Trump Fires Air Safety Experts - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

[bilby]

I'm not a military helicopter pilot, but if there are three people in a military helicopter and even if the pilot is watching the ground due to flying low, wouldn't someone else have noticed the beacons and massive flood light of the oncoming plane? They are right next to Reagan, about to intersect the landing path, so if there was a time to be extra vigilant, this would be the time. It is possible someone at ground control made a terrible mistake, but it just seems hard to imagine the helicopter made no notice of the plane.

It's incredibly easy to imagine.

The entire structure of ATC in the area is deeply flawed, as it allows visual separation of aircraft at night in an urban environment. Washington DC is far from the only US city that has this problem; It is endemic in US ATC.

A few things to note:

1: An aircraft that is on a collision course with you appears stationary against the background; It grows larger as a collision nears, but this effect is hard to discern even in daylight until it is too late to respond.

2: A stationary light (or set of lights) against a background of lights (such as a city) is very hard to spot at all.

3: Even if you see another aircraft in these conditions, it is close to impossible to identify its type at night. The ATCO asks the Blackhawk pilot if he has visual "on the CRJ"; The helicopter pilot responds that he does. However, he cannot know that (and appears in this case to have been tragically mistaken). He likely had visual on the next aircraft in traffic descending into KDCA, and not on the aircraft with which he collided. There was a string of aircraft on approach to runway 1 at the time; The CRJ he collided with had made a dogleg to approach runway 33.

The CRJ pilots did everything exactly by the book.

The ATCO did everything exactly by the book.

The Blackhawk pilots did everything exactly by the book.

The problem is that what is in the book was an accident waiting to happen. Relying on pilots to correctly visually identify air traffic in a busy airspace at night over a cityscape will inevitably result in a crash, sooner or later.

Visual separation in good weather (even at night) is SOP in US Category B airspace (the most strictly controlled category, and the category in which this crash occurred). It is prohibited in Europe, where separation in Cat B airspace is always the responsibility of ATC, and cannot be handed off to pilots to be managed visually.

The Blackhawk pilot believed that he had the conflicting traffic in sight, and that he was able to pass behind it as instructed. The ATCO believed that too. But these people had two different aircraft in mind; And at night, there is no good way to check - in daylight, the helicopter pilot asked to confirm visual on "the CRJ" might have thought "that's not a CRJ, it's an A319 - Oh, shit, there must be another conflicting aircraft to look out for!". At night, he can see lights moving against the background, and has no clue that there is another set of lights not moving against the background, that he desparately needs to be identifying and avoiding.

As with all crashes, there are a lot of factors that conspired to lead to disaster here. But central to it all is the way the system is intended to work, which requires the impossible - visual separation at night in busy airspace.

The US got away with it for sixteen years.

 

[southernhybrid]

I read in the news that there was only one air traffic controller doing the work that would normally be two. I don't know what's up with that.

But it is no OK for the Fascist Felon to go out there blaming before before the cause is determined. The guy will take any opportunity to blame his pet blamees without thought. And his cult followers will just believe him.

He blames Obama and Biden and DEI. He "forgets" that he was between the two.

I think the link I posted earlier in this thread mentioned that there is a huge shortage of air traffic controllers and a lot of them suffer from exhaustion due to mandatory overtime etc. So, it wouldn't be surprising if that was true, regardless if it was the cause of the crash or not. The link also mentioned the numerous close calls we've had due to the shortage. Anyone who watches the news is well aware of all the close calls that have happened in recent years.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's a quite a stretch to suggest that this can have an effect that immediate.

You don't believe that the announcement of mass firings and defunding across every federal department might cause a worker to become stressed and distractable?

Can be a contributing factor, but I don't think there has been much time between Trump becoming President and this incident. We have to actually figure out what did or didn't happen first before assigning extenuating circumstances regarding those things.

Air traffic control is a hellishly stressful job. There are all manner of regulations both limiting how long someone can do the job during a day as well as over the course of a career.

This is a job that chews people up and spits them out, and huge life stressors like anxiety over your job and a lack of replacements for when you are retired, or an empty chair because someone took the offer and quit immediately...

 

[Shadowy Man]

2: A stationary light (or set of lights) against a background of lights (such as a city) is very hard to spot at all.

given the geography in that area and that there are very few tall buildings and they were over a wide river at the time, I am doubtful that there was a significant. background of city lights. But that’s just idle thinking.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'm not a military helicopter pilot, but if there are three people in a military helicopter and even if the pilot is watching the ground due to flying low, wouldn't someone else have noticed the beacons and massive flood light of the oncoming plane? They are right next to Reagan, about to intersect the landing path, so if there was a time to be extra vigilant, this would be the time. It is possible someone at ground control made a terrible mistake, but it just seems hard to imagine the helicopter made no notice of the plane.

It's incredibly easy to imagine.

The entire structure of ATC in the area is deeply flawed, as it allows visual separation of aircraft at night in an urban environment. Washington DC is far from the only US city that has this problem; It is endemic in US ATC.

A few things to note:

1: An aircraft that is on a collision course with you appears stationary against the background; It grows larger as a collision nears, but this effect is hard to discern even in daylight until it is too late to respond.

2: A stationary light (or set of lights) against a background of lights (such as a city) is very hard to spot at all.

3: Even if you see another aircraft in these conditions, it is close to impossible to identify its type at night. The ATCO asks the Blackhawk pilot if he has visual "on the CRJ"; The helicopter pilot responds that he does. However, he cannot know that (and appears in this case to have been tragically mistaken). He likely had visual on the next aircraft in traffic descending into KDCA, and not on the aircraft with which he collided. There was a string of aircraft on approach to runway 1 at the time; The CRJ he collided with had made a dogleg to approach runway 33.

The CRJ pilots did everything exactly by the book.

The ATCO did everything exactly by the book.

The Blackhawk pilots did everything exactly by the book.

The book likely doesn't say "fly into plane".

The pilot indicated they saw the plane, twice. And requested the ability to go around the plane as they saw fit. They didn't go around it. They went "straight" towards it.

The problem is that what is in the book was an accident waiting to happen. Relying on pilots to correctly visually identify air traffic in a busy airspace at night over a cityscape will inevitably result in a crash, sooner or later.

If there was a mistake made, based on the transcript, it was the mis-found trust in the military craft. When ATC saw that the craft was not doing as told, it was too late. They repeated the question, the chopper repeated their certainty, and then there was an explosion. If they weren't military, I'd imagine the orders would have been different by ATC, something along the lines of "Get the fuck away from my airspace".

I'd say with too much hindsight, ATC should have immediately aborted the landing and tell the passenger plane to stop descent and immediately ascend.

 

[Politesse]

It's a quite a stretch to suggest that this can have an effect that immediate.

You don't believe that the announcement of mass firings and defunding across every federal department might cause a worker to become stressed and distractable?

Can be a contributing factor, but I don't think there has been much time between Trump becoming President and this incident. We have to actually figure out what did or didn't happen first before assigning extenuating circumstances regarding those things.

In case it wasn't clear, I think the whole practice of assigning blame based on... no evidence whatsoever?... is absurd on the face of it. I do not know what caused or just resulted in this crash yet, and neither does anyone else. It is not hard to imagine the mood at the FAA and in the military right now though, speaking as a fellow government employee.

 

[southernhybrid]

Unbelievable! Trump supported the DEI for air traffic controllers during his first term, that he now criticizes!

https://wapo.st/3Cy3Pc6

At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 2019

Reading from a 2024 Fox News report — which he incorrectly identified as being two weeks old — Trump listed conditions that he suggested disqualify people from being air traffic controllers: “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

“Can you imagine?” he asked. “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress.” He suggested that it was wrong for anyone with those conditions to qualify “for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, a little runway.”


But here’s the rub: During Trump’s first term, the FAA began a program to hire air traffic controllers with the conditions that Trump decried.

The facts​

In the news conference, Trump said Obama weakened standards and “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best, to extraordinary. … Then they changed it back — that was Biden.”

Damn!

Moreover, the FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news conference.
“FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,” the agency announced on April 11, 2019. The pilot program, the announcement said, would “identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.”

The link under “targeted disabilities” is now dead, but the Wayback Machine retains links from June 2017 and January 2021 that show the page was unchanged during Trump’s tenure. The list included:

• Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
• Vision (Blind)
• Missing Extremities
• Partial Paralysis
• Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy
• Severe intellectual disability
• Psychiatric disability
• Dwarfism

The June 2019 webpage for the Aviation Development Program (ADP) — also now removed but still visible on the Wayback Machine — said the program “provides an opportunity for Persons with Targeted Disabilities (PWTD) to gain aviation knowledge and experience as an air traffic control student trainee.”

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No wonder he was familiar with it.

But at least we don't have a President any more that talks slowly and acts old. What a shit show that was!

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

Cheato looks to be blaming the crash on DEI.
What fucking retarded asswipe.

Was the chopper pilot an indigneous lesbian transwoman?

Are you joking?

It is out there online. Rep. Ogles mentions it out of no where.

Ogles, in an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, was asked if there was any reason to suspect foul play in the accident. The Tennessee Republican, a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said he would “hate to jump to conclusions.”

“Obviously, we’ll look at everything, check all the boxes,” he told Bartiromo, adding that he saw the crash on his phone and was “horrified.” The lawmaker said he is praying for all those affected by the tragedy.

“But, you know, to your point, I think you have to look at this with eyes wide open,” Ogles continued. “See what happened. You know, human error? Was it some sort of equipment failure? Did DEI play a role in this type of thing?”

"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." - DONALD TRUMP a few minutes ago. (quote is being a bitch at the moment)

link
As far as we can tell, the FAA did nothing wrong. Reports indicate that the the Chopper should have known that plane was there and confirmed twice that they saw it. And seemingly, based on Radar, diverted a little bit, the wrong way, when told to pass behind the plane.

Trump gets shot at... DEI, military crashes into passenger plane... DEI, sun rises... DEI.

Bold: If anyone runs this down, I'll betcha dollars to doughnuts they find these folks with disabilities the FAA hires is the janitorial service. Ask me how I know.

So according to Trump himself he is a DEI hire. Admission accepted, he must go.

 

[Jarhyn]

I read in the news that there was only one air traffic controller doing the work that would normally be two. I don't know what's up with that.

But it is no OK for the Fascist Felon to go out there blaming before before the cause is determined. The guy will take any opportunity to blame his pet blamees without thought. And his cult followers will just believe him.

He blames Obama and Biden and DEI. He "forgets" that he was between the two.

And this goes back to my point... It takes two or three air traffic controllers doing the job on a good day.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Watching the VAS, the chopper is weird. Their flight pattern didn't seem to make much sense for the trailing 3130 either. They were informed that the plane was just south of the Wilson bridge, so they'd have to be thinking it was north and heading for the landing.

If you don't watch the passenger jet, you'd never have thought the chopper was doing anything differently on their route.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I read in the news that there was only one air traffic controller doing the work that would normally be two. I don't know what's up with that.

I heard that FAA regulations allow for one under certain conditions, such as lower traffic at night, as this was.

Perhaps the regulations need to be examined but there does not appear to have been a conflict in that regard.

 

[Elixir]

Perhaps the regulations need to be examined

Right, they need to be examined, then thoughtfully abandoned altogether.
They obviously don’t work and we’re spending billions to hire DEI flight control and safety people from god knows where. They can’t even speak English - have you listened to them? They sound like immigrants on cocaine! Let’s save the money - it will more than pay for the jet and the helicopter many times over! If we hire American pilots instead of DEI ones, they won’t make mistakes that cause these accidents, so we won’t need flight control people. Anyway, the flight controllers make too much. Especially for DEIs.

 

[bilby]

The pilot indicated they saw the plane, twice. And requested the ability to go around the plane as they saw fit.

A plane. They indicated that they saw A plane. Whether it was THE plane the ATCO was thinking of, is a whole other matter.

 

[bilby]

When ATC saw that the craft was not doing as told, it was too late. They repeated the question, the chopper repeated their certainty, and then there was an explosion.

What the ATCO told them to do, and what they wanted them to do, may well be two different things.

Everything makes sense, when you assume that the chopper pilot and the ATCO were talking about two different planes, but both thought they were talking about the same one.

"Sure, I can see a plane. I am nowhere near it yet, and plan to pass safely behind it".

BOOM!

Shoulda been looking at a different plane.

 

[robnisch]

 

[barbos]

It's really a miracle that this does not happen more often. Especially considering that it's controlled by human traffic controllers.
You can't rely on pilots ability to look all around his/her plane. There is TCAS, but I understand it is not designed for congested airport space where human traffic controllers control everything.
There should be TCAS analog for congested airport spaces and all aircrafts should be equipped with it.

 

[bilby]

When ATC saw that the craft was not doing as told, it was too late. They repeated the question, the chopper repeated their certainty, and then there was an explosion.

What the ATCO told them to do, and what they wanted them to do, may well be two different things.

Everything makes sense, when you assume that the chopper pilot and the ATCO were talking about two different planes, but both thought they were talking about the same one.

"Sure, I can see a plane. I am nowhere near it yet, and plan to pass safely behind it".

BOOM!

Shoulda been looking at a different plane.

From a pilot's forum I lurk at:

TWR gives AA5342 as traffic to the helicopter, stating they are over the Woodrow (Wilson) bridge, however the helicopter crew keeps flying into the final approach path of R33. 40 seconds later TWR again asks if they have the 'CRJ' in sight, and they reply they have, but at this point the CRJ is less than 200' above them and only 0.5nm away. At the same time the following aircraft on approach to R01, an AA A319 on flight 3130, is above the Woodrow Bridge on finals. Possibly the helicopter crew at some point confused the A319 for the CRJ.

The helicopter crew again confirms they have 'the aircraft' in sight and requests visual separation, but surely if they had the CRJ in sight at less than 200' vertically and half a mile away they would be taking immediate evasive action and not requesting visual separation?

 

[barbos]

According to this video it was head to head collision. Unless of course helicopter was flying sideways which it can.
I don't see how Heli pilot did not see CRJ.
Could it be he saw it but misjudged the distance? Second plane behind might have made him confused about distance.
And Tower talking to Heli just moment before collision and asking if they see CRJ? What's up with that?
It's clear they are colliding, and the helicopter does nothing to avoid it. Tower must have seen that and should have told the pilot to simply turn left.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It also sounds like

When ATC saw that the craft was not doing as told, it was too late. They repeated the question, the chopper repeated their certainty, and then there was an explosion.

What the ATCO told them to do, and what they wanted them to do, may well be two different things.

Everything makes sense, when you assume that the chopper pilot and the ATCO were talking about two different planes, but both thought they were talking about the same one.

"Sure, I can see a plane. I am nowhere near it yet, and plan to pass safely behind it".

BOOM!

Shoulda been looking at a different plane.

From a pilot's forum I lurk at:

TWR gives AA5342 as traffic to the helicopter, stating they are over the Woodrow (Wilson) bridge, however the helicopter crew keeps flying into the final approach path of R33. 40 seconds later TWR again asks if they have the 'CRJ' in sight, and they reply they have, but at this point the CRJ is less than 200' above them and only 0.5nm away. At the same time the following aircraft on approach to R01, an AA A319 on flight 3130, is above the Woodrow Bridge on finals. Possibly the helicopter crew at some point confused the A319 for the CRJ.

The helicopter crew again confirms they have 'the aircraft' in sight and requests visual separation, but surely if they had the CRJ in sight at less than 200' vertically and half a mile away they would be taking immediate evasive action and not requesting visual separation?

3130 seems reasonable except they would be flying in to its path too. You watch the chopper's path, they never appear to divert to go around something.