Helicopter Crash in DC
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The inability of people to STFU and wait for some level of actual evidence to emerge is really quite disheartening.
Of course, the Commander in Chief has the impulse control of a 9 year old who's just raided his dad's stash of steroids, which really doesn't help.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
The inability of people to STFU and wait for some level of actual evidence to emerge is really quite disheartening.
Of course, the Commander in Chief has the impulse control of a 9 year old who's just raided his dad's stash of steroids, which really doesn't help.
Well said. If he could just stop taking about topics he’s not informed on and/or added just a little humility and grace, he’d win so many people over.
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Some details about historic DEI hiring practices, the class action lawsuits that followed, and their lingering effects on the quality and quantity of air traffic controllers:
There were some nuts peak-DEI things happening. 84% of applicants were discarded, regardless of qualification, if they did not "pass" a biographical questionnaire designed to target black people, and with astonishing amounts of embedded racist assumptions. One of the questions, for instance, was whether you did poorly in science class in high school. If you did, you got points. There's more.
Link to video -
Aww, damn. I just found out one of our students was one of the figure skaters to die in the frigging crash. He’s been coming in on
Sundays for 13 years. His parents wouldn’t come in, just drop him off. He’d wait for them to pick him up and were always late. So he’d sit and play video game music until they showed up. They died, too. FFS.https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/us/dc-plane-crash-skater-family.html
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Airline pilots received more than 100 cockpit warnings over the past decade that they were in danger of a midair collision with a helicopter near Reagan National Airport, according to flight-tracking and government incident data, a record of repeated risks compiled by air traffic controllers before the Jan. 29 crash that killed 67 people.
and
Each of the incidents reviewed by The Post triggered an automated cockpit warning advising airliner pilots to take action to avoid a collision — causing them in many cases to abort landings or change flight paths.
Air traffic controllers have raised concerns to managers within the FAA in the past decade — including in writing, according to two people familiar with operations at National Airport and correspondence reviewed by The Post.
In 2020, controllers outlined the challenges, according to the correspondence: Helicopters could be told to wait for airline traffic to pass, potentially affecting national security and police work. Changing the helicopter corridors along the river could draw noise complaints, a perennial issue around Washington. Taking no action would mean airliners would need to abort landings and conduct “go-rounds” to avoid potential collisions.
One proposal in recent years involved shifting a helicopter route that follows the Potomac River inland to Interstate 295, the people said. That would put it farther from the approach to National Airport’s Runway 33. The route was not changed: The current description for Route 4, the path flown by the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the collision last month, is word-for-word the same as it was in 2012.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/13/dca-airport-crash-warnings-helicopters-airliner/
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Airline pilots received more than 100 cockpit warnings over the past decade that they were in danger of a midair collision with a helicopter near Reagan National Airport, according to flight-tracking and government incident data, a record of repeated risks compiled by air traffic controllers before the Jan. 29 crash that killed 67 people.
and
Each of the incidents reviewed by The Post triggered an automated cockpit warning advising airliner pilots to take action to avoid a collision — causing them in many cases to abort landings or change flight paths.
Air traffic controllers have raised concerns to managers within the FAA in the past decade — including in writing, according to two people familiar with operations at National Airport and correspondence reviewed by The Post.
In 2020, controllers outlined the challenges, according to the correspondence: Helicopters could be told to wait for airline traffic to pass, potentially affecting national security and police work. Changing the helicopter corridors along the river could draw noise complaints, a perennial issue around Washington. Taking no action would mean airliners would need to abort landings and conduct “go-rounds” to avoid potential collisions.
One proposal in recent years involved shifting a helicopter route that follows the Potomac River inland to Interstate 295, the people said. That would put it farther from the approach to National Airport’s Runway 33. The route was not changed: The current description for Route 4, the path flown by the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the collision last month, is word-for-word the same as it was in 2012.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/13/dca-airport-crash-warnings-helicopters-airliner/
@taiwan_girl said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
more than 100 cockpit warnings over the past decade that they were in danger of a midair collision
That is a busy weekend at a General Aviation airport.
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long read, but an interesting "minute by minute" account of what was going on in the cockpit of the helicopter.
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Thanks for sharing. I just recorded the Discovery Channel documentary about what happened but haven't watched it yet. I am looking forward to hearing some details and insights not already known. Living in that area for a while, I would watch the planes and helicopters daily. The routes were...well, routine. Of course in hindsight, a route that crosses the landing path for airplanes (at night) should've been treated with so much more risk appreciation than "do you see that jet out there?" and "yeah I see it" (wrong jet, most likely).
