025-01-30 02:56 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mediaite.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mediaite.com)
| mzmzmzm wrote:
| A passenger jet originating from Kansas collided with a Blackhawk
| helicopter midair near Reagan National Airport on Wednesday
| night.
|
| Flights at the airport have been halted.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Potomac_River_mid-air_col...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-30/washingto... |
| https://archive.today/n1ark
|
| https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/plane-crash-dca-potomac-was...
| (CNN live updates)
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1idbkyd/crash_at_dc...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1idba8i/plane_cra...
|
| https://x.com/aletweetsnews/status/1884789306645983319
|
| https://archive.liveatc.net/kdca/KDCA1-Twr-Jan-30-2025-0130Z... |
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250130025411/https://archive.l...
| (event starts at 17:25)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| BBC live updates: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy7kxx74yxlt
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| https://archives.broadcastify.com/44114/20250129/20250129200...
| contains the ATC feed in addition to the PAT-25 (helo) radio.
|
| ~5:41 mark 5342 is given instructions for circling to 33. ~6:45
| mark PAT-25 reports Memorial ~7:06 mark tower gives PAT-25
| traffic advisory about 5342 and PAT-25 reports traffic in sight
| and requests visual separation ~8:12 mark tower asks PAT-25 if
| they have the CRJ in sight. PAT-25 again reports traffic in
| sight and again requests visual separation. ~8:21 mark, crash
| occurs, exclamations, go arounds issued
| htgb wrote:
| I'm impressed by your, and their, hearing comprehension here!
| Granted, English isn't my native language but even with
| concentration I struggle to hear what they say.
| vharuck wrote:
| It's easy to forget how many skills and "heuristics" go
| into listening. I once read a scale of language proficiency
| that placed "Can converse over a poor phone connection" at
| a very high level. When a word is garbled or lost, you have
| to quickly think of all the possible words that could've
| fit the grammar and whatever sound you heard, consider them
| in the context, and choose one or two. Then the next part
| of the conversation should let you pick one. Then add the
| complication of not seeing body language.
|
| I forget where I read this. I think it was from the US
| Department of State, but I can't find it now.
| bolognafairy wrote:
| Previous experience with aviation radio comms helps a lot.
| Typical radio comms essentially follow a template, and it's
| done in a way where you can safely approximate a LOT
| (...just not numbers). But the...phraseology if you will,
| can be approximated quite easily with experience.
|
| Funnily enough, American ATC / pilots are, I find, a lot
| more frequently 'fast and loose' compared to other areas,
| even English-speaking ones. Countless recordings online of
| EALD pilots being befuddled by some self-identified hotshot
| air traffic controller using overly casual / sloppy
| language, sometimes resulting in near misses or worse.
| 83457 wrote:
| Any takeaways from this? ATC not responding with separation
| but Blackhawk continuing anyway?
| johnneville wrote:
| appears to have collided with a helicopter
| lysace wrote:
| A CRJ700 crashing into a Black Hawk sounds _bad_. : /
|
| FR24 shows helicopters from various agencies doing many laps
| around the site, presumably looking for survivors.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/SykzxUA.png
| pbronez wrote:
| On the ATC radio archive you can hear the tower asking aircraft
| if they have lights, can the circle over the east side of the
| field to help locate survivors
| nradov wrote:
| Obviously it will take some time for the full accident analysis
| but there have been quite a few near misses lately due to air
| traffic controller errors. Flight volume has been growing,
| airspace near airports is more congested, and controllers are
| overworked. Eventually all of the "Swiss cheese" holes line up.
| We're going to need to hire more controllers.
|
| Also, it appears that one of the aircraft was a military (not
| police) H-60 Blackhawk helicopter.
| ghc wrote:
| > In addition, the White House has put a hiring freeze in
| place, prohibiting the replacement of open government positions
| or the creation of new ones while the administration evaluates
| reductions in the workforce. The White House plans to release a
| memorandum with further guidance within 90 days. This has drawn
| criticism from lawmakers as the FAA has been ramping up
| controller hiring.
|
| https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2025-0...
| smitty1110 wrote:
| To quote the order itself:
|
| > This order does not apply to military personnel of the
| armed forces or to positions related to immigration
| enforcement, national security, or public safety.
|
| ATC surely falls under public safety. Additionally, the ATC
| issues stretch well back into the Biden term, and you can
| find plenty of articles discussing the controversy elsewhere.
| int0x29 wrote:
| I get a strong sense that they don't actually know what
| they cut as they stopped paying to guard ISIL prisoners. I
| could very easily see ATC getting hit by accident.
| Generally this administration neither thinks nor plans
| before acting
|
| https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-
| daily...
| rayiner wrote:
| That article is propaganda from the same people who
| brought you the Iraq War. That's exactly the sort of
| funding spigot we should be stopping so we can figure out
| what the hell is going on. Why the hell are we paying for
| prison guards in Syria? At one point CIA backed militias
| in Syria were fighting DOD backed militias:
| https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-
| pentagon-...
|
| Everyone obviously wants to use critical services as a
| shield to avoid scrutiny on them. But by all indications
| the administration was ready to go on day 1, and insofar
| as stuff is being cut or halted a decision was made to
| allow that to happen.
| philistine wrote:
| So the LA Times is not part of the propaganda that
| brought us the Iraq War? And the US must, must at all
| cost, stop paying for prison guards to _figure it out_?
|
| There's no other way to just ... figure it out? You know,
| by studying the situation?
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm begging you to read Manufacturing Consent.
|
| And when has "studying the situation" ever worked to make
| the government stop wasting money destroying the Middle
| East? Obama promised to change this stuff, and he
| couldn't do it, because he innately trusted the same
| people who made the mistakes to "study" how to fix them.
| philistine wrote:
| I can't believe you agree with the premise of
| Manufacturing Consent and the goals of the
| administration.
|
| They're manufacturing consent to a massive power grab
| from Congress. The consent to an American King is being
| manufactured in front of our very eyes.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't know what was going on with Syria, sounds real
| bad, but your claim about the administration having clear
| plans they're executing from day 1 is clearly false. This
| is sourced reporting, not analysis:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/omb-
| whi...
| allemagne wrote:
| "Surely"? This is only a few days after a change of
| administration along with sweeping government changes.
| Don't you think it's worth asking questions a little more
| deeply than this?
| joezydeco wrote:
| Meanwhile, San Carlos Airport (KSQL, near San Francisco) is
| going ATC-zero on February 1st. The tower will be unstaffed.
|
| https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CASMATEO/bulletins/.
| ..
|
| "The FAA has awarded a new contract for air traffic services
| at SQL to Robinson Aviation (RVA). However, the contract does
| not include locality pay to account for the high cost of
| living in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a result, RVA's
| employment offers to current SQL controllers were
| significantly lower than their current compensation under
| SERCO. Understandably, all current controllers have declined
| RVA's offers."
|
| "Given that the FAA is ultimately responsible for ensuring
| air traffic services at SQL, we requested temporary FAA
| staffing for the tower--a solution currently being
| implemented at Eagle Airport in Colorado during its
| transition from SERCO to RVA. However, the FAA informed us
| this morning that they will not provide temporary personnel
| for SQL"
| jonathanlb wrote:
| Honest question: are air traffic controllers at risk for
| being replaced with AI systems? My initial thought is no,
| there is too much complexity, but AI could help ease the
| load. I'm not really informed about air traffic systems,
| just curious.
| joezydeco wrote:
| The FAA adopts new technologies at a glacial pace, for
| good reason. But AI has been mentioned in the planning of
| the next generation of ATC.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Wide_Information_Man
| age...
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/atiec
| /me...
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| Perhaps some day, I would hope that we make a lot of
| progress before we look towards the current form of AI in
| such a critical spot.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| What kind of ai are you talking about? The non
| deterministic black box LLMs we have now?
| jonathanlb wrote:
| Of course not LLMs, but approaches using mixed integer
| programming, genetic algorithms, and/or simulated
| annealing.
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| Are these new products from Rockwell automation?
| kristjansson wrote:
| Oh, algorithms, they should have thought of those.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The kind that could land an atomic-powered vehicle on
| Mars, eight light-minutes from human contact? In 2012?
|
| It's utterly ridiculous to expect humans to do this job
| for much longer. It's what computers are _for_.
| justinspace wrote:
| Gosh, you'd think someone would've thought of this
| already.
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| Oh you mean the kind that has no conflicting traffic in
| 0.5 to 2.5 AU?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Really? There were 3 aircraft involved. Game AI in the
| 1980s was good enough to handle the amount of
| "conflicting traffic" involved here. You're arguing in
| favor of automation, not against it.
|
| For that matter, next time you visit the Bay Area, drop
| by the CHM in Mountain View and take a look at what SAGE
| could already do in the 1960s.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| > ATC please advise, I'm about crash
|
| > Thanks for reaching out! As you probably know, crashing
| an aeroplane is not generally recommended. There are many
| factors that may contribute to a crash, such as weather,
| technical malfunction or human error. Appropriate
| training, regular maintenance and flight planning are
| some of the best practices which help minimise the
| likelihood of a crash. I recommend revisiting these
| factors. Is there anything else I can help you with
| today?
| tjohns wrote:
| No. We use some deterministic automation on the backend
| for helping with traffic management and rerouting flight
| paths, but the communication with aircraft is mostly done
| via voice. Everything happens too fast to insert a
| keyboard in the middle (*), and voice recognition would
| be too error prone for something safety critical.
|
| (* CPDLC does allow ATC to send texts to/from larger
| aircraft, but this is only used for things that aren't
| time sensitive. Voice is still the primary method of
| control.)
| hattmall wrote:
| Why would it need to even be AI? Why not just regular
| software? Couldn't airplanes just send a message that
| they want to land and the Air Traffic Control software
| sees where they are and what other aircraft are around
| and sends everyone the appropriate messages?
| schoen wrote:
| The human ATC system is very good at handling exceptions,
| including various kinds of emergencies, pilot errors, and
| reasons to prioritize one plane over another. The human
| controllers also typically have a good understanding of
| the details of airspace, regulations, policies, aviation
| customs, and the capabilities of various kinds of
| aircraft.
|
| So for example, a plane can have a "missed approach and
| go around" when trying to land. I was once on a plane
| that did that because of extremely high winds. In that
| case, the plane that was supposed to be on the ground is
| suddenly climbing again and is going to need to turn in
| order to repeat the approach.
|
| A plane can have a medical emergency onboard, so it needs
| to land at an unexpected airport, possibly faster than a
| normal landing, or starting from a somewhat atypical
| position. I was once on a plane that did that because
| someone onboard had a seizure.
|
| A plane can have damage or equipment failures that the
| pilots find it hard to assess directly, so it needs to
| fly around for a while to give the pilots time to "run
| checklists" or perform various tests, or sometimes to let
| a ground-based observer report on something about the
| plane (!), or just to develop their intuition about how
| functional the plane is. It might then need to land at an
| unintended airport or return unexpectedly to its takeoff
| airport. I was once on a plane that did that because of
| bird strikes during departure, where the plane was
| damaged but the pilots were unsure how seriously.
|
| A pilot might misunderstand something or disobey
| regulations, and that pilot or another pilot might be
| told to take some unexpected evasive action to avoid a
| collision. (This is one area that has been productively
| automated in some cases via TCAS, where the aircraft
| themselves can sometimes figure out what an appropriate
| maneuver would be before a controller tells them one.) I
| haven't personally experienced that.
|
| There might be another kind of emergency where a runway
| is closed and a large number of planes need to be
| diverted (like right after this collision where DCA was
| abruptly closed).
|
| There might be negotiations with an uncooperative or
| mentally ill pilot (like the tragic story of Richard
| Russell in 2018, but also a number of incidents that had
| happier endings).
|
| Pilots might also negotiate more cooperatively with ATC
| related to diversions and priority in situations like bad
| weather, where the airport has less capacity than
| originally expected and the pilots need to determine
| whether they will divert to a different airport. In this
| case the air traffic controllers may talk to different
| pilots about their fuel levels and other factors that
| make them better and worse candidates for changing flight
| plans. En-route (ARTCC/ACC) controllers will also
| negotiate with pilots about changing altitude to reduce
| or avoid turbulence.
|
| There are occasionally cases where a pilot is
| incapacitated and someone with less training and
| experience needs to be advised remotely on how to land a
| plane. (This is mostly very small planes but ATC will
| still ultimately deal with these emergencies.) In that
| case other planes also need to be kept away from the
| incident aircraft and maybe diverted elsewhere.
|
| Specifically for takeoff and landing, there are often
| multiple planes using the same runway (for takeoff,
| landing, or both) in relatively quick succession, or
| possibly using runways that cross each other. In this
| case, a controller needs to keep an eye on how quickly
| pilots have (or haven't) complied with specific
| clearances, e.g. to cross a runway on the ground, because
| the clearances may need to be revoked or modified if they
| aren't used quickly enough (because of the presence of
| other aircraft that have _also_ received clearances that
| will soon start to conflict with the older clearances).
| This also includes checking whether planes that have
| landed have vacated the runway expeditiously (since if
| they haven 't done so, for whatever reason, other planes
| may soon need to be told to go around).
|
| There are also cases where military or law enforcement
| authorities may ask or demand to modify normal ATC
| procedures or clearances because of some special
| operation or problem. The simplest case is that they
| might ask to prioritize a government aircraft over
| civilian flights for some reason, or ask certain other
| operations to stop e.g. during a takeoff or landing of
| Air Force One. (I just watched this a few days ago with
| an Air Force One departure from Las Vegas, where other
| departures and landings were temporarily but briefly
| suspended. So that had to be planned and communicated to
| various pilots, some of whom then had follow-up questions
| about what they were or weren't allowed to do.)
|
| Pilots are also considered to have ultimate
| responsibility for the safety of their flights and
| passengers, and they can also refuse some ATC
| instructions, or deviate from some normal procedures, in
| emergencies. So for example, a controller might believe
| it's safe to land in certain weather conditions and might
| give a pilot a certain clearance, but the pilot might not
| feel up to completing the landing and might then refuse
| to do so. The controller will have to understand the
| pilot's intentions as best as possible, and deal with the
| consequences of those intentions (e.g., once again,
| keeping other planes out of the way, or trying to find a
| new routing that the pilot will be willing to accept).
|
| ATC is also responsible for passing some kinds of
| information to and from other parties, like in case of an
| emergency landing communicating with emergency responders
| so that they understand the nature of the emergency and
| whatever facts will help them respond more effectively.
| And they have to tell other ATC facilities about problems
| and situations that will affect them, like in-flight
| emergencies, closed airspace, closed runways, closed
| airport, etc.
|
| Many of these things can and should be more automated
| than they are, but humans in these jobs are doing
| _enormous_ amounts of reasoning, improvisation, and even
| social negotiation.
|
| (I'm not a pilot or air traffic controller, just a former
| frequent flyer who liked listening to ATC communications
| and sometimes listens to liveatc.net when friends'
| flights are arriving or departing, or watches video
| recaps of various aviation incidents.)
|
| Edit: Another case that I thought of: during an emergency
| landing, a pilot might be given either a shorter (more
| direct) or longer (more indirect) route than usual, in
| response to the pilot's assessment of which would be
| safer. The pilot could also be given a longer route than
| usual in order to have time to "work checklists" in
| preparation for the landing, or in order to burn off fuel
| so that the plane will weigh less (and be less likely to
| cause a huge fire) upon landing.
|
| If some navigation equipment is broken, the ATC facility
| could help with navigation or with diagnosing the problem
| (by describing visual landmarks, or by estimating the
| plane's current speed and heading based on ATC radar).
| justinspace wrote:
| Because it pays half of Hacker News's salaries.
| kube-system wrote:
| Another system could hypothetically exist, but for
| practical use it is a huge migration issue. There are
| just too many planes in use that only support voice. The
| average airplane in general aviation usage is 50 years
| old.
| stall84 wrote:
| There's no good excuse, other than cost and training and
| equipment integration (which are massive costs, i know)
| for _not_ having some kind of learning or at a minimum
| high levels of automation in 2025.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Replaced, no. ATC, at least while we still have human
| pilots, is a system for instructing, organizing, and
| responding to humans, with all their flexibility and
| foible.
|
| Now a copilot e.g. ATC audio parsed by an LLM into
| intended tracks, requests from traffic, integrated into
| the scope with projections for future separation etc...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The SOTA is augmented ATC displays and digital towers,
| which basically use object recognition to label planes on
| cameras, and the controllers sit somewhere else.
|
| Usually this is done for rural airports, where you have
| one controller potentially managing multiple low traffic
| airports, and it's tough to get ATC willing to move to
| remote locations. The only busy airport doing this kind
| of thing is London City Airport, but that has 3M
| passengers a year and DCA has 25M. That was motivated by
| the lack of space at London City Airport, so they
| demolished the traditional tower to reallocate space.
|
| London City implementation:
| https://www.nats.aero/news/london-city-is-first-major-
| airpor...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Ages ago, I watched a documentary about ATC that showed a
| drill involving ATC work under power failure (mains and
| generator). I'm probably misremembering some details but
| there were battery-operated radios and little tablets
| being passed around with scribbled information.
|
| I guess AI can work while the lights are on, but if this
| is your backstop scenario, you still need the meat ATC
| controllers, and they really need to know their stuff.
| mapt wrote:
| Tower systems are the last place in the world you would
| want a 97% accurate large language model, and the very
| last place we would culturally tolerate this sort of
| thing. Innate conservatism is what happens when
| deviations from perfection lead to collisions, and for
| the most part "AI" success remains a stochastic matter,
| gigabyte to terabyte sized tensors that are not human-
| intelligible. A black box which cannot be readily, safely
| validated in the real world.
|
| With that said - algorithmic, automated, and digital
| systems for collision avoidance at the very minimum have
| and could continue to make ATC jobs significantly easier.
| The radio voice channel is a particularly low fidelity,
| low bandwidth way to mete out information and directives.
| sorokod wrote:
| There will be a list of scenarios competing for that
| "last place".
|
| Operating rooms, certain military/police situations and
| self driving cars come to mind. A shared characteristic
| here is that errors lead to fatal outcomes exacerbated by
| unclear accountability.
| wbl wrote:
| Self driving cars are already operating no problem.
| mncharity wrote:
| Yes, but, as with collision avoidance systems... Years
| ago a VA thoracic surgeon was trying to find someone to
| build them a tool to listen in an OR for surgeon commands
| and team member acks, and if it saw a command without an
| ack, to nudge. Context is surgeons are both team managers
| and individual specialists, and when heads down as
| specialist, the managerial role gets load shed. So a
| dropped command may not be caught before bad things
| happen. The VA does OR pickup teams, so there isn't the
| polished but idiosyncratic load sharing of long-standing
| teams. And the acks are more formal. He was fine with a
| high false negative rate (catching anything is good), and
| a moderate false positive (nudges are low cost). That
| seems now plausible. Aside from tech maturity, the
| biggest challenge then envisioned was willingness to be
| recorded. Though perhaps the real fix is staffing the
| team management role, but that was above his pay grade.
| cco wrote:
| Surely the FAA would just shut the airport down in that
| eventuality, no?
|
| Seems tenable for a GA airport in rural Wyoming but that is
| far too close to a major hub.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > The tower will be unstaffed.
|
| Doesn't that just mean there will be no taxi control? My
| understanding is that ATC isn't in the tower. The tower
| staff just give clearances for take-off and directions on
| which runway to land/take-off. In radio clips, you can hear
| ATC hand-off a plane to tower.
| nharada wrote:
| No, ATC here refers to ground and tower controllers. They
| give taxi, takeoff, landing, and close in maneuvering
| instructions.
|
| When you say ATC I believe you're thinking of tracon
| controllers, a level of airspace up from towers who
| control approach and departures and then hand you off
| to/from the tower. Above them there's yet another level,
| center controllers. All of these are ATC though.
| V99 wrote:
| The "ground" controller manages taxing around the
| "movement areas" (i.e. taxiways) on the ground. This
| notably does not include the runways. And it depends how
| much of the actual ramp and parking area they control
| (those are sometimes non-movement area and it's the
| pilots job to not hit anything).
|
| The "tower" controller manages the actual runways, and
| the airspace within several miles of the airport
| laterally and a few thousand feet vertically (varying at
| each airport). This includes sequencing all the planes
| that want to take off of land there, and everybody
| maneuvering around that immediate area.
|
| For the large airports that mostly big airliner flights,
| that sequencing is largely worked out by the approach
| controllers dozens or hundreds of miles ahead of time. So
| there's a steady stream of planes following standardized
| approach procedures at just the right distance apart.
|
| Outside of the ~30 busiest airports in the country
| though, there is also a lot of general aviation in small
| planes. They want to transition through that airspace, or
| do a dozen laps around the "pattern" to practice
| landings, etc. Even at fairly major airports, there's
| plenty of GA activity. For example at Burbank, Ontario,
| John Wayne, Long Beach, San Jose, Oakland, etc in
| California. It's only really SFO and LAX where that
| doesn't really happen, because they set fees to shoo the
| peons away.
|
| SQL is a small but very busy airport that is almost
| exclusively GA. There are several flight schools there
| with multiple planes each, and it's sandwiched in
| complicated airspace between SFO, SJC, OAK, and open bay.
|
| The tower at this kind of airport is doing a delicate
| dance keeping multiple planes buzzing around in a
| rectangular pattern all day every day. Some of which are
| faster than others. Less frequently a larger much faster
| plane wants to get in or out and they're getting handed
| off from approach. Helicopters are doing tours and
| wanting to cross through. And a lot of the people flying
| are students that are new at this, don't know how to talk
| or listen on the radio right yet, make mistakes following
| directions, etc.
|
| With the tower closed, all those people have to
| coordinate on a party-line radio with each other about
| where they are, what they're doing, etc to hopefully not
| hit anyone. So yeah... it's possible, but it's going to
| be a mess, and that's why tiny airports like this with
| virtually no commercial passenger service have a tower.
|
| Also if you're leaving the immediate area, someone at the
| airport (ground, tower, or "clearance delivery",
| depending) normally will coordinate putting your
| destination (for visual/VFR flight following) or full
| route (for IFR/instruemnt) into the ATC systems before
| you takeoff so that you can talk to the approach
| controllers once you leave and they can provide you
| traffic advisories, etc.
|
| With nobody at the tower to do that, you have to "cold
| call" approach once already airborne. Or if your route
| allows, just not get flight following at all (and then
| ATC has no way to reach you). So SQL tower closing will
| also add to the workload for the SFO/OAK approach area.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The SQL tower service provided by SERCO already had a poor
| recent reputation among Bay Area small aircraft pilots,
| with controller(s) who are obviously overworked/underpaid.
| You can find plenty of threads about it on forums and on
| YouTube.
|
| Now they want to go with an even bottomer-of-the-barrel
| contractor? That's not going to work at all.
| why_at wrote:
| I've been working towards my private pilot license at San
| Carlos and I don't know what's going to happen if they
| can't find someone to do this job. The airport can get very
| busy sometimes and it seems like it could be dangerous to
| have nobody working the tower.
|
| I sympathize with the ATC workers though. It's ridiculous
| that they can't pay them a decent wage for the area,
| there's only two of them as far as I know.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| In fairness to the current administration, while the hiring
| freeze may have impacted ATC hiring, that is not causal here.
| No one hired last week would have been running things today
| (if they were hit with the freeze).
| elicash wrote:
| They were replying to a comment that said "We're going to
| need to hire more controllers."
|
| So I took their comment to be forward-looking.
|
| It's worth adding that Elon Musk's email that had the
| supposed "buyout" went to ATC folks -- however management
| was telling them they'd need to work through their
| resignation date, regardless, removing the point of it.
| Then again, Musk denied the buyout will work this way, that
| agencies can just do whatever they want on this and OPM
| seems to agree, so who knows.
| sigmar wrote:
| Someone that was hired weeks or months ago, but scheduled
| to start last week, could* have been included in the hiring
| freeze. There's examples here of rescinded offers after
| doing irs on-boarding: https://www.journalofaccountancy.com
| /news/2025/jan/executive... (Not that there's information
| that suggests this caused the incident)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That's not what the hiring freeze EO would have done:
|
| https://www.opm.gov/media/zkebfxow/omb-opm-federal-
| civilian-...
|
| If someone in your scenario had accepted the offer and
| was going to start last week, they would _not_ have been
| included in the hiring freeze and would have been able to
| start.
|
| > Job offers made prior to noon on January 20, 2025, for
| which the individual has accepted the position and has a
| designated start date on or before February 8, 2025.
| Those individuals should report to work according to
| their respective designated start date.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > not causal here
|
| but it does illustrate the type of future incident that it
| _could_ be causal of
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Sure, I didn't say otherwise.
| liontwist wrote:
| But we don't know what the future of the policy is
| either.
| rsanek wrote:
| Wow, a controller can be hired and on the job in less than a
| week?
| SmellTheGlove wrote:
| Sure can if they make the right offer to the people that
| were working there just before they quit due to being
| lowballed!
| ekianjo wrote:
| Is there an actual reason why the control tower work can't be
| fully automated? For train control lights we almost don't
| rely on human operators anywhere.
| foobarchu wrote:
| Not an expert but I can't imagine that would go very well.
| Trains have a single axis of movement that sometimes cross
| or combines with others. Aircraft have three axes of
| movement all under human control.
| namirez wrote:
| How would you deal with all sorts of emergencies involving
| human pilots? For unmanned aircraft(aka drones) it's a lot
| easier to implement unmanned traffic management (UTM).
| hattmall wrote:
| Direct them to land in the best location and make sure
| all other aircraft are on non-intersecting flight paths.
| What exactly is ATC doing that software isn't able to?
|
| How many options are there for handling emergencies with
| aircraft now? You pretty much just have either land ASAP
| or circle to burn fuel and then land.
| namirez wrote:
| Obviously you're not a pilot. It might be helpful for you
| to listen to a few ATC transcripts of emergency
| situations.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| It does seem like the routine could be automated more,
| no?
| justinspace wrote:
| "You pretty much just..."
|
| Ah, there it is. "How hard could coordinating takeoff and
| landing for thousands of flights be? You just..."
| stouset wrote:
| Trains run on fixed tracks with fixed intersections, and
| one track might see a handful of them per day.
|
| Planes around airports come in from all directions in three
| dimensions, and there can be hundreds of arrivals per hour.
|
| These are vastly different scales of problem domain.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Four Dimensional Navigation, actually! X, Y, Z, plus
| Time. By incorporating strict time constraints, air
| traffic controllers can schedule and merge arriving
| aircraft more precisely, reducing holding patterns and
| optimizing fuel usage.
|
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19750022064/downloads
| /19...
|
| >4D AREA NAVIGATION SYSTEM DESCRIPTION AND FLIGHT TEST
| RESULTS
|
| >A 4D area navigation system was designed to guide
| aircraft along a prespecified flight path (reference
| path) such that the aircraft would arrive at the approach
| gate at a time specified by the ATC controller. Key
| components to achieve this requirement were:
|
| >(1) stored reference trajectories;
|
| >(2) a continuously recomputed capture trajectory to a
| selected waypoint on the reference trajectory so as to
| achieve the desired time of arrival;
|
| >(3) electronic situation displays; and (4) a control
| system to follow the overall trajectory in space and
| time.
|
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19750015477
|
| >Four-dimensional guidance algorithms for aircraft in an
| air traffic control environment
|
| >Theoretical development and computer implementation of
| three guidance algorithms are presented. From a small set
| of input parameters the algorithms generate the ground
| track, altitude profile, and speed profile required to
| implement an experimental 4-D guidance system. Given a
| sequence of waypoints that define a nominal flight path,
| the first algorithm generates a realistic, flyable ground
| track consisting of a sequence of straight line segments
| and circular arcs. Each circular turn is constrained by
| the minimum turning radius of the aircraft. The ground
| track and the specified waypoint altitudes are used as
| inputs to the second algorithm which generates the
| altitude profile. The altitude profile consists of
| piecewise constant flight path angle segments, each
| segment lying within specified upper and lower bounds.
| The third algorithm generates a feasible speed profile
| subject to constraints on the rate of change in speed,
| permissible speed ranges, and effects of wind. Flight
| path parameters are then combined into a chronological
| sequence to form the 4-D guidance vectors. These vectors
| can be used to drive the autopilot/autothrottle of the
| aircraft so that a 4-D flight path could be tracked
| completely automatically; or these vectors may be used to
| drive the flight director and other cockpit displays,
| thereby enabling the pilot to track a 4-D flight path
| manually.
|
| https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/stories/2020-12-4d-tbo
| -a-...
|
| >4D-TBO: a new approach to aircraft trajectory prediction
|
| >How four-dimensional trajectory data could contribute to
| aviation decarbonisation targets
|
| >The real-time transmission of four-dimensional
| trajectory data has the incredible potential to greatly
| improve an aircraft's trajectory prediction. By reducing
| the inaccuracy of current air traffic management (ATM)
| prediction models by approximately 30-40%, the Trajectory
| Based Operations in 4 Dimensions (4D-TBO) project is
| helping to pave the way to a more sustainable management
| of tomorrow's air traffic.
|
| https://skybrary.aero/articles/4d-trajectory-concept
|
| >The 4D trajectory of an aircraft consists of the three
| spatial dimensions plus time as a fourth dimension. This
| means that any delay is in fact a distortion of the
| trajectory as much as a level change or a change of the
| horizontal position. Tactical interventions by air
| traffic controllers rarely take into account the effect
| on the trajectory as a whole due to the relatively short
| look-ahead time (in the order of 20 minutes or so).
|
| >The implementation of 4D trajectory management is being
| researched by SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) in
| the EU and NextGen in the US.
|
| >The 4D trajectory concept is based on the integration of
| time into the 3D aircraft trajectory. It aims to ensure
| flight on a practically unrestricted, optimum trajectory
| for as long as possible in exchange for the aircraft
| being obliged to meet very accurately an arrival time
| over a designated point.
| feistypharit wrote:
| Yes, this multiplies the complexity. When you talk to ATC
| you always need your tail number and airplane model. Why?
| Because a landing Cessna 150 is moving at 70mph. An
| incoming jet is moving at 130mph. And the jet can't just
| slow down to 70 or it will fall out of the sky. They need
| to consider aircraft performance in all aspects of
| planning.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > there can be hundreds of arrivals per hour
|
| I Googled about this. London Heathrow is widely regarded
| as the busiest two runway airport in the world. They
| allow less than 50 arrival per hour. Are there any
| airports in the world that can have "hundreds of arrivals
| per hour"? Conservatively, 200 can be considered
| "hundreds", then you would need 8x runways operating at
| max capacity. That seems hard to imagine. Google also
| tells me that Atlanta (normally the business airport in
| the US) can handle about 250 "operations" per hour, so
| let's say half for arrivals.
|
| Serious question: Why is 3D such a hard problem for
| modern computers? I could imagine a plane enters a
| cylinder of airspace near the airport and automatically
| communicates by radio waves information about itself.
| Then, HAL9000 can provide guidance as a landing plan.
| refulgentis wrote:
| > Serious question: Why is 3D such a hard problem for
| modern computers? I could imagine a plane enters a
| cylinder of airspace near the airport and automatically
| communicates by radio waves information about itself.
| Then, HAL9000 can provide guidance as a landing plan.
|
| Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe it is a more modern
| phenomena, enabled by a steady diet of 30 second videos.
|
| Either way, I'm quite disturbed, regularly, recently, by
| the # of people who breezily stumble through quarter-
| baked thoughts while speaking dismissively, as if they've
| covered the surface of a complex _universe_ that has been
| worked on very many smart people for decades, and _now_
| we can get to the real singular problem that 'd fix
| everything, the one thing they've identified.
|
| I don't even know where to begin trying to interlocute
| when the starting premise is "3D is hard for modern
| computers."
|
| So I speak straightforwardly, in a way that I wish
| wouldn't be seen as rude, but it is.
|
| So it goes.
|
| You're right about the arrivals, but you missed the
| forest for the trees in the comment you're replying to.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You're reading into it too much. It wasn't dismissive.
|
| And the framing of "3d" is a reasonable followup to the
| train comparison.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Well, if it wasn't, it certainly is now! ;)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| ?? I have no idea what this means.
|
| Are you implying your reply would make the previous post
| _become_ dismissive?
| refulgentis wrote:
| "It" is an indefinite pronoun, meaning, "it" is by
| definition unclear to anyone but the speaker.
|
| Here, "it" means "your involvement in this discussion"
|
| To put it a bit more plainly, and apologies if it is hard
| to hear currently, I'd find this very helpful to hear
| this if I were you:
|
| - The first comment was objectively, straightforwardly,
| dismissive. You questioned one statistic, then ignored
| the thrust of the comment and the comments leading up to
| it, instead framing the difficulty as "modern computers
| have a hard time with 3D", eliding the main point
| communicated.
|
| - You then replied to my comment to tell me I'm wrong, it
| wasn't dismissive. This is also, in itself, dismissive. I
| had already fisked you, and I felt bad, so I didn't want
| to get overly literal and criticize you roughly again, in
| front of a crowd, so soon. So, I choose to keep it brief,
| rely on your ability to recognize the irony in your reply
| being dismissive in telling me the original comment
| wasn't dismissive, especially when combined with the
| wink.
|
| To be hyper clear, it's...unusual...when communicating
| with others to ignore most of what they just said and
| fixate on one illustrative part of what they said, then
| when told you were being dismissive, to just say "I
| wasn't being dismissive" and put the burden on the
| listener. It's so unusual as to be objectively amusing.
|
| You certainly did not _mean_ to be dismissive, but you
| were. I sympathize with the reflex, I am 100% sure I 've
| made many similar errors in my own journey, probably more
| than you ever have and will. It is a problem area for me.
|
| With humility, I'd humbly suggest that when given
| feedback, rather than briefly asserting the feedback is
| incorrect, you come with curiosity and ask why it came
| off that way.
|
| Given their answer, you'll be able to tell _very_ quickly
| if the person is having a bad day /picking on you, or if
| you were unclear.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I'm a different person from the guy you originally called
| dismissive.
|
| Your advice would make sense if I was the same person,
| but if I was the same person I would have responded very
| differently to the criticism. I gave a brief reply
| _because_ I 'm a third party.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Aha! Glad we cleared that up :)
| kristjansson wrote:
| We've built good enough systems that lots of people have
| never had engage with the complexity of reality?
| refulgentis wrote:
| Great, concise, thought that wraps together some of my
| other bugaboos. Will be stealing it for many years to
| come :)
| rtpg wrote:
| I think the 3D part is fine, it's more "all of physics"
| coming into play with a plane. Like bird strikes, engine
| failures, trying to decide how to handle that. What is
| the loss function the AI is supposed to apply if an
| emergency landing is needed?
|
| And then if you have people flying the planes, you have
| to deal with people mostly _but not always_ doing the
| right thing. So now you build out a plan and have to deal
| with consequences of that.
|
| So at the end of the day you're still looking at
| funneling humans into a thing. At worst you could
| consider ATC as "customer support", there to press
| buttons on machines to actually handle a bunch of
| logistics because the pilots need to figure things out.
|
| On top of all of this, airports are trying to get through
| a lot of flights quickly. So people can make snap
| judgements about whether planes can or cannot advance,
| what they should do, etc. No matter how well your plan
| is, the instant a pilot mishears something it's over.
|
| If we can figure out self-driving cars, maybe we can talk
| about replacing pilots with AIs. But in the meantime
| there's somebody not following the plan often enough.
|
| This does lead to an interesting question for me, though:
| what is the biggest "human movement" system that is
| actually entirely hands-off logistics? I would imagine
| that postal service companies are doing a lot but every
| major person moving operation seems pretty hands-on from
| the outside.
| jon-wood wrote:
| > If we can figure out self-driving cars, maybe we can
| talk about replacing pilots with AIs.
|
| There's currently a human in the loop at almost all times
| but a great many planes are already self-flying.
| Autopilots are a thing, and have been for decades. Modern
| airliners routinely land themselves, and Garmin have
| developed an emergency landing system for general
| aviation aircraft which can handle everything including
| selecting an airport and communicating with ATC in the
| case of the pilot being incapacitated.
|
| In many ways a self-piloting plane is an easier problem
| to solve than self-driving cars. Every plane has (or will
| have in the near future) a beacon on it transmitting it's
| location to every other plane around it to allow
| collision avoidance, and the procedure for getting from
| one major airport to another is pretty much prescribed in
| the form of standard departures, arrivals, and airways.
| The big difference of course is that if a car on the road
| breaks down and the AI can't handle it then the car can
| just stop, and baring someone not noticing and plowing
| into the back of them everyone will be fine, while if
| that happens in a plane it's a matter of time until the
| thing falls out of the sky killing everyone on board.
| kristjansson wrote:
| The happy path is easy, as you imagine. It's all the
| other imaginable and unimaginable paths, each unhappy in
| their own way...
|
| Oh and thousands of lives hang in the literal balance
| matwood wrote:
| It's not _just_ a 3D problem. It 's all of the management
| in the air and on the ground. Could a computer eventually
| do it autonomously? I would think eventually, but the
| problem is handling exceptions. The Navy has been
| experimenting for years with a digital replacement of
| their Ouija board analog flight deck management tool for
| carriers [1]. And even then, people are still making most
| of the decisions.
|
| And ATL is a crazy busy airport (there's an old doc on
| Netflix I think which is interesting). To confirm your
| question, ATL can run 5 runways nearly continuously[2].
| It would be interesting to know what they peak at during
| a busy Monday morning, but my guess is they are more
| constrained by gate space at this point.
|
| [1] https://newatlas.com/us-navy-ouija-board/50087/ [2]
| https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/business-
| econom...
| stouset wrote:
| I should have said "arrivals and departures". KATL has
| 2,100-2,700 arrivals and departures per day. Even if we
| assume those are equally spaced throughout the day (they
| aren't) we're over 100/hour.
|
| But sure. It's a mild exaggeration. It still doesn't
| change the core point.
|
| 3D isn't just "magically hard" for computers, but the
| process for routing traffic is _wildly complex_ and a
| bunch of planes arriving and leaving at semi-random
| times, directions, and with different requirements and
| capabilities is where the problem _starts_ not finishes.
|
| The happy path is relatively easy. The exceptions are
| innumerable.
| sofixa wrote:
| > one track might see a handful of them per day.
|
| In the middle of nowhere. A metro track can have a train
| every 60s.
|
| But it's still entirely fixed, with easy to deploy
| sensors on both the tracks and trains.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| > For train control lights we almost don't rely on human
| operators anywhere.
|
| Trains are on tracks. They basically move in one dimension.
| And the tracks can have (near) contact-based sensors along
| the way where the exact distance is known. (And in the US,
| there still is human conducting in a lot of the US)
|
| That's a very different problem space than the three
| dimension, unattached, space that air traffic moves in.
| randerson wrote:
| The problem space is too broad.
|
| E.g. On 9/11 ATC had to land almost 3000 planes in 1 hour.
| I'm not sure if that sort of national coordinated grounding
| is part of ATC training, but it's certainly not something
| I'd want to leave to some code that has never needed to run
| in production before.
| hattmall wrote:
| It just seems like software could pretty easily compute
| non-intersecting flight paths for all planes and assign
| them accordingly. As well it could real time monitor all
| trajectories and continue to give out the updated flight
| paths. I don't see why you also couldn't run a trillion
| tests using real and simulated flight data to make sure
| it works well.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| Because right now airplanes are flown by humans. A large
| part of atcs jobs is dealing with humans. Not every pilot
| will be able to fly the optimum flight path.
| YZF wrote:
| Air traffic control has a lot more things to deal with.
| There are scenarios like runway closed and all traffic
| has to be diverted. Loss of communication. Various
| emergencies. Weather changes. It's not just a question of
| 3D motion planning. Controllers in the tower also use
| their eyes.
|
| In your imaginary system how is the software "tower"
| communicating with airplanes, using voice? I don't think
| we even have software that can reliably decode the
| variety of human voices over radio that a controller can
| respond to.
|
| One can imagine a digital protocol to all airplanes but
| technology works its way really slowly into aviation.
| hattmall wrote:
| Yes, it would require a piece of hardware, but that seems
| easy to regulate and wouldn't need to be very expensive
| certainly not in relation to the costs of owning and
| operating an airplane.
| mplanchard wrote:
| Seems like you've stumbled onto a very obvious solution
| that would be easy to implement and that no one else has
| ever managed to see, but which would totally
| revolutionize the airline industry. Time to start a
| business!
| SeptiumMMX wrote:
| Because things can go from routine to multiple simultaneous
| life-threatening failures very quickly. Something like one
| flight declaring a mayday while another one just lost
| communication, all while the radar just started glitching
| in a weird way. Human intuition and common sense can sort
| it out. Deterministic algorithms would not.
| stall84 wrote:
| not a bad question honestly.. I'd want some highly skilled
| humans there monitoring things but, yes. The air traffic
| control system of the US is absolutely incredibly amazing,
| but their entire mission, technology and equipment used to
| accomplish that mission, etc need to be reviewed, maybe
| rebuilt to be even safer.
| justinspace wrote:
| I mean this sincerely. What is more likely: that we've
| spent several decades ignoring very real automation
| solutions to this problem, or that it's a really, really
| hard problem that could get people killed?
| kristjansson wrote:
| Positive Train Control has been a big fight too.
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| Weather. How often do weather events change the entire
| traffic flow into a train station?
|
| I've heard ATC swap landing and takeoff directions in the
| space of 10 minutes because of weather
| rayiner wrote:
| https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/01/broad-
| exemptions-t...
|
| > President Trump signed an executive order instituting the
| freeze on Monday shortly after his inauguration, but allowed
| for exceptions for positions related to immigration
| enforcement, national security or public safety.
|
| Important to read the details! There will be lots of
| misinformation as people invoke the minority of critical jobs
| as cover to defend the less critical ones.
| AngryData wrote:
| And we also did make it basically impossible for ATC workers to
| strike, so its not like the ATC workers could have said "fix
| this shit so people don't die or we will strike" because they
| can't really and anyone who says it anyways alone is going to
| be given the boot and blacklisted from the job. Not to mention
| the amount of training and effort needed to become one in the
| first place with basically zero job security or recourse if you
| make the wrong person angry.
| NaOH wrote:
| Hiring controllers is not easy. A friend's daughter just went
| through the hiring process. She graduated from college with an
| appropriate degree right as COVID hit. Her FAA application
| wasn't accepted for four years.
|
| This past summer she did the four-week interactive online
| courses. Applicants must pass this and may not re-enter the
| program if they do not. After that she did the six-week courses
| in Oklahoma City. Again, applicants must pass this and may not
| re-enter the program if they do not. She passed. Only half her
| class of 20 passed. In the prior class, only 4 of 15 passed.
|
| She declined the position when they could not offer a position
| within reasonable proximity of her family. She, too, may not
| re-enter the program. On top of all that, the program has
| strict age requirements because there's a mandatory retirement
| age (55, I believe).
|
| There isn't a large pool of applicants and the percentage of
| successful ones is not high. Considering the amount of lives on
| the line, it's understandable the hiring criteria is strict.
| All told, it's not an easy position to fill and even explicit
| efforts to increase the number of applicants will take years.
| Just like many other skilled fields.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > appropriate degree
|
| what's considered an appropriate degree for ATC?
| NaOH wrote:
| In her case it was a Bachelors in Aviation and Aerospace
| Science with an Air Traffic Control Concentration. There
| may be other programs or concentrations which are
| acceptable.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Since the chances of landing an ATC job are so slim with
| the degree, what kind of job options does that degree
| afford you? What kind of job did she end up taking (or
| doing while waiting on the FAA)?
| NaOH wrote:
| While waiting for the FAA and since declining the ATC
| position she's worked at her family's auto repair shop.
| Pre-FAA she did repair work and for the last few months
| since returning she's more on the management side. She
| hasn't yet decided if the family business or something
| else is the career she wants.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > Bachelors in Aviation and Aerospace Science with an Air
| Traffic Control Concentration
|
| I'm not that far removed from my time in college, but I'm
| shocked by the specificity of that.
| NaOH wrote:
| Here's the FAA overview of what the agency calls the Air
| Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative (AT-CTI) Program:
|
| https://www.faa.gov/jobs/students/schools
| nradov wrote:
| No college degree is officially required. Candidates with
| aviation related degrees probably have a better chance of
| making it through. But there are plenty of working
| controllers who have only a high school diploma or learned
| the job as enlisted military personnel.
|
| "Have either one year of general work experience or four
| years of education leading to a bachelor's degree, or a
| combination of both"
|
| https://www.faa.gov/be-atc
| kbaker wrote:
| Another problem is the maximum entry age for the ATC school -
| if you are over the age of 31 you can't apply.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Not being allowed to re-enter the program is just insane.
| perihelions wrote:
| Isn't it a reasonable filter? I'd (naively) assume that all
| things being equal, a person who passes a test on the first
| attempt, is more likely to have a higher innate ability
| than one who doesn't.
|
| Is this wrong?
| UltraSane wrote:
| Imagine if they only let people take the bar exam once.
| michaelt wrote:
| That depends on the test, and the training surrounding
| it.
|
| If I'm hiring for a job where there's a strict
| requirement to be 6 feet tall and there's nothing
| candidates can do to get taller - then once you've
| measured under 6 feet there's no point in re-testing you.
|
| If I'm hiring for a job where there's a strict
| requirement that you be able to lift a 90 lbs weight, a
| lot of people will fail - but if they hit the gym, in a
| month or two they'll be able to pass easily.
|
| If I'm hiring for a job where there's a strict
| requirement that you be able to lift a 90 lbs weight, but
| before the test every applicant goes through a 6 month
| strength training program, so we test them at absolute
| peak strength? Re-testing would be a waste of time,
| except in a few cases like if someone had a loved one die
| just before the final test.
|
| If I'm hiring for a job with a written test, the test
| draws a random selection of questions from a question
| bank, and some questions are much easier than others?
| There might be a substantial random element to the
| results. If re-testing people produces substantially
| different scores, probably that indicates I need to
| improve the design of my test.
| fernandopj wrote:
| Indeed. Imagine if prospect lawyers were prevented from
| retaking the bar exam.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| ATC doesn't get to redo traffic flying in the air.
| pirate787 wrote:
| The program needs to have high standards and I imagine some
| of the reasons for failing are related to ability under
| pressure.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Imagine if they only let people take the bar exam once.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| While missing a comma can have great impact, it isn't the
| same as missing traffic, and ATC doesn't have the luxury
| of rough drafts.
| kemayo wrote:
| Particularly not for the last reason mentioned -- declining
| an offered position because it's not in a place you want to
| live.
| mplanchard wrote:
| In addition, ATC is not allowed to go on strike, limiting the
| degree to which they can bargain for better working
| conditions, pay, etc.
| xienze wrote:
| Then why is there an ATC union if, apparently, it can't
| affect any change?
| mplanchard wrote:
| Union predates the legal ban on striking, and still
| represents employees, even though their actual power has
| been significantly neutered.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| There is a law that the govt has to negotiate in good
| faith. Presumably while they could say "no" to
| everything, it would be hard to prove that was "good
| faith" if the union takes them to court.
| kristjansson wrote:
| The ATC union has some unique history [1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_
| Traffic_...
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| And current controllers are often working 60-70+ weeks
| because of the understaffing...
| throwaway36482 wrote:
| Their candidate success rate would probably be higher if they
| weren't rejecting the vast majority of their most-qualified
| applicants for reasons that are clearly pretextual:
| https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-
| scandal-...
| tristor wrote:
| That's shocking and disturbing, and is pretty much a
| textbook example of exactly the type of thing opponents to
| DEI have been referring to for how DEI and Affirmative
| Action result in a lowering of the bar. They explicitly
| structured things so that ATC hiring was pre-restricted for
| non-cognitive (e.g. merit) reasons, and failed out
| candidates that scored a perfect score on the cognitive
| test on the basis of their demographics (they weren't
| minorities).
| talldayo wrote:
| ATC (as well as most government jobs) are a real case of
| "you get what you pay for". When you bring wages down so
| low that educated engineers don't want to work your job,
| your options are to lower the qualifications or leave
| empty seats.
|
| DEI might have contributed to this, but we wouldn't be
| hiring unqualified people in the first place if America
| could naturally compete for talent. The lesson learned
| seems to be less about the dangers of diversity and more
| about how the feds aren't paying the industry rate for
| professionals.
| tristor wrote:
| Did you read the link that I replied to? Because in that
| link, what I am responding to, it EXPLICITLY says that
| the FAA changed the ATC selection process to exclude
| candidates based on demographics (being not diverse)
| regardless of their aptitude as tested using a
| standardized and validated cognitive assessment. These
| were candidates who had already completed multiple years
| of schooling and explicitly wanted to be ATCs, so you are
| talking about a pipeline problem which may or may not
| exist but is irrelevant to the article I am responding to
| in the link above my comment.
|
| Per that article, candidates who accepted the pay terms
| and wanted to become ATCs were /rejected/ explicitly
| because they were not minorities or otherwise able to
| produce a biographical or demographic reason for
| acceptance, even when they scored a perfect score on the
| standardized aptitude assessment.
|
| If you have something to refute the article the person
| above me linked, I'd love to see it because I'm
| incredibly disappointed in what I read about in that
| article.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No, you read a link that says people suing the FAA
| _claim_ the FAA didn 't hire qualified candidates on
| diversity.
|
| Except that none of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit
| actually bothered to apply for jobs with the FAA (see
| this blog post from their own legal team crowing about
| winning a procedural matter over whether they had
| standing to sue given that they never applied for a job
| and thus were never actually rejected by the FAA
| https://mslegal.org/press-releases/mslf-prevails-over-
| faas-a... )...
|
| What actually happened was that the FAA invalidated a
| bunch of AT-SAT[1] scores to align with its new diversity
| policy, and a bunch of people who barely passed the first
| time didn't want to re-take the test again and risk
| failing. So they did the American thing and sued instead.
|
| The FAA has not rejected qualified candidates on the
| grounds of "diversity." And at any rate, the controller
| in the DC tower last night was hired during the Trump
| administration and the Blackhawk pilot that caused the
| crash wasn't the kind of candidate who would have been
| selected on DEI grounds...
|
| [1] it's like the SAT, but for controller jobs instead of
| college admissions
| tristor wrote:
| Perhaps I misunderstood something, but it seems those
| claims were supported by the evidence of multiple
| internal memos retrieved via discovery. Another commenter
| points out that this practice ended in 2018 due to
| Congress making it illegal, but prior that the FAA had
| been issuing a biographical assessment as a basis for
| hiring decisions, exactly as stated in the article.
|
| Your own link has the court opinion confirming my
| understanding of the article. The fact they won the case
| on procedural grounds is not relevant to the fact the
| court is opining in the case that the evidence supports a
| conclusion that the FAA discriminated against "non-
| diverse" candidates who were otherwise qualified.
|
| I think we can all agree that for a role like ATC, the
| most important thing is that candidates are competent and
| capable, because it is literally life or death. I have
| the strong belief that minority candidates are also
| competent and capable, so discriminatory against "non-
| diverse" candidates is reprehensible in the strongest
| terms. I don't think my position here is unusual,
| unreasonable, or in any way objectionable, and it turns
| out Congress agreed and made this practice explicitly
| illegal.
| nradov wrote:
| Educated engineers generally don't want to work ATC jobs
| regardless of pay because they're not engineering jobs.
| Controllers are operators, not engineers. There are some
| working controllers with engineering degrees, but almost
| nothing in typical engineering coursework is directly
| relevant to the job.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| It's kind of odd that blog post doesn't mention that the
| biographical assessment it's talking about was only used
| between 2014 and 2018.
| abecedarius wrote:
| It says "In 2016, Congress passed Public Law 114-190,
| which among other things banned the use of biographical
| assessments as a first-line hiring tool for air traffic
| controllers."
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Wow.
|
| I thought Trump instantly blaming DEI was ridiculous in
| this case but I'm somewhat reconsidering.
|
| How much less of a shortage of ATCs would we have now if it
| wasn't for that debacle?
| talldayo wrote:
| > How much less of a shortage of ATCs would we have now
| if it wasn't for that debacle?
|
| Probably not much, considering the biggest constraining
| factor is pay. For example, San Carlos airport is
| shutting down ATC entirely because they can't pay
| _anyone_ enough to live locally to the tower:
| https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-airport-
| losing-...
|
| There would be no problem filling the seats if the
| compensation was handsome and attractive. But we all know
| how federal workers are compensated, even when lives are
| on the line.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| My understanding is ATCs are pretty well paid. With most
| making 140-150, and many making up to 200k.
|
| I could see this maybe being an issue in the bay area but
| outside of that area that pretty good pay.
| NaOH wrote:
| Starting salary is US $90,000 along with government
| benefits.
| bradfox2 wrote:
| This is, justifiably, very similar to nuclear reactor
| operators. Pay needs to reflect the working conditions to
| attract more people (it does for reactor operators).
| paulddraper wrote:
| I believe this happened in DC SFRA, which is a 30-mile radius
| specially controlled airspace due to the level of traffic and
| national security interests.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Damn. We've avoided a US airliner having a fatal crash since
| 2009.
| drcode wrote:
| It's a crazy accomplishment really, unimaginable how safe US
| commercial airplanes have been in the last two decades
|
| So sad that streak finally ended
| techwizrd wrote:
| As someone working in aviation safety, this is heartbreaking
| and awful to watch. The efforts of CAST and ASIAS in reducing
| aviation safety accidents have been very successful, but of
| course we still have so much to do.
| whycome wrote:
| There have been incidents that were just saved by luck (eg
| losing door in flight). And Too many near misses.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Better a near miss than a catastrophic incident.
| chrismartin wrote:
| And in such an avoidable way, too.
| idlewords wrote:
| There was a fatality on a Southwest flight in 2018.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380
| okdood64 wrote:
| > fatal crash
|
| But yes, you're right to point that out.
| ars wrote:
| Not a US airliner, but in the US: Asiana Airlines Flight 214
| SteveVeilStream wrote:
| Although Air Canada Flight 759 was far too close for comfort
| and should be classified as a failure of the system, even if it
| did not result in an accident.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The video makes it look like the helicopter crashed into the
| airplane, not the other way around.
| lysace wrote:
| How do you figure? The videos of the crash that I can find on X
| just show a small airline light suddenly turning into a low-res
| explosion. (Edit: ah. yes.)
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| there's a dot moving from the left to right that intercepts
| the airline lights and explodes. I would presume that's the
| helicopter.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Its on final landing. The small light (helicopter) from the
| left intersects it.
| cryptonector wrote:
| https://x.com/aletweetsnews/status/1884789306645983319
|
| You see the helo coming from the left on the screen while the
| airliner appears to be descending. The helo must have gotten
| in the way (as opposed to catching up from behind). The
| airliner's lights are unmistakable, so how did the helo pilot
| not notice them? The airliner's pilots might not have had a
| chance to notice the helo. Since the helo was crossing an
| active runway approach the fault has to be with them.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| My only thought is that it's a regional jet, so it's
| smaller than a "normal" commercial flight. At night, if you
| expect it to be a big jet and it looks small, you presume
| it's just further away. I think they saw it, saw it small
| and presumed they had enough time to make it in front of
| it.
| pbronez wrote:
| Maybe, but those smaller aircraft handle tons of flights
| in and out of DCA. Lots of commuter flights to NYC,
| Boston, etc.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Not many big jets at DCA. Max is typically a 757.
| ghxst wrote:
| Anyone that can explain what the people on X mean when they
| comment that it was "intentional"? I'm probably out of the
| loop but this feels super out of place to me.
|
| These are only a small amount directly from the replies to
| the tweet you shared, you can find many more if you keep
| scrolling.
|
| https://x.com/27steph77/status/1884799302947500062
| https://x.com/Aangtweets/status/1884793609326666014
| https://x.com/Ray4444444444/status/1884824192308134234
| https://x.com/OmarGoshTV/status/1884807622588522981
| https://x.com/Sgt_Mac87/status/1884795428559814968
| https://x.com/dudeodnv/status/1884796307665203456
| https://x.com/USBornNRaised/status/1884793041610842420
| https://x.com/thatcrazytoast1/status/1884797991678034183
| netsharc wrote:
| Because too Allah-damned-many people are worm-brained
| conspiracy theorists nowadays: https://archive.is/sS3W1
| jeffhuys wrote:
| I feel like Q is much more prevalent in discussions here
| and on reddit than between actual conspiracy theorists...
| Q didn't start that, it's just part of it. But I do think
| it shows that we should help people understand more. A
| lot of secrecy nowadays.
| netsharc wrote:
| It doesn't have to be connected to QAnon, a lot of people
| now just jump into "it's a conspiracy, I'm sure of it!"
| and when they find X and Y and create a connection
| between the 2, their brain rewards them, even if that
| connection isn't there in reality. And imagine how
| exhausting it is for debunkers, when they try to say
| "you're hallucinating", the conspiracy theorist holds
| strong to his belief, thinking the debunker doesn't get
| it or they're part of the lying pack.
|
| > As game designers would expect, it works very well --
| because when you "figure it out yourself," you own it.
| You experience the thrill of discovery, the excitement of
| finding the rabbit hole and tumbling down it. Because you
| were persuaded to "connect the dots yourself," you can
| see the absolute logic of it, even if you made it up.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Because everything is intentionally nowadays according to
| Twitter users. No matter the event.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Landing lights are very focused. They're only noticeable if
| they're pointed towards you (but then they're very bright).
| They were visible to the camera but perhaps not to the
| heli.
|
| Of course the plane would have anti-collision lights as
| well though, those are omnidirectional.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Gruesome, in a crash like this, if there were any survivors from
| the impact, the water would likely have finished them off.
| whycome wrote:
| If they can get out, they have a chance. There was a crash on
| the Potomac in January 1982 and there were several survivors.
| The video of the rescue is pretty crazy.
|
| https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/from-the-archives-h...
| bfeynman wrote:
| There was a truck that crashed on bridge right next to
| lincoln memorial and then veered off roadway into bridge, and
| both were deceased. Its very cold in DC right now and an
| airplane crashing is much more catastrophic.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It was very cold in DC until recently but it's 45degF right
| now at 11:21. I was walking & biking around in a sports
| jacket today with a winter coat strapped onto the outside
| of my bag.
|
| Best wishes to the victims.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Potomac is half frozen still.
| twoparachute45 wrote:
| It wasn't a police chopper, it was a military VH-60, also known
| as a "White Hawk" [1]. It's a VIP transport helicopter, the same
| type that is used to transport the president.
|
| ~The flight track of the helicopter [2] starts at a property in
| McLean, VA (edited to remove likely inaccurate info)~
|
| The chopper was based out of Fort Belvoir, and based on similar
| past flight tracks, looks like it probably took off from there
| too. CNN is reporting that there were 3 soldiers onboard, and no
| VIPs.
|
| 1: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_VH-60N_White_Hawk
|
| 2:
| https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae313d&lat=38.952&lon=-...
| reaperman wrote:
| [2] shows the helicopter taking off 2 miles away from the old
| saudi embassy in McLean marked "permanently closed" on google
| maps. (The current embassy is in DC proper, directly across the
| river from DCA airport)
|
| I don't think thats strong evidence that it took off from the
| old Saudi Embassy - thats pretty far away even given your
| caveat about accuracy.
|
| Edit: it looks to me like the black hawk was coming from
| somewhere else with its ADS-B turned off entirely, and then
| turned on ADS-B once it reached the potomac to approach DCA.
| The first two datapoints of that flight already show it going
| 110mph, which its unlikely to be able to accelerate to in just
| 0.2miles after take off.
|
| Edit 2: The route also looks very similar to this flight from
| 11 days earlier (but reversed in direction):
| https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/PAT25 This shows the
| Blackhawk at 300 feet passing by DCA on what seems like a
| routine or training flight? I don't know how to look up
| historical flights to see if this is a commonly-flown route. On
| that flight, the Black Hawk flew past DCA at 300 feet of
| altitude, and the last FlightAware data for the American Eagle
| passenger flight showed 400 feet of altitude.
| twoparachute45 wrote:
| I didn't say it took off from the old embassy. The flight
| track starts at the backyard of a house that is currently
| owned by the embassy. You can see the owner of that property
| by searching that address here (the site doesn't support a
| direct link): https://icare.fairfaxcounty.gov/ffxcare/search/
| commonsearch....
| reaperman wrote:
| Thank you!
| twoparachute45 wrote:
| Regarding your edit: that's a good point, but the
| vertical ascent rate of the chopper at those first few
| data points shows 400-800 feet per minute, which is
| consistent with a chopper taking off...'
|
| edit: your second edit makes me think you're right
| though, tonight's flight track was pretty consistent with
| the past flight track where it looks like it both took
| off from and landed at Fort Belvoir.
| dboreham wrote:
| That house doesn't seem to have enough clearance vs the
| trees to land a helo. Note that Langley (CIA) is nearby.
| jijji wrote:
| 811 Lawton St, Mc Lean, VA 22101 Name: SAUDIA ARABIA ROYAL
| EMBASSY OF, Mailing Address: 8500 HILLTOP RD STE 301 C/O
| FINANCIAL DIRECTOR FAIRFAX VA 22031 4310
| jetpackjoe wrote:
| CNN is reporting the helicopter came from Fort Belvoir.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/plane-crash-dca-potomac-
| was...
| reaperman wrote:
| The helicopter seems like it is typically stationed at Fort
| Belvoir. Does "out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia" strictly mean
| that the helicopter's flight started at Fort Belvoir, or
| that the helicopter itself is considered to be "out of Fort
| Belvoir" in a similar manner that LeBron James could be
| said to be "out of Akron, OH"?
| highcountess wrote:
| Military flights do not fly ADB hot outside of the DC FRZ. It
| was also clearly exactly following flight route 4.
|
| There are a few locations in that area it could have been
| coming from. Anything else would have made no sense flying
| through the FRZ from/to Belvoir.
| reaperman wrote:
| What is "flight route 4"?
| matheweis wrote:
| The FAA publishes supplemental charts specifically for
| helicopters in areas with high concentrations of
| helicopter activity: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flig
| ht_info/aeronav/productc...
|
| Specifically the Baltimore-Washington route chart was
| relevant for these flights:
| https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/10-31-2024/PDFs/Balt-
| Wash_Hel...
|
| If you find the DCA airport on that chart, you'll find
| routes 1 and 4 which roughly correspond to the
| helicopter's flight path.
| Animats wrote:
| Right.
|
| Helicopter was on Helicopter Route 4, per the map,
| apparently on course.
|
| Aircraft was on approach to Runway 33, apparently on
| course.
|
| That helicopter route crosses the approach to runway 33.
|
| That's controlled airspace. How did they both have
| clearance to be there?
|
| We'll know more tomorrow as all the audio and radar
| recordings are examined.
| agsnu wrote:
| They were almost certainly both cleared to maintain
| visual separation.
| deepersprout wrote:
| > They were almost certainly both cleared to maintain
| visual separation.
|
| DCA TWR: PAT25, traffic just south of the Woodrow Bridge,
| a CRJ, it's 1200 feet setting up for runway 33.
|
| PAT25: PAT25 has the traffic in sight, request visual
| separation.
|
| DCA TWR: Visual separation approved.
|
| Audio of MID-AIR CRASH into Potomac River:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiOybe-NJHk
| hluska wrote:
| This comment was written by a US Coast Guard helicopter
| pilot. It gives a lot of information on how the two
| aircraft should have been able to share the space and
| some speculation on what went wrong:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1idba8i/commen
| t/m...
| Animats wrote:
| That makes sense.
|
| A helicopter instructor suggests that possibly the
| helicopter pilots, who were told to go behind an aircraft
| that was landing, were looking at the _previous_ aircraft
| that was landing.[1] That 's just speculation at this
| point.
|
| [1] https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2025/01/29/reagan-
| national...
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| They could use the car autopilot solution: simply
| negotiate your coordinates with nearby traffic instead of
| trying to parse malformed visual data.
| highcountess wrote:
| That was clearly a training flight
| alistairSH wrote:
| But does that provide any context? Military pilots perform
| training flights regularly - it's not necessarily
| indicative of an inexperienced pilot.
| lovecg wrote:
| Note that that track is not ADS-B at all. It's triangulated
| from mode S pings ("MLAT",
| https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/mlat/). I don't know how
| accurate these are.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| The current embassy is indeed in DC proper, but it isn't
| directly across the river from DCA.
|
| It's about a mile upriver, near the Watergate.
| jballer wrote:
| It's a "Gold Top", callsign PAT25
|
| https://helicoptersofdc.com/helicopters/5-us-army-12th-aviat...
| Rantenki wrote:
| BBC is reporting that the Army has confirmed that it was a
| UH-60, not a VH-60, ie: not a VIP transport:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy7kxx74yxlt?post=asset%3A62b9...
|
| Although it's early on and these communications are often
| chaotic/inaccurate.
| twoparachute45 wrote:
| I thought it was a VH-60 given that it was callsign PAT25
| (PAT is Priority Air Transport and they use the VH-60 for
| those flights), but if this was a training flight, they may
| have still used the PAT callsign while flying a UH-60.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Both are "Black Hawk" airframes, right? The VH-60 variant
| is just a UH-60 that was build/configured for VIP transport
| vs the normal UH-60 utility variant.
|
| IE, other than paint, they look the same to a casual
| observer.
| evil-olive wrote:
| > The flight track of the helicopter starts at a property in
| McLean, VA
|
| that's almost certainly not where the flight started, due to
| intricacies of how this sort of flight tracking works.
|
| if you look at [0] it has tracks of both flights. toggle the
| right-hand sidebar, if it's not open already, and you'll see a
| table containing both planes. the helicopter (PAT25) is yellow,
| the plane (JIA5342) is blue. the legend right below that
| explains the color-coding - the plane's data came from ADS-B,
| while the helicopter's data came from multilateration (MLAT).
|
| MLAT [1, 2] works by having multiple ADS-B feeder stations
| cooperate in real-time and deduce an aircraft's position based
| on timestamps of when the signal is received. it allows
| tracking aircraft that only broadcast the more limited Mode S
| data, instead of the newer and more detailed ADS-B.
|
| because it requires multiple cooperating receivers, the start
| of the track in suburban McLean does not mean it took off from
| there. it just means that was the point in its flight where it
| became visible to enough receivers that MLAT was able to pin
| down a position.
|
| you can also see this difference just by looking at the tracks
| - the plane is broadcasting its own position continuously, so
| its track is nice and smooth. meanwhile the helicopter's flight
| looks "jagged" in a way that does not match what its actual
| flight path would have been. this is an artifact of the small
| errors introduced by MLAT.
|
| 0: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae313d,a97753
|
| 1: https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/mlat/
|
| 2: https://adsbx.discourse.group/t/multilateration-mlat-how-
| it-...
| amelius wrote:
| That's a nice website, but from a layman's perspective it
| seems odd that everybody with an internet connection could
| have seen the imminent crash except the pilots ...
| nemomarx wrote:
| once you know to look at those two specific flights it
| probably gets easier, yeah. if you were looking at
| everything in the air at the time I think less so?
| amelius wrote:
| I mean, you can get the data from an API, probably. Then
| you just write a python script to keep an eye on
| colliding trajectories.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I'm sorry, do you HONESTLY think ATC doesn't do that? ATC
| was literally mid conversation with the helicopter to
| deconflict it's path when the collision happened.
|
| What is it with people insisting that the smart people
| literally tasked with their job somehow have no idea how
| to do it?
| alistairSH wrote:
| And just to be clear, the POTUS/super-special VIP transport
| is run by the USMC out of Quantico[1], a bit further to the
| south along the Potomac. Belvoir is US Army, and does have
| VIP heelicopters (obviously), but it's not the same group
| that lands at the White House.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMX-1 They have some
| Ospreys and other things as well, but HMX-1 is the most
| famous and recognizable.
| reaperman wrote:
| Does anyone have the flight path for the helicopter? (Tail number
| PAT25). FlightAware doesn't show it but it might have been
| tracked by open source ADS-B receivers.
|
| This helicopter was often utilized for VIP transport.
| HeavenFox wrote:
| https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae313d
| chinathrow wrote:
| Note: This is MLAT, not ADSB-Out data.
|
| https://skybrary.aero/articles/multilateration
| nradov wrote:
| PAT25 would be a temporary military flight call sign, not a
| tail number. US military aircraft don't have FAA "N"
| registration numbers like civilian aircraft do. Military
| aircraft do have official numbers but those aren't used for ATC
| or radio communications.
|
| In this particular case it appears that the "PAT" part is an
| acronym for Priority Air Travel. In other words, it was a VIP
| transport flight (there may not have been any VIPs actually on
| board at the time).
| 7thpower wrote:
| Oh man. I'm in Wichita and am getting a bunch of texts.
|
| Texted my friends that fly that route regularly and most have
| texted back.
|
| It can all be gone in an instant, tell those you love what they
| mean to you.
|
| edit: everyone is accounted for
| jeffhuys wrote:
| > everyone is accounted for
|
| Happy to hear that.
| bryant wrote:
| Not that being near DC affords me any kind of right to an
| opinion, but:
|
| Given the uptick in near miss incidents across the US the last
| few years, this is the kind of incident that should've been
| entirely avoidable through changes in policy from these past
| events but is also apparently the only kind that can spur along
| policy changes. I can see a world where the fault is on the
| VH-60, but absent more information, it would surprise me less to
| hear that it's the fault of the tower.
|
| Knowing where AA5342 was in its approach, I see no possibility of
| the jet being at fault.
|
| https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL5342
|
| I'm drawing a lot of early conclusions but it's mostly because
| I'm just not surprised. Angry as someone who flies a bunch, but
| not surprised.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| Regulations are written in blood, which is why it's such a
| disservice to indiscriminately tear it all down. We will re-
| learn the same lessons and people will pay for those lessons
| with their lives.
| derektank wrote:
| Some regulations are written and blood but some regulations
| are written to cover someone's ass and the two should not be
| treated equally. We shouldn't give equal respect to the
| Federal Aviation Regulations and to OPM's Qualification
| Standards for Federal Jobs; doing so deligitamizes the
| importance of the former.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| That's entirely true. Thank you for the correction. I spoke
| overly broadly.
| rayiner wrote:
| If everyone writing regulations were as rigorous as the FAA
| people wouldn't be clamoring to reduce regulations.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You mean the same FAA people that allowed Boeing to self
| certify? The FAA is not spotless. I can only imagine how
| much worse air travel would be without them, but they are
| only run by humans trying to work in a political
| controlled environment.
| craftsman wrote:
| Congress directed the FAA--by law--to delegate certain
| aspects of certification to non-FAA entities. This
| directive was issued by H.R. 302 - FAA Reauthorization
| Act of 2018, 115th Congress.
| Brybry wrote:
| Is that the 49 USC 44736 Organization designation
| authorizations part?[1]
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
| bill/302/...
| craftsman wrote:
| Yes, the ODAs. I'm not making a value judgement that this
| is good, bad, or indifferent. I'm just trying to provide
| factual context to understand when and why the delegation
| of certain aspects of certification has occurred.
| camgunz wrote:
| The FAA is pretty bonkers; Rayiner is right here.
| Besides, what other system beyond "humans trying to work
| in a political controlled environment" are you advocating
| here?
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _You mean the same FAA people that allowed Boeing to
| self certify?_
|
| Reputation lags reality.
|
| Boeing _used to be_ a product-first organization, and the
| FAA relied on that. However Boeing changed and put other
| priorities first and started cutting corners but their
| reputation was still good. After all, why would Boeing
| (unlike, say, tobacco) sell products that would kill
| their customers: it would be against Boeing 's own
| interests.
|
| In the 1980s and 1990s Boeing could be trusted to have
| less oversight, but since the 2000s that was no longer
| true, but no one noticed that. Now everyone recognizes
| that Boeing needs a babysitter.
| dboreham wrote:
| > sell products that would kill their customers
|
| Because the company ended up being run by people who had
| no clue what it takes to not kill your customers.
| krisoft wrote:
| The existence of all the "FAA: We are not happy until you
| are not happy" funny t-shirts seems to disagree with that
| observation.
| randerson wrote:
| FAA is however an agency that regularly tangles with SpaceX
| and could be seen as slowing them down. Seems like a
| conflict of interest for the guy tasked with government
| efficiency.
| addicted wrote:
| Why don't you identify all these easily found regulations
| then?
|
| There's a whole YIMBY movement, for example, that has
| identified specific regulations that are no longer valid
| and have made tremendous strides in proving and changing
| these regulations for almost universally better outcomes.
|
| So where are all these specific regulations that are so
| terrible and the evidence that they are indeed net
| negatives.
|
| I absolutely believe such regulations exist. But that's not
| what these people care about. They simply care about
| trashing the govt to make it easier to drown, otherwise
| they would actually act like the YIMBY movement and
| identify specific regulations and work on changing those.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| There was an awful lot of complaining about rolling back
| regulations in the first Trump term, so maybe the
| administration does care about it.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-
| envir...
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-regulatory-
| chang...
|
| ^^ includes Trump's first term and Biden's term.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Why don't you identify all these easily found
| regulations then?
|
| That was rude, and didn't at all speak to OP's point.
| They indicated that not all regulations are equal. Some
| are important and put into place because people died
| without them. Others are put into place for less
| important reasons. And the fact that _some_ regulations
| were removed doesn't mean that "ones written in blood"
| necessarily were.
|
| There are definitely regulations out there written by
| people that have no idea what they are talking about, and
| that are a net negative on the area(s) they impact. Does
| that mean we should remove Chesterton's Fence? No. But it
| does mean that, if you see someone removing a fence, you
| shouldn't immediately accuse them of causing harm.
| aklemm wrote:
| Not as rude as ignorant indiscriminate knee-jerk
| criticism of government work.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's not rude. Making some inane point contrasting FAA
| regulations to HR rules is a stupid comparison feeding
| the nihilist attitude that everything is broken, except
| for what I think.
|
| Air regulations are "written in blood". Nobody claimed
| that OPM rules about HR were.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Okay, what blood was the NOAA regulations concerning
| earth-observing satellites written in? The national
| security justification is quite flimsy when you remember
| that China, Russia, etc are not bound to those
| regulations, only satellites from the US.
| freen wrote:
| Ooh... which ones?
|
| Classic Edgerton's Fence: If you don't know why someone put
| up a fence, don't take it down.
| bobnamob wrote:
| Chesterton's Fence
| freen wrote:
| Oof. Correct.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Typically, the ones that protect me are good, the ones
| that slow me down are bad. Easy!
| massysett wrote:
| The latter is how you get a workforce qualified to write
| the former, rather than a bunch of hacks who know nothing
| about aviation safety.
| xienze wrote:
| > Regulations are written in blood, which is why it's such a
| disservice to indiscriminately tear it all down. We will re-
| learn the same lessons and people will pay for those lessons
| with their lives.
|
| And which regulation was eliminated that caused this?
| coddingtonbear wrote:
| This would, if the system is working, be the blood that
| future regulations are written in. That these kinds of
| things happen so rarely came to us at a cost of past lives.
| xienze wrote:
| OK then, what regulation do you think was missing that
| could have prevented this
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I mean, that's pretty obvious right? It's absolutely
| insane to have VFR traffic passing through the final
| approach corridor, especially at night.
| sib301 wrote:
| I just listened to the ATC recording from immediately before
| the collision. ATC instructs the helicopter to pass behind the
| CRJ. I'm fairly certain a few minutes before that, ATC
| instructed the helicopter to maintain visual separation, which
| is common. They typically ask, "do you have the aircraft in
| sight" and if you respond in the affirmative they rely on you
| to maintain safe distance.
|
| I should mention that in the recording you can only hear one
| side of the conversation, so I don't know whether or not the
| helicopter said whether or not they had visual contact with the
| plane they collided with.
|
| Either way it doesn't seem to be the fault of ATC. Of course
| we'll know more as additional information becomes available.
| rsanek wrote:
| Do you want to post a link the recording?
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| it's linked in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42874330
| wyldfire wrote:
| In the video from the webcam there's another plane which is
| much easier to see. Could they have asked about "the
| aircraft" and the helicopter pilot mistook which one they
| referred to? "yes I can see the plane flying much higher"
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| It's possible but generally there's implied context to ATC.
| ATC would only instruct you to watch out for possible
| vector interceptions. flying over an approach path, the
| context would be that you would look for aircraft on
| approach, not ones in holding or other patterns above.
|
| That said, it's possible they mistook which aircraft to
| look for, but it's unlikely imho and we will likely never
| know for sure, as I would presume the pilots are deceased.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I got a lesson in how ATC works with helicopters up close
| and personal on a helicopter tour. ATC had the helo pilot
| hold position while an airplane was on final approach. I
| asked the pilot why we needed to hold as we could clearly
| see the aircraft and were to my lack of knowledge on the
| subject "plenty" far away. (It actually took me a second
| to locate the airplane as my sense of scale was not
| expecting the plane to be so small which is part of why I
| made the assumption we were plenty far away.) That's when
| the pilot told me we were not in the way of the approach
| but if the pilot had to declare a miss (or whatever they
| call it) and climb to circle around. The helo was near
| the path for the plane on the abort flight path. Once the
| plane was on the ground, ATC allowed us to continue.
|
| It was my first experience in an aircraft seeing how ATC
| controlled the airspace directly. Lots of respect to the
| folks in ATC with a fraction of understanding in just how
| much they have to deal with other than the obvious take-
| off/landings.
| mlyle wrote:
| It's pretty dang easy to misjudge distances and closing
| rates in a plane or helicopter, _especially_ at night.
| ketanmaheshwari wrote:
| Is this true for the trained pilots as well?
| sklargh wrote:
| Yes.
| paulddraper wrote:
| It's next to impossible to know at night.
|
| The only thing you have visually is direction / angular
| velocity.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And if you're on a collision course the other vehicle
| will appear motionless, with no change in direction.
|
| If the airliners was approaching faster than the
| helicopter it could have been approaching from behind.
| How large is the field of view of a UH-60?
| lightedman wrote:
| "How large is the field of view of a UH-60?"
|
| Massive, you're practically against the glass. Visibility
| below is more obstructed than visibility above or to the
| sides.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| No, that aircraft (having taken off from Reagan, visible in
| the full not-cropped videos) is close to the Kennedy Center
| camera but is nowhere near where the CRJ and helicopter
| were.
| trhway wrote:
| > easier to see.
|
| One has radars even on recreational boats. That was a
| military helicopter. At night. It would be hard to believe
| that it doesn't have nor radar nor IR cameras, and the
| plane would be lightened up like X-mas tree in both.
| jahewson wrote:
| Marine radar is trivial compared to air-to-air radar. The
| Black Hawk, like most aircraft, does not have an air-to-
| air radar. IR cameras would be completely inappropriate
| for the situation but night vision goggles are a
| possibility I guess - though still have all the same
| drawbacks as using your eyes - you have to look in the
| right direction and recognise what that small dot is that
| you're seeing.
| trhway wrote:
| >Marine radar is trivial compared to air-to-air radar.
|
| like in the case of a boat, the air-to-air radar is still
| peanuts compare to the cost of the plane/helicopter
|
| >The Black Hawk, like most aircraft, does not have an
| air-to-air radar.
|
| Pretty surprising for the military. You'd like to know
| when an enemy fighter or a missile coming for you. And
| military frequently operates in the territories without
| any ATC, so you'd like to see even the friendly planes
| and helicopters too. Say at night over Iraq.
|
| And even without radar - simple ADS-B receiver attached
| to notebook plotting onto the screen of the notebook
| would be a great improvement in that situation over DC or
| anywhere over US.
|
| > IR cameras would be completely inappropriate for the
| situation ...recognise what that small dot is that you're
| seeing.
|
| in visual at night you have a sea of city lights with
| some low flying lights you can easily mistake for ground
| lights. In IR all those city lights would pretty much
| disappear, while the plane's engines and exhaust would be
| a very bright light against very dark background of the
| sky.
| stall84 wrote:
| In any event, unless the weather was IMC, where neither
| aircraft can see because of weather/cloud, which I'm deducing
| is not the case if they were allowed to maintain visual
| separation, the ultimate responsibility for maintaining
| separation is with the pilot(s) .. But as I posted, we should
| not have this happen anywhere in the United States in 2025 &
| much less the nation's capital. Hopefully DOT and FAA get to
| work, but I have a feeling that will be the end of DCA's
| usefull life as a major passenger airport.
| jfengel wrote:
| Just so ya know, "get to work" is the opposite of what the
| federal agencies are being told just at the moment.
|
| I'm sure the accident investigators are very compassionate
| and dedicated to their jobs, and will do everything they
| can to resolve this and prevent future accidents. But
| overall the mood in DC isn't great just at the moment, as
| everyone is expecting to be fired regardless of their
| experience and skill.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > everyone is expecting to be fired regardless of their
| experience and skill.
|
| How do you know this?
| SenHeng wrote:
| Presumably because Trump just offered an 8month severance
| package to all fed workers.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvqe3le3z4o
|
| > _US President Donald Trump has offered federal workers
| the option to resign and receive pay for eight months, in
| a major effort to shrink and reform the US government._
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| It's not even a buyout. They have to work for those 8
| months; it's not a severance package.
| Larrikin wrote:
| There's also no evidence they have the money to pay if
| the offers were in good faith. Combined with the fact the
| two people who came up with the idea have a history of
| deciding not to pay and instead go to the courts to avoid
| paying
| jrs235 wrote:
| From what I have seen, if a worker agress to it, they
| agree they could be reassigned or terminated early (and
| thus not paid the same or at all). Seems like a trap.
| jfengel wrote:
| Because I live here.
| cjaybo wrote:
| I also live here but that doesn't give me crystal ball-
| like insight into what every single fed and fed-adjacent
| employee is feeling. It's a fairly big city! Do you work
| in the federal space? I have acquaintances who do and
| their mood doesn't quite match the hysteria you see on
| e.g. the regional subreddits.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| I live far away from DC, but my friends in two different
| federal agencies (stationed outside of DC) are partly
| bemused and partly shocked at how unprofessional the
| emails and new directives they are receiving from this
| new administration are. All of their colleagues are
| expressing the same sentiment (and my friends usually do
| not fraternize after work with their colleagues, but they
| have all been doing that after work just to cope with
| what is going on). Your contrarian-ness about the
| 'hysteria' is misplaced. Professional and dedicated
| federal workers are deeply concerned.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Damn near every one I know is either worried about being
| fired OR is unclear on what their agency should be doing
| in light of the flurry of ambiguous EOs from Trump. The
| best case seems to be "my office is clusterfuck, but I'm
| a contractor in SCIF, so I guess I'm ok for now."
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| So basically you don't know, but are being dramatic. NSA
| and CIA and DoD in general?
|
| The reason i say this is you mention experience and skill
| but ignore whether such people are in _roles_ that need
| to exist at all, which is what is being questioned, not
| the worth of individuals in those roles.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Weather was fine tonight.
|
| Also DCA is the most popular airport and congress would
| stage their own revolution if they had to go further.
| stall84 wrote:
| I definitely think it'll stay open for charter flights
| (part 135)
| nopzor wrote:
| it's actually really hard for private jets / charter
| (whether part 91 or part 135) to use dca. requirements
| include having an armed officer on board. as a result
| almost nobody flies charter into dca.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yeah, it's at least partially Congress's fault DCA is as
| busy as it is. Every few years, they push to allow more
| flights, and longer flights, into the airport, because
| they all want to convenience.
|
| Which is silly, it's not like IAD is all that far away.
| It's a straight shot down the Access Road to 66 and then
| into the city. Of course, with the RTO mandate, the
| portion from 66 inward is going to get busy again, but
| hey, Congress wanted that too, so reap what they sow, I
| suppose.
| wat10000 wrote:
| DCA is much nicer in pretty much all respects other than
| having a fairly restricted set of routes. When the routes
| are available, I'll pick DCA every time. It's a gem, and
| I'm glad that Congress' selfishness overrode their
| terrorism paranoia on this one.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's true, DCA is smaller footprint, so easier to
| navigate inside. And even better now that the remote
| terminal redone and linked properly (vs the old "Take a
| bus and wait on a bench").
|
| But, the last few years, I haven't had any issues at IAD.
| Yeah, it takes longer to get from the front door to the
| gate, but that's about it. The security lines are more
| reasonable now (pre-COVID they were pretty long at
| times).
|
| I pick IAD when I can, but that's only because I live in
| Reston. If I lived inside the Beltway, I'd pick DCA, but
| only because of the shorter drive, not the airport
| experience itself.
|
| And I wouldn't want DCA to be shuttered. But, it's been
| at capacity for a while and Congress keeps pushing that
| limit.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Hopefully DOT and FAA get to work
|
| they were just told to resign en masse as a loyalty test
| (the memo literally uses the word "loyal"), so yeah, no
| stall84 wrote:
| I didn't know. this line is really upsetting people
| tonight.
| addicted wrote:
| I'm curious, how many people in your business were
| elected to their jobs?
|
| Do you think people should be electing the ATC agents?
|
| Also, what's your opinion about the entire cabinet, Elon
| Musk, and the likes, all of whom are also unelected?
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _The reformed federal workforce will be built around
| four pillars:_
|
| [...]
|
| > 4. _Enhanced standards of conduct: The federal
| workforce should be comprised of employees who are
| reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for
| excellence in their daily work. Employees will be subject
| to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we
| move forward. Employees who engage in unlawful behavior
| or other misconduct will be prioritized for appropriate
| investigation and discipline, including termination._
|
| [...]
|
| > _Upon review of the below deferred resignation letter,
| if you wish to resign: 1) Select "Reply" to this email.
| You must reply from your government account. A reply from
| an account other than your .gov or .mil account will not
| be accepted. 2) Type the word "Resign" into the body of
| this reply email. Hit "Send"._
|
| * https://www.opm.gov/fork
| JohnBooty wrote:
| but I have a feeling that will be the end of DCA's
| usefull life as a major passenger airport.
|
| Wait, what?
|
| I was with you until this last sentence. You think DCA will
| be spun down because an accident occurred there?
|
| This seems wild - what am I missing here?
| dehrmann wrote:
| I only have a passing interest in this, but DCA's
| approach is tricky, the airspace is complex and
| restricted, and then you mix in military pilots doing VIP
| helicopter training runs across the approach. The
| procedures make it safe-ish, but it's riskier than other
| major airports.
| blantonl wrote:
| Here is the ATC audio between the Tower and PAT-25. Helos
| that transition DCA's airspace use a separate VHF frequency
| from traffic landing and departing, but talk to the same
| tower controller.
|
| https://archives.broadcastify.com/44114/20250129/20250129200.
| ..
|
| * At 5:41 - 5342 is given instructions for circling to 33.
|
| * At 6:45 - PAT-25 reports Memorial
|
| * At 7:06 - tower gives PAT-25 traffic advisory about 5342
| and PAT-25 reports traffic in sight and requests visual
| separation
|
| * At 8:12 - tower asks PAT-25 if they have the CRJ in sight
| and tells him to pass behind the CRJ. PAT-25 again reports
| traffic in sight and again requests visual separation.
|
| * At 8:28 - crash occurs, exclamations, go arounds issued
| fblp wrote:
| This is wild to listen to. A) this is a busy atc channel
| and it's amazing how much complexity is coordinated over
| noisy radio. B) within minutes of the accident happening
| (at 11:48) the ATC controller is calmly asking helicopters
| in the air if they can assist in search rescue operations
| asking, if they have search lights and direction them. This
| is whilst diverting and grounding flights.
| consp wrote:
| > over noisy radio
|
| I've been told the noise on the recordings is always a
| lot worse than in practice due to the location of the
| recording antenna not being ideal. I have no idea if this
| is correct or not. Maybe someone can enlighten this.
| thowawatp302 wrote:
| Yes, having tried to listen to ATC with an SDR-- the
| public recordings are made from antenna that placed near
| the airport, while the official recordings are made from
| the feeds that the ATC is listening to-- and those
| antenna have their lobes pointed toward the sky.
| FL410 wrote:
| Yep. Radios are much clearer in the air. VHF is mostly
| line of sight and planes have the benefit of altitude.
| Approach/center comms can get a bit scratchy at times
| mostly due to distance, but approach/tower is almost
| always perfectly clear.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I watch a lot of pilots on Youtube. Most of them use some
| kind of audio splitter to record sound. You hear what the
| pilot hears. But minus the plane noise, vibrations, etc
| (unless that's mixed in via some open microphone). So,
| it's actually better.
|
| So, it really is that bad. Especially when flying low, on
| the edge of the range of the radios, etc. VHF radio is
| ancient technology. It's not great even under ideal
| conditions.
|
| If your phone calls sounded that bad, you'd want to
| upgrade your phone or switch operator. Really not
| acceptable for consumer grade communication. Not even
| close. This is how phones sounded half a century ago.
| "can you hear me .... are you there ..... can you talk
| louder ....". My grand mother never really unlearned
| 1930s phone etiquette. Phone calls with her were short
| (cause expensive) and she'd be shouting at you because
| that's what you did. Be brief, loud, hang up as soon as
| possible. That's what pilots still do. My grand mother
| was born during WW I (not II) and she's been dead for
| nearly 20 years.
|
| The aviation world is very conservative with
| new/better/any technology. They stick with "what works".
| Even if arguably it barely works. Like pretty much the
| vast majority of radio exchanges between pilots and
| controllers over VHF radio. Learning how to talk on the
| radio is the second hardest part of getting an instrument
| rating. The only thing that's harder is flying a plane
| with zero visibility ... while suffering extreme
| information overload because of the constant radio
| chatter and dealing with confused/stressed/pissed off
| controllers who have to juggle you and 20 other planes.
|
| A lot of radio exchanges are routine exchanges that
| involve very basic information: call signs, transponder
| codes, codes for approaches/departures, courses,
| altimeter settings, altitudes, weather information, etc.
| And then a lot of double checking the other side heard
| correctly, repeating back what you heard, etc. Radio
| communication compensates for the lack of a more
| robust/sane way of exchanging information. There
| literally is no way for a controller to send you
| information in written format. Other than using their
| private phones. So, it all gets spelled out over low
| quality VHF radio.
|
| There's no good technical reason to not do something
| vastly more reliable, less intrusive, and less error
| prone. Some might say safer. Many planes have star link
| connections these days. The passengers get better
| connectivity than the pilot. They could be having video
| calls with the controller with crystal clear audio from
| anywhere on this planet instead of yelling to them over
| VHF only when they are in range. They could be sending
| each other emails, documents, digital maps, and lots of
| other machine readable information, etc. Not a thing.
|
| It's more a challenge of agreeing on what such a vastly
| better thing would be and then updating each and every
| plane and tower, airport, controller world wide with
| equipment that supports that. Add design by committee to
| the mix and the "state of the art" is something that
| would make any competent engineer born after 1970 blush.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _A lot of radio exchanges are routine exchanges that
| involve very basic information: call signs, transponder
| codes, codes for approaches /departures, courses,
| altimeter settings, altitudes, weather information, etc._
|
| They are also in a fairly standardized format with
| reserved "keywords" for many important aspects of
| operation ("hold short", "line up and wait", "cleared to
| X"):
|
| * https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/115
| .pdf
|
| English is the lingua franca of ATC, but it is recognized
| it is obviously not everyone's first language.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Honestly a lot of those recordings probably _do_ sound a
| lot worse than the radio audio. I rarely see YouTube
| recordings that are as audible as the radio is in person.
| Here 's what seems to be the reason:
|
| The common splitters you can buy to break out your
| headset connector to a recorder don't account for the
| signal level, which is very high on the headset
| connectors as aviation headsets are traditionally pretty
| high impedance. I've struggled with the headset audio
| blowing out even a fairly nice recorder (a Zoom) with the
| gain turned all the way down. Phones and pocket reporters
| don't even offer a gain adjustment and the recording can
| end up almost unusable. In a lot of YouTube videos of
| pilots, even most, it's pretty obvious that it's clipping
| at the recorder the whole time. Perhaps even worse, a lot
| of people are using like a GoPro with auto-gain, so you
| get the worst of both worlds: it ramps up gain until the
| noise is loud, and then when someone starts talking, it
| ramps down the gain, but a little too slowly, and it's
| still clipping even when it hits minimum.
|
| It's not very common to have trouble understanding the
| controller when in the air. AM radio at line of sight (as
| is the case when you're flying) is pretty robust. Maybe
| the hardest thing to understand are helicopter pilots
| because there's often rotor noise on their end.
| FL410 wrote:
| YouTube is not a good representation of what you hear in
| a headset. Half the time the mic taps aren't impedence
| matched and sound like shit.
|
| Besides that, most "controlling" (i.e. instructions that
| require action) comms have a handshake of sorts - the
| pilot repeats back the instruction for the controller to
| confirm. They don't just bark out instructions and hope
| you heard it, they listen for you to read them back, and
| will keep doing so until successful. So, even in cases
| when the comms are degraded, you will go back and forth
| until there has been positive confirmation (readback) you
| heard the instruction correctly (or they'll just give you
| a new frequency).
| V99 wrote:
| Besides the "we already have it everywhere" bit, the big
| advantage of analog AM over UHF/VHF is that it degrades
| fairly gracefully. As you're getting too far away the
| signal gets harder to pick out from the noise, but it's
| not an all-or-nothing digital signal.
|
| That doesn't matter much over Washington DC, but when you
| get out towards the western half of the country the
| transmitters are a lot more widely spread out. There's
| mountains in the way. There's limitations to how low you
| can be and still be reachable, which sometimes has to be
| balanced against how high a GA plane can comfortably fly,
| or oxygen requirements for the occupants.
|
| A better sounding "modern" system is generally going to
| be worse at handling those marginal situations, which
| would probably require building a lot more radio outposts
| in fairly remote areas to compensate.
|
| But the big problem with requiring anything new is
| getting it into the existing fleet of thousands of
| decades old certified aircraft. You need a new radio
| stack. You probably need new antennas. Changing anything
| on certified aircraft needs tons of paperwork and things
| like Supplemental Type Certificates for each individual
| model of aircraft that make it cost 5-50x what you'd
| think it should cost. Military aircraft are probably 10x
| worse beyond that.
|
| A handheld COM radio is maybe $200 from Sporty's. Take
| basically the same thing but package it as a basic Garmin
| COM radio (GTR 205) and it's now $2,300. If you want a
| NAV radio in it too (GNC 215) now it's $5,400. Add GPS
| and ADSB-Out (GNX 375) and now you're at $9,000. You can
| buy an entire currently airworthy (really old) plane for
| maybe $30,000.
|
| For some uses you don't even have to have _any_ radio or
| transponder /ADSB installed on your aircraft. Some
| aircraft don't even have an electrical power system to
| run one. Granted they're not allowed in the middle of
| Washington DC, but still trying to require the entire
| fleet gets fancy new digital radios would be a monumental
| challenge and fantastically expensive.
|
| There are some existing better ways to communicate.
| Larger planes usually have CPDLC (Controller Pilot Data
| Link Communications), which is basically text messaging
| from ATC to the plane avionics. That's how they receive
| their IFR clearance at major airports. In an airliner
| you're not generally reading it out over the radio and
| scribbling out your "CRAFT" acronym on a scratchpad like
| you see on YouTube. (Even your 4-seat steam gauge Cessna
| can do this via PDC (Pre-Departure Clearance) at
| supported airports with something like ForeFlight on an
| iPad).
|
| CPDLC can also be used in the air to communicate less
| time-sensitive things like altitude changes and reroutes,
| talking to the operations department of the airline, etc.
| There's no reason you couldn't put this in smaller GA
| planes and towers, other than cost.
|
| Airliners that do transatlantic and -pacific routes also
| have satellite communications instead of using old-school
| HF radios (which are even worse than VHF).
| singleshot_ wrote:
| > This is how phones sounded half a century ago. "can you
| hear me .... are you there ..... can you talk louder
| ...."
|
| No, landlines in 1975 sounded outstanding. I didn't hear
| the phrase "can you hear me now" until I got my first oki
| (1992?)
| lawlessone wrote:
| I think the crash was at 8:22 or 8:21, you can hear sudden
| commotion at that time.
| hammock wrote:
| I was a controller at DCA for 8 years and this is a normal
| operation with Helicopters using the Helicopter routes.
|
| The problem I see is the controller asked the Helicopter if
| they had the CRJ in sight, but he never said WHERE HE WAS OR
| WHAT HE WAS DOING! The controller should have told the
| Helicopter that the CRJ was circling to RWY 33. The
| helicopter said he had him in sight, but he really had the
| Jet in sight that was landing on RWY 1.
|
| Had the controller told him: Traffic ahead and to your left
| landing runway 33 is a CRJ report him in sight, then the
| helicopter crew would have LOOKED to their left and saw him.
| They unfortunately were looking straight ahead at a different
| plane.
|
| The controller is going to take a major blame for this one
| unfortunately for not being more detailed. Those Helicopters
| literally fly directly in the path of those RWY 33 arrivals
| so as a controller you have to be EXACT!!!!
|
| Another problem I see is the expectation bias. As controllers
| in that scenario, we want to hear the Helicopter say "traffic
| in sight and we will maintain Visual Separation. These
| Helicopter Pilots know we need to hear them say that (it's
| required), so they will say this just because even though
| they might not really have the aircraft in sight. They are
| just saying what we want to hear. If they don't, then we stop
| their forward progress or make them turn out. Comment from
| instagram
| deadbabe wrote:
| The controller will not take blame. It is a blameless
| culture where mistakes are expected and analyzed and
| learned from.
| hammock wrote:
| Agree with this
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| > The controller will not take blame.
|
| Depends how much they deviate from cishet white male and
| the context of the blame you're talking about.
|
| If there's any way this can remotely be pinned on DEI
| hiring, the controller will be thrown under a bus in a
| very public and spectacular manner, not by their own
| community but by the current administration and the
| media.
| recursive wrote:
| Where did that come from? There are some things in life
| that don't revolve around identity politics, and I'd
| venture to say, ATC is one of them.
| deeg wrote:
| Parent is exactly right. There's already a scramble to
| pin the blame and some in the GOP are looking for DEI:
| https://bsky.app/profile/andylevy.net/post/3lgxsd35fhs2i
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| > There are some things in life that don't revolve around
| identity politics
|
| Not anymore.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Simply wild coming from the person who introduced it
| where it was not being discussed.
|
| If this is true, it's because you and people like you are
| inserting it in otherwise innocuous, productive
| discussions. Have you considered not doing that?
| chowchowchow wrote:
| are you serious? https://www.fox5dc.com/news/trump-
| blames-dei-dc-plane-crash
| axus wrote:
| On "Truth Social" last night, Donald Trump was explicitly
| questioning the actions of the ATC. And during this
| morning's press briefing, he blamed "the crash on Barack
| Obama, Joe Biden, former Transportation secretary Pete
| Buttigieg, DEI and people with disabilities." I'm waiting
| for the transcript on that one.
| dboreham wrote:
| Contrast this with the on-screen appearance by American
| Airlines CEO last night. Watching it, I wondered: why
| can't we have a guy like this as president?
| axus wrote:
| Since whitehouse.gov couldn't be bothered, here are some
| quotes from "Straight Arrow News":
|
| ----
|
| President Trump also appeared to blame a "diversity push"
| at the FAA for the midair collision, reading some news
| headlines.
|
| "I do want to point out that various articles that
| appeared prior to my entering office. And here's one: the
| FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with
| severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities," Trump
| said.
|
| When he was asked to clarify why he thought a diversity
| push played a role, he said, "It just could have been. We
| have a high standard. We've had a higher, much higher
| standard than anybody else."
|
| Trump did not cite any evidence.
|
| He also placed blame on the Biden administration's
| transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, using an
| expletive to describe Buttigieg's time in office.
|
| "He's a disaster now. He's just got a good line of
| bulls--," Trump said of Buttigieg. "Well, he runs it,
| 45,000 people, and he's run it right into the ground with
| his diversity."
|
| Trump's pick for transportation secretary, Sean Duffy,
| who just started the job, also spoke during the press
| conference.
|
| "When Americans take off in airplanes, they should expect
| to land at their destination -- that didn't happen
| yesterday," Duffy said. "That's not acceptable, and so we
| will not accept excuses. We will not accept passing the
| buck."
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| Trump is explicitly blaming programs to hire disabled
| people. Note that just because FAA had a program to hire
| people with disabilities, does not mean that they made
| any changes to the medical standards for air traffic
| controllers - there are many jobs at FAA besides air
| traffic controllers, and there are also plenty of
| disabilities that would not effect a person's ability to
| be an air traffic controller. FAA does not allow people
| with psychiatric disabilities to work in ATC.
|
| > "I do want to point out that various articles that
| appeared prior to my entering office. And here's one, the
| FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with
| severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is
| amazing. And then it says FAA says people with severe
| disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the
| workforce said 'they want them in, and they want them,
| they can be air traffic controllers. I don't think so.
| This was January 14, so that was a week before I entered
| office. They put a big push to put diversity into the
| FAA's program," Trump said.
|
| > "Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and
| their lives are actually shortened, very substantially
| shortened because of the stress where you have many, many
| planes coming into one target, and you need a very
| special talent and a very special genius to be able to do
| it," the president added.
|
| > When he was asked to clarify why he thought a
| "diversity push" at the FAA played a role in Wednesday's
| collision, President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday
| that "it just could have been."
|
| > "It just could have been. We have a high standard.
| We've had a higher, much higher standard than anybody
| else," Trump said.
|
| > Trump did not cite any evidence. Source:
| https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/plane-crash-dca-potomac-
| was...
| gumball-amp wrote:
| Unfortunately, there's a long-standing scandal and
| lawsuit around the ATC and its hiring practices that will
| inevitably play into the analysis of this tragedy --
| details here: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-
| faas-hiring-scandal-...
|
| I can well believe it has absolutely nothing to do with
| this disaster, but I don't think either political side
| has any interest in arguing over the fine points of that
| distinction.
| recursive wrote:
| Wow, I hadn't heard about that. It seems the FAA inserted
| _themselves_ into the culture wars. I take it all back.
| Every single thing is now based on identity politics.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Is this for real: (questions for becoming an ATC, linked
| from the article you liked. It's so weird so I'm not
| sure)
|
| https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessme
| nt/
|
| The questions are mind-blowing. And:
|
| > In the present day, there is a critical shortage of
| ATCs, with the FAA having 1,000 fewer ATCs in 2023 than
| it did in 2012.
|
| If that's how they were hiring (although they don't do
| today), I could understand if that has a bit contributed
| to fewer ATCs today.
|
| Seems it is for real:
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jan/30/faa-
| diversi...
|
| _"... In 2013, the FAA started using a "biographical
| assessment" to increase the hiring of preferred minority
| racial groups at air traffic control centers. The
| assessment asked applicants about their participation in
| school sports and the age at which they started earning
| money. "_
|
| _" The assessment disqualified more experienced,
| qualified applicants ..."_
| baggy_trough wrote:
| You might venture to say so, but unfortunately you'd be
| wrong.
| 1shooner wrote:
| The President:
|
| >Asked how he could come to the conclusion that diversity
| played a role in the deadly midair collision near Ronald
| Reagan Washington National Airport, Trump said, "Because
| I have common sense, OK? And unfortunately a lot of
| people don't."
|
| >He later defended his assertion that diversity
| initiatives at the FAA could have contributed to the
| National Airport crash as the investigation continues.
|
| >"No, I don't think so at all," Trump said when asked if
| he thinks his claims about the helicopter, air traffic
| control and DEI policies were getting ahead of the
| investigation. He quipped to the reporter that "I think
| that's not a very smart question."
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5116606-5-tak
| eaw...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Fuck me this is gonna be a long 4 years and a LOT of
| ibuprofen.
|
| Days without being an international embarrassment: 0
| JamesBarney wrote:
| There was a scandal at the ATC which has culminated in a
| lawsuit Brigida v. Buttigieg, and from what I remember
| the facts look bad.
|
| They replaced a skill assessment with a completely
| bizarre biography test where for instance you got +15
| points if you listed science as your worst subject, but 0
| if you listed math, English, history or P.E.
|
| Then they leaked the answers to black organizations, as
| well as special keywords to put in their resume to go to
| top of the pile.
|
| The students who spent years and thousands of dollars and
| aced the skill assessment but then failed the
| biographical test are suing in a class action.
| gosub100 wrote:
| It's been culminating for years. they don't fire
| incompetent people and they use skin color and gender as
| a factor in deciding who to hire. It's federal employment
| and is linked greatly to politics.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| If it's been "culminating for years" why is this the
| first time this has happened in 16 years? Or are all the
| white men just doing that great of a job compensating for
| their dumbass POC/non-male colleagues? It's not like this
| is a team effort where one competent employee can cover
| for others; if an ATC is genuinely unqualified, shit is
| going to go wrong _immediately._
|
| Your grievance politics are nonsensical on their face.
| gosub100 wrote:
| If you didn't deliberately misinterpret the word "it" you
| would have nothing to dispute.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Feel free to correct my interpretation.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| And apparently Trump included dwarfism in his DEI blame-
| game. Where the hell did that come from? Are little
| people eating the cats and dogs now, too?
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5116332-trump
| -0f...
| abecedarius wrote:
| If you're quoting someone else, please say so at the top of
| the comment instead leading with "I was a controller" and
| burying the attribution at the end of a paragraph.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| > The problem I see is the controller asked the Helicopter
| if they had the CRJ in sight, but he never said WHERE HE
| WAS OR WHAT HE WAS DOING! The controller should have told
| the Helicopter that the CRJ was circling to RWY 33. The
| helicopter said he had him in sight, but he really had the
| Jet in sight that was landing on RWY 1.
|
| I think you're only listening to a selected part of the
| recording.
|
| > Tower: "PAT25 traffic just south of (unclear) bridge is a
| CRJ at 1,200ft turning for Runway 33"
|
| > PAT25: PAT25 has the Traffic in sight, request visual
| separation
|
| > Tower: Visual separation approved.
|
| Then a minute later he asks again if PAT25 has the CRJ in
| sight, which I think is what you're referring to.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| The common mistake with this is seeing a plane, reporting
| "traffic in sight" but looking at a different plane than the
| one the controller meant. Especially at night where distance
| is near impossible the estimate and you can't see differences
| in types of planes.
|
| I have no extra information on this incident so this is only
| generic input.
| bsder wrote:
| Reagan should have been shut down for commercial use many moons
| ago.
|
| It will never be shut down because it's got all the exceptions
| so that Congresscritters don't have to be treated the same as
| us plebians.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| >It will never be shut down because it's got all the
| exceptions so that Congresscritters don't have to be treated
| the same as us plebians.
|
| DCA is open to the public.
| bsder wrote:
| DCA is open to the public. But it has lots of ways for
| Congressmen to avoid the inconveniences that you and I have
| to endure.
|
| The other airports in the area do not have those.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Please expand.
|
| I fly out of DCA and IAD frequently (and JFK and LGA).
| I've gone through the process next to politicians, though
| I've never recognized any highly ranked ones (e.g.
| Pelosi, McConnell, etc.).
|
| What's the difference they experience?
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Not OP but the only thing I'm aware of is new Senator Jim
| Justice who seems to use a private plane to get to the
| airport which seems relatively rare.
|
| https://punchbowl.news/article/senate/jim-justice-takes-
| priv...
| wildzzz wrote:
| I watched Warren and some of her staff cut the entire
| pre-check line at BOS. They still had to walk through the
| metal detectors but without any bags, they whisked
| through.
|
| I got to cut the line at security once because I was on
| the job, I was completely embarrassed.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Isn't that just what CLEAR is?
| tayo42 wrote:
| > the inconveniences that you and I have to endure.
|
| What are those? With pre check you just more or less walk
| through and use a metal detector.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of people here like to go on about security. I
| agree there's a certain amount of theater, and I try to
| avoid really peak times, but with pre-check I do tend to
| arrive early because I don't want stress but, as you say,
| it's rarely more than a few minute wait and I pretty much
| toss my bag on the carousel and walk through the metal
| detector. It's really not a big deal if you're prepared.
| michaelt wrote:
| Your airport sounds a lot better than the ones near me!
|
| In my area they all want you to arrive 2-3 hours before
| your flight, without any water, then to shuffle through
| security without your belt and shoes.
| ghaff wrote:
| I usually arrive about 2 hours before flight time. For
| one thing, my car company doesn't really want you to cut
| things close as they'll tend to catch the blame if you
| miss your flight for some unavoidable reason. But usually
| security is maybe 5-10 minutes. Don't remember the last
| time I needed anything like the margin that I give
| myself.
|
| Probably doesn't hurt that I'm usually taking early
| morning flights.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| What's pre-check?
| alistairSH wrote:
| TSA pre-check is a pre-screening program that air
| travelers can use to bypass the normal security line.
|
| It's not a huge time-saver (any more, used to be more)
| but gets you out of a few annoyances like removing shoes,
| unpacking toiletries, and a few other things. And the
| lines are usually a bit shorter and the ratio of regular
| traveller to new traveller is a bit better (less likely
| to get caught behind somebody who doesn't know the
| process and wastes everybody's time).
| ghaff wrote:
| And they don't put you through the nudie scanner (or
| whatever it's called) which is important to some people.
| I have pre-check automatically through global entry (that
| basically lets you bypass immigration coming back into
| the US).
|
| Just got ETA for the UK and you also have e-entry (which
| _usually_ works) from the US and a number of other
| countries as well.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Usually true, though I don't believe that's guaranteed.
|
| And all the lines at IAD have the new, high-powered
| luggage scanners (for carry-on, so still less powerful
| than the ones used for checked bags). So for those of
| that fly with film camera gear, we need a hand check with
| or without pre-check.
| ghaff wrote:
| Right--though pretty rare in my experience. Though you
| can always(?) ask for a hand check rather than going
| through the more invasive scanner.
|
| Haven't used film for a while :-) Back in the film days,
| at least latterly I traveled with my film in a lead-lined
| bag.
| rayiner wrote:
| Not disagreeing, but is there something particularly wrong
| with DCA?
| cyberax wrote:
| It's in the middle of a city, with lots of restricted
| airspace just _seconds_ of flight time from it.
| jcranmer wrote:
| From what I've heard, it's a challenging airport to land
| at, particularly because one of the approaches has two
| sharp turns in it, and I think the main winds tend to be
| annoying crosswinds for the main runway. Also, the airport
| is surrounded by lots of restricted airspace because, you
| know, seat of federal government and all that.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Short runway too. 9/11 restrictions only made it that
| much worse.
|
| It was discussed post 9/11 about closing National
| Airport, but congress wouldn't hear it. It was too
| convenient from DC. (At a time when IAD was way the hell
| out there, rather than being 1/2 the way out the sprawl.)
|
| I won't fly through DCA in the winter, because when I was
| a kid there was the Air Florida crash. I'd much prefer
| IAD with it's 3 mile runways and straight approaches.
| rob74 wrote:
| The Air Florida crash had very little to do with the
| airport and a lot to do with the pilots who took off with
| dangerous amounts of ice/snow on the wings. Fortunately,
| de-icing procedures have also improved since then - in
| the 80s, it was possible to have a long time between
| deicing and takeoff; today, deicing is done at the end of
| the runway, shortly before lining up for takeoff.
|
| Full story: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-cold-
| laws-of-winter-...
| wiredfool wrote:
| I was in 6th grade. It was a shitty day all around --
| there was a metrorail accident under the river. I was on
| a school bus for 4 hours while getting home in the snow.
| The plane hit a bridge and went into the river.
|
| Think of what you know about DC traffic when there's a
| flake of snow in the air, and put an airliner crash and a
| metro accident on top of that.
|
| Maybe it's not logical, but I'm still not a fan of flying
| through National in the winter.
| jonstewart wrote:
| DCA is great to fly in and out of (I live in DC proper), as
| it's close, isn't hard to get to, and has a Metro (our
| subway) station right in front of the terminal, and the
| airport is fairly easy to navigate once you're in. Dulles
| now has a Metro station, but it's still far away from the
| terminal and it's hard to navigate, with gates very far
| away from the terminal; other than the Saarinen
| architecture, everything else about Dulles is awful. BWI is
| even further from most parts of DC; there's an AmTrak
| station where you can catch a bus, but pretty much you're
| driving an hour+ and it's in the middle of exurban hell.
|
| DCA is challenging for flights, though, as the approach
| from upriver over the Potomac requires a sudden bank to the
| right just before landing and the runway's a bit short
| (tonight's flight was coming in from the southern
| approach). The Potomac also has a lot of helicopter
| traffic, between the military (including POTUS/VPOTUS), US
| Park Police, DC Police, and civilian flights. DCA's natural
| advantages have put the screws to Dulles the last 20 years,
| and Dulles's inability to not suck hasn't helped. As a
| result, people (including Members of Congress) want more
| flights out of DCA, so flight traffic has steadily
| increased. There were two near-misses last spring:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/faa-investigating-
| colli....
|
| Tonight's crash seems like a colossal screwup by the
| helicopter. DCA is too popular for flight traffic to cease,
| but I wouldn't be surprised by further restricting the
| flight corridors and helicopter traffic, more
| funding/staffing for ATC, and maybe a small reduction in
| flights.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _more funding /staffing for ATC_
|
| _More_ funding? From an administration that is currently
| doing its best to get rid of as many federal employees as
| possible and has an extra "department" (led by you-know-
| who) dedicated to that? What they will probably do with
| ATC is privatize it (which is actually a reasonable thing
| to do - it's private in most of Europe, but if the
| intention behind it is to save money, it will probably
| not improve the system).
| jonstewart wrote:
| I would not be surprised if ATC _at DCA_ gets some more
| funding given the complicated air traffic environment and
| its unique position as Congress's second-favorite
| airport.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| What is Congress' favorite airport?
| ghaff wrote:
| Presumably Dulles because international and probably
| long-haul generally flights. (Though I imagine more fly
| in and out of Reagan/National on a regular basis.)
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Huh, yeah I think that's maybe the Virginia delegation's
| favorite airport but I'm highly skeptical it is for other
| members as it's pretty far and while it does have more
| flights, I don't think it's incredible. For international
| flights when traveling for work, many Congresspeople will
| use milair anyways. For reference, I worked as a staffer
| in Congress for a couple of years and just picked this up
| although I've never done any in-depth research
| alistairSH wrote:
| Congressmen from areas that can serve DCA tend to pick
| DCA due to proximity/convenience. Noted elsewhere, it's a
| bit easier to navigate internally (smaller, newer
| terminal building vs IAD), though I don't know how much
| that impacts Congressmen - I'm guessing they at minimum
| are using first class/preferred facilities and not
| queuing up with us plebes for security.
|
| Periodically, Congress pushes to have DCA take more
| traffic total and from a larger portion of the US.
| Currently, DCA is limited to destinations 1250 miles
| away, though powerful Congressmen have obtained permanent
| waivers for this over the years for specific flights so
| they get an easy flight to their own home region.
| gosub100 wrote:
| There's a privately controlled tower at KSQL (San Carlos)
| and there have been numerous incidents of ATC losing
| their cool on pilots, sometimes brand new students. All
| the YT comments say it's because it's privately
| controlled and understaffed and many pilots vouch for
| similar drama happening to them. I can't prove it, just
| passing along a data point. Obviously this problem could
| be solved by paying better and having enough staff. But
| how likely is that?
| rayiner wrote:
| Thank's for the detailed explanation! I have a warm spot
| in my heart for Dulles, because it's my first memory of
| American (we flew into Dulles from Bangladesh in 1989).
| It's really convenient if you live in Great Falls or
| Reston. And I loved what was then the semi-rural Virginia
| around the airport. But agreed, it's a huge pain in the
| butt to navigate.
| ghaff wrote:
| For all the hate EWR (Newark) gets, I much prefer to
| connect through from there to Europe from Boston than
| Dulles. My biggest objection to EWR is that it's a PITA
| to get into Manhattan from but, then, that's pretty much
| true of all the NYC airports. I'm rarely doing that
| though as I'm almost always taking the train into the
| city.
| MattSayar wrote:
| > the airport is fairly easy to navigate once you're in.
|
| I see you skipped talking about how terrible it is
| navigating the road traffic to arrivals/departures
| tssva wrote:
| DCA is just across the Potomac River from DC and thus large
| amounts of restricted air space. This makes take offs and
| landings at DCA challenging since all this restricted air
| space has to be avoided. DCA also has not space to expand
| to try to mitigate the risks. Congress has interfered over
| the years by attaching riders to legislation requiring the
| number of flights allowed in and out of DCA to be increased
| over the objection of the Metropolitan Washington Airport
| Authority (MWAA) who runs both DCA and IAD (Dulles). This
| despite decades of warnings that the number of flights
| posses a significant safety risk.
|
| Regional airport authorities which run multiple airports
| such as MWAA generally spread the cost of improvements out
| across the multiple airports by increasing gate fees at all
| the airports they control to cover the cost of improvements
| at any one airport. Congress has forbidden MWAA to do so
| which has limited their ability to expand and improve IAD
| to lure airlines to shift domestic flights from DCA to IAD.
| IAD remains primarily an international airport with
| domestic flights in and out supporting that role. This is
| largely due to the higher gate fees at IAD.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I have a feeling from your comment that you know more about
| aviation than you are letting on, and the part about being in
| DC not giving you a right to an opinion seems pretty silly in
| that context.
| boringg wrote:
| This seems to be a resolved problem and one that we shouldn't
| have in this era. An unnecessary tragedy.
| huijzer wrote:
| blancolirio (active pilot who regularly makes videos about
| crahses with the aim of improving safety) just released a new
| video on this accident: https://youtu.be/_3gD_lnBNu0
|
| Summary: The helicopter might have been a little bit too high.
| The night vision goggles might have negatively affected the
| vision. The two aircraft were probably on different frequencies
| so didn't hear each other. And the helicopter might have
| focused on the wrong plane to avoid because they didn't see the
| right one thanks to the city skyline. It looks like the classic
| swiss cheese where multiple problems stacked up to cause the
| collision. See the video for details.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I believe the Marine aviation unit supporting the WH operates
| from the navy base east across from DCA. You can watch them
| training from the terminal.
|
| Not sure how they or the Army transition the approach ends to the
| runways, but it's really close.
| duxup wrote:
| I sometimes wonder about the value of these news stories on
| forums and social media.
|
| It's all pretty much wild speculation with several potential
| causes already mentioned on this forum.
|
| News important yes, every rando with a few shreds of factoids
| speculating, not so much.
| g-nair wrote:
| I've been saying something similar to friends recently. We have
| access to a bit Too much news for our own good.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Anything about civilian air safety is like catnip for nerds. It
| is the ultimate armchair nerd sport -- speculating about
| reasons for a civilian air crash. I guess this discussion will
| be more than 1,000 comments before its heat-death.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| Let's go back to AI non-stop 24/7, hallucinations are saner.
| fullshark wrote:
| In this case there is no or negative value. Wait for the facts,
| avoid the noise and wild speculation.
| avs733 wrote:
| But my dopamine...
| fortran77 wrote:
| Don't you know? If a person can program in Rust and Kotlin,
| that makes him an expert in every other field, too.
| justinspace wrote:
| I've seen at least one "why don't you just <misunderstanding
| of how aviation works>" upthread already. Can't believe this
| flavor of tech hubris is running the country now. No wonder
| the goddamn planes are falling out of the sky...
| duxup wrote:
| Arguably we have that with the current US executive branch.
|
| We had a hubub about the right way to power an aircraft
| carrier catapult for a while the first go around with these
| fools ...
| neilv wrote:
| Yes, tons of speculation, and very little clear basic facts.
|
| When I clicked, I expected to find the comments interesting
| (since I worked in a small corner of flight safety), but,
| skimming through, I kept feeling aversion to threads.
|
| Most modern news organizations aren't much better.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| I come to hn for the speculations.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Here we get air traffic controller recordings, and people who
| are ammeter pilots. It is more informed speculation than my
| "normal" friends or co-workers.
| duxup wrote:
| I suspect moderately informed, but not completely informed,
| is the worst kind of speculation. It has a sense of authority
| and knowledge that is hard to pinpoint its accuracy.
|
| Almost all the amateur theories in here, just by the variety,
| are going to be dead wrong.
| whateveracct wrote:
| It just _sounds_ more informed. Just like all the "amateur"
| physicists who speculate on theoretical physics posts on HN.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Here, I get ATC transcripts and learn about the helicopter
| flight paths. Traditional news describes an airliner with 60
| people on board as a "small plane."
| dboreham wrote:
| Well, last night when there were only 10 comments here, the
| essentials of what had happened were available from those
| comments. Meanwhile the mainstream news TV I was watching at
| the same time was presenting either zero information, or false
| information (e.g. that 4 survivors had been rescued).
| stall84 wrote:
| We really can't have this type of accident, a midair collision
| happen anywhere in the United States, much less the nation's
| capital, especially considering the Washington area is some of
| the highest controlled airspace in the country. DCA has been a
| high-risk airport really since the jet-age, and I have a feeling
| this might be the end of it as a major passenger airport (at
| least for Part 121 operations). DOT/FAA are really going to need
| to step up after this and figure it out, for good. I hope there
| are survivors but it is really cold in that water right now, look
| up Air Florida flight 90 for a completely different accident, but
| in a similar time of the year.
| alsodumb wrote:
| Unfortunately it's not gonna happen. The traffic at DCA only
| keeps going up, and I've heard chatter that it's because a lot
| of congressman and senators prefer taking flights from DCA
| instead of driving to Dulles or BWI.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Cities should have convenient airports
|
| Maybe the evtol technology will alleviate this dilemma
| modriano wrote:
| > DOT/FAA are really going to need to step up after this and
| figure it out, for good.
|
| Yeah. First, we should fill the currently vacant US Secretary
| of Transportation role. Then we should fill the currently
| vacant FAA Administrator role. Then we should fill the FAA
| Deputy Administrator role [0]. Then we should fill the
| currently vacant DoT Inspector General role that Trump just
| opened up by illegally firing this watchdog without the
| required 30 days notice to Congress [1]. Then we can start
| investigating.
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250129122818/https://www.faa.g...
|
| [1] https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2025/01/trump-fires-
| multip...
| Axsuul wrote:
| We've gone this long without an accident, what's to say we're
| not gonna learn the hard lesson from this and make sure it
| doesn't happen again?
| tjohns wrote:
| Radar replay: https://x.com/avgeekjake/status/1884823071611363833
|
| UHF feed with comms from the military helicopter:
| https://archives.broadcastify.com/44114/20250129/20250129200...
|
| - 5:41 - AA5342 is given instructions for circling to 33
|
| - 6:45 - PAT-25 reports Memorial
|
| - 7:06 - Tower gives PAT-25 traffic advisory, PAT-25 reports
| traffic in sight and requests visual separation
|
| - 8:08 - Tower asks PAT-25 if they have the CRJ in sight. PAT-25
| again reports traffic in sight and again requests visual
| separation
|
| - 8:23 - Crash occurs
| jakeogh wrote:
| aaand.. it's gone.
|
| archive of the radar replay: https://dpaste.com/3DUG9YWFB
|
| sha3-256: 539b49e57443109cb0aea06209ce142d44a5ccbee16e42e0c7102
| 6742fc56703
| smcin wrote:
| No, the Twitter/X post is gone but the
| archives.broadcastify.com link is still good.
| jakeogh wrote:
| more: https://dpaste.com/HDBW79JMX
|
| (no height data, so I ignore the overlay comments on the first
| video)
|
| sha3-256's 7c608babe5552ac436499978b1a458b3a74ddc7e1d7e5011c657
| 3b724729149e 24a3e23aa97f348ebd8740af83b3b50ae7dd5cd5147e88636b
| 564e93d99d9775
|
| blancolirio: Potomac Mid Air Collision DCA 1/29/25
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouDAnO8eMf8
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Anecdotally, the amount of helicopter & air traffic going on
| around DC has been absurd this month.
|
| My house in DC has calmed down _some_ but we had a bunch of low
| flying fighters jets & helicopters for a bit. It's been wild
| having the house shaken at noon or 1:00 from pairs of fighter
| jets!
|
| I've had an in-week around Tysons this week, and it's been _wild_
| seeing pair after pair after pair of helicopter flying east
| towards the city this week. I 'm normally up there once or twice
| a week and usually there's nothing like this.
| zzleeper wrote:
| Agreed. Why so many heli's to McClean? Are they just too stingy
| to pay the I66 toll in the afternoon?
| gonzo41 wrote:
| I know that everyone crosses all altitudes during landing. But
| why don't ATC / FAA stratify aircraft type and use by altitude.
| Like all commercial traffic is put in even thousands altitudes.
| And the Military / EMS gets the odd thousands.
|
| Its crazy to have things colliding like this.
| mbreese wrote:
| Everything eventually needs to land, so when you're talking
| about an area around an airport, at low altitudes, that's going
| to be a difficult thing to do. If you mix in helicopter traffic
| that needs to run at lower altitudes anyway, that is also near
| an airport, it becomes a much more difficult scenario to
| control.
| dboreham wrote:
| Helicopter flies at 200ft. Planes landing have to traverse
| through 200ft. Therefore vertical separation impossible.
| chinathrow wrote:
| This heli route is just crazy.
| dboreham wrote:
| Agreed. Seems that underlying all of this is "people doing
| inadvisable things because they can".
| chinathrow wrote:
| Update: Found the routes in the FAA HELDC PDF
|
| https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/12-26-2024/PDFs/Balt-
| Wash_Hel...
| alsodumb wrote:
| Route 4 (the helicopter route along the river) has a maximum
| altitude of 200 feet for helicopter. From the crash it seemed
| like the helicopter pilot wasn't strictly following the
| ceiling.
| justinspace wrote:
| You'd think they would've figured this out by now. Hacker News
| to the rescue!
| third_rate_econ wrote:
| Could be a relevant DEFCON talk:
| https://youtu.be/KYuBf2HpXJg?si=srOl5T6CY6Lg8HZQ
|
| Sounds like maybe the ADSB was on in this case though.
| mmaunder wrote:
| This will be the worst disaster since Colgan in 2009 which is the
| crash that upped the hours requirement for ATP pilots from 250 to
| 1500 even though both pilots had over 1500 hours. I think this is
| going to be a very big deal and very quickly become a political
| football. Regardless, this is absolutely awful and extremely
| unfortunate.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Early indications are that the airliner and ATC were operating
| as planned, and the immediate cause of the crash was the
| military helicopter.
| lovecg wrote:
| This is an often repeated misconception. ATP always needed 1500
| hours. What wasn't required is for both pilots to have an ATP,
| just the captain - the flight officer only needed a commercial
| certificate. Airlines would hire with lower hours and train on
| the job.
|
| While both pilots in the crash did have over 1500 hours, the
| flight officer did not in fact hold an ATP. The rule also
| changed some of the ATP training requirements, and there were
| other regulation changes on duty cycles, etc.
|
| It's very possible we've had a run of good luck since 2009.
| It's also possible some of the rule changes helped. I wouldn't
| dismiss that possibility too quickly.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/notice/n_8900.225....
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Maybe the military shouldn't fly training flights there. Just an
| idea.
| warner25 wrote:
| It's a bad idea. That unit's [1] task is to provide
| transportation to senior government officials and security
| forces around the capital, including to and from that airport.
| If they didn't train to operate there, then their first time
| doing so would be with someone like the Secretary of Defense
| onboard or during some other mission that's critical to
| national security.
|
| "Training" here also doesn't imply some 21 year-old flight
| school student learning to fly. The aviators assigned to that
| unit are typically more senior people who've already done a
| tour or two with more conventional units.
|
| I've lost count of how many times I've heard your sentiment
| already today, and I'm distraught by the general public's
| apparent lack of understanding about how things work.
|
| [1] https://jtfncr.mdw.army.mil/TAAB/
| dmtroyer wrote:
| Are pilots landing at DCA conditioned to ignore TCAS warnings on
| approach? Would there have been one?
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| TCAS has a minimum altitude of 700ft AFAIK
| inoffensivename wrote:
| It's 900ft AGL and below while descending
|
| (CRJ pilot here)
| teractiveodular wrote:
| To put this in perspective, this is the first fatal crash of a US
| commercial airliner in 16 years (Colgan Air Flight 3407 on
| February 12, 2009) and the first fatal commercial airliner crash
| in the United States in 12 years (since Asiana Airlines Flight
| 214 on July 6, 2013).
|
| We like to throw shade at Boeing, the FAA etc, but this is still
| an incredible accomplishment, especially given the explosive
| growth of traffic over those years. Back in the 1970s and 1980s,
| there were far fewer flights but multiple crashes _every year_
| was the norm.
| cameldrv wrote:
| That was my thought exactly when I heard of this. I trust that
| like other major accidents, that we will learn from this and
| make the skies safer. Sixteen years without a major airline
| crash was an incredible accomplishment. It's a tragedy it
| couldn't have gone on longer.
| windowshopping wrote:
| The real question, I feel, is whether the current U.S.
| government as it exists in 2025 is still capable of continuing
| to improve things, and whether it's still putting all the
| lessons of the past into practice - or whether we were just
| coasting on a combination of luck and the vestigial safety left
| to us by the diligence of the past.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Our presidents social media commentary on this issue reads,
| and this is the only way I can phrase this, like a child
| wrote it. It's embarrassing.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| nothing new there
| venusenvy47 wrote:
| Considering that the head of the FAA and TSA were forced to
| resign, and a hiring freeze on air traffic controllers is
| suddenly in effect, I don't think the current government
| wants to improve flight safety.
|
| https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-
| transport/2025-0...
| contravariant wrote:
| Honestly I'm expecting an executive order banning left
| wings at this rate.
| AdamN wrote:
| Reagan fired the ATCs when they tried to assert their
| rights - can't be good if they think they may be the next
| in line for DOGEing.
| richwater wrote:
| > when they tried to assert their rights
|
| That's an interesting way of phrasing going on an illegal
| strike which they agreed not to do as part of their
| employment contract.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| The fact that a strike can be illegal is, in and of
| itself, an erosion of worker rights.
| richwater wrote:
| It's a compromise to ensure the functioning of the
| country.
|
| PATCO members were offered more than double % raises of
| any other government employee with a small reduction in
| work hours.
|
| They overplayed their (illegal) hand and it bit them. No
| sympathy.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| Everyone else was offered 2.5%?
| amazingamazing wrote:
| unpopular opinion - but public workers should not be able
| to go on strike, and in fact shouldn't even be allowed to
| unionize. it's antithetical to democracy. they should
| simply run for office and change things, not hold
| taxpayers' services hostage.
|
| unions make sense for private organizations because
| private organizations are effectively authoritarian
| entities, not democracies. there is no mechanism in which
| you could actually "vote" anyone out or establish a
| leadership position by virtue of popular support, and
| most importantly there's no constituency to air
| grievances to
| lesuorac wrote:
| Yeah, imagine if somebody at say Google made a union as
| opposed to just buying up 51% of the stock to vote
| somebody out.
|
| Everybody makes in-groups to advocate their positions.
| idk why when it comes to workers people are all like "but
| they shouldn't". Let me know when you're against the US
| Chamber of Congress ...
| nemo44x wrote:
| I don't think that's an unpopular opinion really. Unions
| are supposed to be an adversary of management who they
| negotiate with, and depending on who wins the election
| they are an ally. There's a conflict of interest. So
| naturally the group that supports the person that wins
| the election will have a favorable contract and be able
| to grow their union as that's beneficial to the political
| party and the union.
|
| At the very least states should implement laws and
| statutes that define limits and rules such as union
| compensation must be paid with the current years revenues
| and not with bonds that are paid for by future
| generations, etc.
| callc wrote:
| That's a good point against unionization for government
| employees.
|
| But anti-union is against the right to assemble, and any
| law requiring an individual to work goes against some
| very basic freedoms (self-determination, slavery?)
|
| Let's not make stripping away of freedoms a common thing
| that employers, government or private, can do. Rights are
| rights.
| Carrok wrote:
| > simply run for office
|
| That "simply" is doing an absurd amount of heavy lifting.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The people in federal workers unions aren't in elected
| positions, no country or government anywhere has voters
| weigh in on every clerk, office manager, etc.... They're
| just jobs, no one votes for them beyond in some cases
| voting for the head of their agencies but more often by
| voting for the people that will select the agency heads.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| > Considering that the head of the FAA and TSA were forced
| to resign
|
| For context, the heads of the FAA and TSA are supposed to
| serve 5-year terms. The FAA Admin (Michael Whitaker) who
| was forced out started serving in Oct 2023. The TSA Admin
| (David Pekoske) was first appointed in 2017, and then
| nominated for another 5-year term in 2022.
|
| As far as I'm aware, this is the first time those positions
| have ever been told to resign by a new administration.
| venusenvy47 wrote:
| I've been avoiding the typical outrageous statements from
| the current POTUS for many years, but his comments at his
| press conference today, about how DEI hiring could be
| responsible for this accident, are just unbelievable. And
| all of a sudden it seems to have made him to decide that
| the FAA needs a director today.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| What is unbelievable about them?
| jumpman_miya wrote:
| There are reports that qualified applicants were turned
| away by US Gov due to DEI. But go on...
| teachrdan wrote:
| With all due respect, Hacker News is not the place for
| making blanket assertions with no references. Please post
| a citation if you have one. Otherwise please don't waste
| readers' time with unfounded rumors.
| j-bos wrote:
| Poster may be referring to the complaints about the
| devaluation of the standardized CTI process https://ojs.l
| ibrary.okstate.edu/osu/index.php/CARI/article/d...
|
| There was also a lawsuit against the last Sec of
| Transportation which I believe was related but not too
| sure.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| "People are saying"
|
| What reports, specifically?
| alistairSH wrote:
| The same ones Trump hears, probably.
|
| FAA ATC has been underfunded and understaffed for years.
| That has nothing to do with DEI.
| randomopining wrote:
| Yeah same here. Somehow these latest today by T have gone
| overboard and struck a chord. What an absolute bozo he
| is.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| I think Boeing specifically attracts criticism due to all the
| fatalities outside of the US in that time period.
| gota wrote:
| And the perceived sentiment that those fatalities are
| directly linked to changes in the corporate culture that
| emphasized 'greed' and 'middle management power structures'
| over 'engineering focus'
|
| Not saying these are true - or false - just that the
| prevalent media coverage and social media commentary
| (including here on HN) has been touching on these points
| frequently. The 'good guys' at Boeing were pushed out or
| silenced, the 'sleazy guys' won and didn't care about the
| consequences as long as they got their payday
| junaru wrote:
| Why is this being framed as airliners fault to begin with.
|
| When a fishingboat gets rammed by an cruise ship it's not
| "cruise ship collides with fishingboat", its the reverse.
|
| One is a big civilian aircraft thats being tracked and has no
| way of making sharp course adjustments the other is a 'VIP'
| with potentially ADS-B off.
|
| Heads should fly at whatever military branch the hellicopter
| was operated at... but they wont.
| sofixa wrote:
| > We like to throw shade at Boeing, the FAA etc, but this is
| still an incredible accomplishment, especially given the
| explosive growth of traffic over those years
|
| To be fair to them, the Boeing-related incidents could have
| well happened in the US and killed Americans too. And the FAA
| absolutely refused to do their job until their hand was forced
| by everyone else - they refused to ground the Maxes until all
| other major air authorities did. That's also why EASA is
| involved in the Max recertification, and the 777X
| certification. Nobody trusts the FAA anymore.
|
| And the fact that the door blowout didn't damage any part of
| the plane is miraculous - if it had hit the vertical
| stabiliser, the plane would have been a total loss.
|
| So you're giving credit where very little is due.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| There is simply no reason to use the statistical safety of air
| travel to excuse incidents. We can appreciate the incredible
| feats of engineering and logistics that make air travel so safe
| without letting the bar dip down or throwing up our hands and
| saying "well it can't be perfect, don't throw shade" when a
| specific organization has a specific incident.
|
| Edit: To be clear, I'm referring to what you said, not to the
| current incident.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Well it is objectively true that it can't be perfect.
| wat10000 wrote:
| We can simultaneously acknowledge this amazing safety record
| and still want to fix issues that are found.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Can you clarify the difference between these?
|
| > first fatal crash of a US commercial airliner
|
| > first fatal commercial airliner crash in the United States
|
| Is it that the 2009 crash was a US-manufactured plane while the
| 2013 crash was not manufactured in the US but _happened_ in the
| US?
| hervature wrote:
| Actually, the planes from both crashes were Bombardier, a
| Canadian company. The first one means operated by a US
| company and the second one refers to a crash in the US.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I believe the distinction the OP was making was foreign-
| owned/operated airline vs domestic. Makes a small difference,
| but not hufe, as all commericial pilots landing in the US
| must have an FAA ATP, and the same minimum flight hours as
| American pilots (though the quality of those hours and other
| training may vary).
| user_7832 wrote:
| It's probably really early to ask, but in case anyone here is
| knowledgeable and has any idea: why didn't TCAS help avoid the
| accident? Isn't it designed for such situations where 2 aircrafts
| collide? Do military crafts not have it or something?
| kristjansson wrote:
| Too low, most likely.
| whataguy wrote:
| It's likely both the helicopter and the jet received a TCAS
| warning. In dense airspaces, those alerts tend to trigger
| frequently, so there's a strong chance they may have dismissed
| it. The CRJ crew might have been aware of the Blackhawk's
| presence, but if the other crew had visual contact with the
| approaching traffic (the CRJ), they might not have felt the
| need to take further action.
| m2fkxy wrote:
| TCAS RAs are inhibited at low altitude.
| dboreham wrote:
| I've seen this comment widely. But...why doesn't TCAS show
| the pilots at least as much information as I would have
| seen on my phone if I'd been browsing flightradar at the
| time? It's one thing to design a system with "don't
| saturate the operator with audible alerts" but another to
| say that it's appropriate to withhold very valuable
| information from the operator ("there are loads of planes
| in the general vicinity, but yeah look at that one coming
| at you from the left").
| m2fkxy wrote:
| the TCAS data would have been displayed. but not on
| instruments or in any place that you typically pay
| attention to the most during final visual approach (ie.,
| mostly outside).
| nopzor wrote:
| as others have said, likely too low. tcas is pretty awesome
| (and yes, most military flights will use it), but it is
| (deliberately) muted/degraded at low altitudes (i think around
| 1500feet).
| RA_Fisher wrote:
| Another horrible cost of militarism.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Maybe not related at all, but I can't help but wonder if this is
| affected by the funding turmoil. Would a less distracted ATC
| controller prevent this?
| fastball wrote:
| No.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| DCA has two runways. The longer runway is aligned with the
| river's north/south direction at that point, so planes flying the
| approach to this runway from the south track along the western
| shore of the river, leaving the eastern shore clear for other
| aircraft like helicopters. The vast majority of flights on
| approach from the south [1] use this longer runway.
|
| The secondary runway is set at a diagonal NW/SE. Planes flying an
| approach from the south follow the river at first, but then loop
| out over the eastern shore of the river to line up on that
| runway. To my eye the radar track of the downed flight follows
| this path. It's possible since it was a small plane and only
| small planes can use the diagonal runway--it's shorter.
|
| I mention this because this track takes planes into airspace that
| is a) usually clear of commercial airplane traffic, and b)
| directly over military facilities like Naval Research Lab and
| Joint Base Bolling, which have significant military helicopter
| travel.
|
| Basically, I wonder to what extent the helicopter pilot was
| surprised to find an airplane descending in that location.
|
| [1] When flights are approaching from the north, the main runway
| requires a pretty sharp right turn seconds before touching down.
| Approaches to the diagonal runway from the north take planes
| almost directly over the Pentagon.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| The press conference this morning mentioned that this was a new
| flight path. I wonder if the helicopter crew were not fully
| briefed on the new path, if that is the case.
| francisofascii wrote:
| In looking at the radar recording, the plane appears to be
| approaching from the south going north (very slightly east),
| than diverts northwest to land on the runway, as you describe.
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| I work at NRL, east of DCA and about 500 yards south of the
| crash. Can confirm that it is not unusual for flights to pass
| directly overhead of us, however I don't understand the
| statement that this was a new flight path.
| dboreham wrote:
| What it means is that the aircraft was on approach into
| runway 1 (ILS) and then on ATC instruction changed runway to
| 33 (no ILS). This required a "jog" in flight path -- a slight
| right turn followed by a left turn, to account for the
| different orientation between the runways. You can see the
| turns on the ADS data. Crash happened right at the end of the
| second turn.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It wasn't a surprise, the ATC recording is out there already
| [0], also while it's a less common approach path it's not
| exactly new or that unusual military traffic has to deal with
| the commercial traffic all the time in that area.
|
| [0] Crash happens around 8:21 the chopper pilot is advised of
| and reports traffic in sight at around 7:06 and 8:12
| https://archives.broadcastify.com/44114/20250129/20250129200...
| vman81 wrote:
| If anyone needs a palate cleanser after listening to a depressing
| ATC recording, I can recommend this heartwarming first time solo
| flying teenager dealing with her landing gear coming off after
| takeoff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ5q7Iv5wTM
| Reubachi wrote:
| The amount of times i've wtched this video needing an excuse to
| feel hype is greater than 10.
|
| Her personal instructor finally arriving ("Maggie it's john")
| and Maggie starting to normalize the situation/making
| professonal raido calls really show the power of humanity
| working through struggle.
| dibujaron wrote:
| This was great, thanks!
| kirtakat wrote:
| Gods, her "OK" at 30seconds is fucking heart wrenching.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The absolute terror she must have felt. All she could
| probably think of was that she was not going to survive that
| flight.
|
| Though it sounds like she successfully landed it without any
| injury.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Thank you so much for sharing this. Probably the most
| wholesome, scary, heartening thing I've seen this year.
| bolognafairy wrote:
| I've watched this countless times and I'll watch it countless
| times more.
| wnevets wrote:
| Whose idea was it to gut aviation safety?
| outside1234 wrote:
| The Boeing-ification of the federal government, in which
| everything is stripped down to below what is actually required to
| be safe, is in full effect.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| AV Herald has a great summary and discussion:
| https://avherald.com/h?article=52374362&opt=0
| GlenTheMachine wrote:
| I work at a Navy installation on the Potomac just south of DCA.
| As of 10 am EST today there was a moderate police and rescue
| presence on the water. There is a significant amount of debris
| visible floating in the river, and the boats are fishing it out
| piece by piece. The only things in the air are a handful of
| helicopters, presumably related to the search operation.
| r00fus wrote:
| I wonder if this administration's firing of many FAA civil
| positions and the federal worker "buyouts" are responsible.
| rapnie wrote:
| Just learned about it here: https://fallows.substack.com/p/it-
| had-been-16-years-since-a-...
|
| Likely more affected are learning about the aftermath via
| investigation, but I am not sure.
|
| Edit: No wait, that article mentioned the disbanding of
| Aviation Security Advisory Committee a week ago.
| JadoJodo wrote:
| I'll bite. How are you thinking that might've contributed to
| the crash?
| davidw wrote:
| The intelligent response would be "probably not, but we'll see
| what the investigation says".
|
| But imagine if the tables were turned politically. Fox News
| would be going off 24/7 about "DEI" or some such for weeks on
| end. That strategy seems to be successful, so I would expect
| the other side to start employing it more as well.
|
| Having a bunch of harried, overworked people stressed about
| their jobs and the future certainly doesn't _help_ anything, in
| any case.
| TheGRS wrote:
| Yea I had the same thought, its a ticky-tacky thing to say
| right now, but I wouldn't expect any more from the other side
| either.
| davidw wrote:
| And there it is. He's out there saying it right now.
| TheGRS wrote:
| Yep, I should have expected it honestly. This is a pretty
| great opening for an aspiring Democratic leader right
| now, there are no sacred topics for political clout
| anymore.
| fundad wrote:
| RW media and the POTUS himself is making the dubious claim
| that DEI practices are responsible for low standards of
| hiring for air traffic controllers in the FAA during the
| Biden presidency.
|
| I don't think POTUS was serious because he also claimed
| people shouldn't be hesitant to fly.
|
| 'He is later asked by a reporter if people should be hesitant
| to fly, and he says: "No, not at all."'
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy7kxx74yxlt
| davidw wrote:
| Basically, their idea is that only white men can do these
| kinds of jobs. It's just racism.
| fundad wrote:
| It results in more questions than answers. Like why was
| the impact of DEI on ATC competence overlooked by the
| Commander-in-Chief and DOD when training mission in DC
| airspace began?
| archagon wrote:
| There is no Fox News equivalent for the left, though. In
| fact, most of the US media seems to be owned by or otherwise
| aligned with the right.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| As long as it also affects the investigation to find out its
| all the same to a psychopath.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| "Commercial jet collides with helicopter during landing", while
| not the article title, would be _far_ more accurate.
| throw0101c wrote:
| "FAA Got Rid of Its Leader Before D.C. Plane Crash--Thanks to
| Elon Musk":
|
| * https://newrepublic.com/post/190942/faa-no-leader-dc-plane-c...
|
| "FAA Administrator Quit on Jan. 20 After Elon Musk Told Him to
| Resign":
|
| * https://www.thedailybeast.com/faa-chief-michael-whitaker-qui...
|
| "The FAA is facing a major crisis without a leader because Elon
| Musk pushed him out*
|
| * https://www.theverge.com/news/603113/faa-chief-musk-dc-plane...
| dehrmann wrote:
| If we see more accidents a year from now, you have a point. The
| most you can really blame on leadership changes right now is
| stress from worrying about your next paycheck. Even then, this
| _looks_ like a military pilot screwed up doing a routine
| training exercise.
| dboreham wrote:
| Probably, but that pilot was it seems operating within a very
| risky environment (being able to see and avoid a plane in the
| dark in a place with many such planes and other lighted
| objects) that with hindsight should not have existed. I'd
| certainly never have flown on a plane into DCA if I had known
| that military helicopters were routinely buzzing around in
| the same airspace with no technological deconfliction aids.
| fundad wrote:
| It's important to consider what the administration was
| focused on during a life-or-death crisis.
| CivBase wrote:
| Gotta find a way to blame every tragedy on the politicians we
| don't like, huh? Trump is out there blaming Biden's
| administration for hiring bad ATC under the banner of DEI.
| Meanwhile, his detractors blame him and Musk for letting go of
| some FAA administrator.
|
| But of couse neither of those explanations are likely to hold
| water. The sad, mundane reality is these people probably lost
| their lives due to a miscommunication or misunderstanding
| between ATC and the helicopter pilots. And this political
| mudslinging will probably get in the way of us ever
| implementing process changes so it doesn't happen again.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, the political mudslinging is not yet at the level where
| it will interfere with the methodological investigation of
| the circumstances, and making and implementing
| recommendations so that it does not happen again.
|
| The political mudslinging will distract the general
| population from that process, but that's all right - they
| weren't involved in it anyway.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Trump is out there blaming Biden 's administration for
| hiring bad ATC under the banner of DEI._
|
| The policies were in place since 2013, and somehow were not a
| problem during Trump's first term (2016-2020).
|
| > _Meanwhile, his detractors blame him and Musk for letting
| go of some FAA administrator._
|
| The FAA administrator in question was around for about a
| year, and had a term until 2028, so there's no need to push
| him out now.
|
| And the crash is not the fault of Biden or Trump, but there
| is unnecessary chaos because of Trump _et al_.
| Yeul wrote:
| "Trump blames diversity rules under his predecessors, saying he
| believes people were hired for air traffic control roles who were
| not qualified - but offers no evidence for this"
|
| From the BBC. I swear to god they made 4chan president of
| America.
| okvariation2323 wrote:
| There is some evidence for this, unfortunately
|
| https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
| JTbane wrote:
| Real talk, the helicopter was operating night VFR, right? How is
| this safe when the jet is moving extremely fast relative to the
| chopper and the only separation is a visual reference to some
| navigation lights?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Right or wrong, the US has fewer (but not quite zero) limits on
| night-time VFR.
|
| This differs from some of the EU, where night VFR can have more
| stringent operating parameters than day-time VFR.
| jahewson wrote:
| It's not. That's the simple answer. Accident waiting to happen.
| gepardi wrote:
| Why is a Blackhawk helicopter Performing a "training flight" at
| night very close to DCA?
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Presumably because they might have to fly a regular flight at
| night very close to DCA?
|
| Imagine if there was VIP onboard, especially if it was foreign
| VIP.
| kube-system wrote:
| Because DCA is right beside a couple of military bases, the
| headquarters of the US military, and the political capital of
| the US.
|
| These helicopters are _always_ going up and down the Potomac
| all the time.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I'm pretty sure "training flight" in this context simply means
| they weren't actively carrying passengers. And it's not
| indicative of a junior or unqualified pilot (doesn't rule it
| out, just can't infer much from the phrase in this context).
|
| At the extreme, fighter pilots fly almost exclusively training
| flights because we're not actively waging war at the moment.
|
| There are a few military bases in the area - Belvior (Army),
| Quantico (USMC), Andrews (USAF), Pentagon, and some smaller
| ones (some of which have helipads, but no helicopters on
| station). And lots of shuttling of DoD and other government
| VIPs from location to location across the DC metro area.
| warner25 wrote:
| Yes, the public needs to understand this. That unit's [1]
| task is to provide transportation to senior government
| officials and security forces around the capital, including
| to and from that airport. If they didn't train to operate
| there, then their first time doing so would be with someone
| like the Secretary of Defense onboard or during some other
| mission that's critical to national security.
|
| And the aviators assigned to that unit are typically more
| senior people who've already done a tour or two with more
| conventional units. Source: I'm a career Army officer and
| former Black Hawk pilot.
|
| [1] https://jtfncr.mdw.army.mil/TAAB/
| kranke155 wrote:
| A real tragedy.
|
| Here on HN someone mentioned after a recent (last year) near miss
| that the US system was overloading the system and that some
| tragedy might be incoming. Maybe of the most insightful and heart
| breaking "competency crisis" related posts I've encountered.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-30 23:01 UTC)