Helicopter Crash in DC
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I am struggling to not make a misogynistic joke, here.
She seems qualified, but it also seems like most of her work has been more social at the WH in recent weeks. It looks (from the outside) like this is a soldier that did a lot of flying earlier in her career, but has been more of a politico/military ambassador at the WH in recent years, and this was a flight to just make sure that her certifications stayed active.
Still, to this completely unqualified observer, it still feels like a communications failure in a very tough situation from the Tower. And as much as you might hate to admit it, based on all of the lawsuits, DEI hiring practices have played a part, and yes, that includes from 2017-2021
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There were 6 people who could have prevented the collision.
ATC, 2 jet pilots, 2 helicopter pilots and the helicopter observer.
Communications failure may turn out to be an understatement.
Again, it is still early in the investigation, there could have been some problem we don't know about yet.
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Okay, I’ll say it… She just freaking needed to parallel park…
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Always makes me pause just a tad more once you put real faces and names to the victims. I haven’t read the details, was she actually flying? The voice who said they have visual separation from the CRJ was male.
There are some good examples on YouTube of what the helicopter and plane pilots actually saw, which is to say both had blinds spots (more for the plane) at the angles they hit, it really seems as simple as the helo was looking at the wrong jet. And I’d imagine this will result in much stricter helicopter path restrictions as well as stricter standards from the tower other than “see that plane? Yeah go behind it”, which has worked for decades…until it didn’t.
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Always makes me pause just a tad more once you put real faces and names to the victims. I haven’t read the details, was she actually flying? The voice who said they have visual separation from the CRJ was male.
There are some good examples on YouTube of what the helicopter and plane pilots actually saw, which is to say both had blinds spots (more for the plane) at the angles they hit, it really seems as simple as the helo was looking at the wrong jet. And I’d imagine this will result in much stricter helicopter path restrictions as well as stricter standards from the tower other than “see that plane? Yeah go behind it”, which has worked for decades…until it didn’t.
@89th said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
Always makes me pause just a tad more once you put real faces and names to the victims. I haven’t read the details, was she actually flying? The voice who said they have visual separation from the CRJ was male.
There are some good examples on YouTube of what the helicopter and plane pilots actually saw, which is to say both had blinds spots (more for the plane) at the angles they hit, it really seems as simple as the helo was looking at the wrong jet. And I’d imagine this will result in much stricter helicopter path restrictions as well as stricter standards from the tower other than “see that plane? Yeah go behind it”, which has worked for decades…until it didn’t.
It would have been the crew chief on the radio, not the pilot.
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She had 500 hours flight time according to this guy. He considers that very low for that type of flying in that corridor at night.
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@kluurs said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
There were 3 pilots, but do we know who was in the lead seat at the time?
We know it was a training flight. We know that she was the trainee. We know that a lot of emphasis and blame was being put on whoever had the stick of the helicopter, and we know the family had requested her name not be revealed at first. There were reports for the past 2 days that it was a woman at the controls….
And also, I’m not sure, but I don’t believe that helicopters have duplicated controls like a plane. I think there’s only 1 set, which would make it extremely unlikely that she wouldn’t be piloting the craft.
That being said, I don’t think any one person has the preponderance of the blame, here.
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Virginia transgender National Guard pilot falsely targeted
‘Proof of life’ video posted after fatal DC-area crashBy Stuart A. Thompson The New York Times
Jo Ellis, a helicopter pilot in the Virginia Army National Guard, was falsely identified as the captain of the crashed Black Hawk helicopter in thousands of social media posts last week. The flurry of falsehoods were so extreme that Ellis, who is transgender, posted a “proof of life” video to Facebook clarifying that she is alive and had not flown the crashed chopper. -
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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.
I was only joking
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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.
People STFU?
Stand at the water's edge and scream at the tide...
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@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.
People STFU?
Stand at the water's edge and scream at the tide...
@Jolly said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
@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.
People STFU?
Stand at the water's edge and scream at the tide...
Well, I actually meant people in positions of authority.
As far as shouting at the sea goes, the Britons had King Cnut, now apparently we've got his anagram.
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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
