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Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

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Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#91

Post by LeafItAlone »

ekianjo wrote: post #57
ghc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/aviati…

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.

> 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.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#92

Post by jauntywundrkind »

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.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#93

Post by randerson »

ekianjo wrote: post #57
ghc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/aviati…

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.

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.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#94

Post by g-nair »

duxup wrote: post #82

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.

I’ve been saying something similar to friends recently. We have access to a bit Too much news for our own good.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#95

Post by LeafItAlone »

nradov wrote: post #30
YZF wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's way to early to say but one of the threads seemed to indicate the helicopter pilot was told about the airplane and instructed to maintain visual separation. I used to be a military air traffic controller and that was fairly common practice but I wasn't aware this is something that happens in civil aviation where usually the margins should be much higher. Crazy and sad. I guess we'll learn more over the next few…

It's very common for civilian ATC to instruct pilots to maintain visual separation, especially when they're both in the approach pattern. For airliners, TCAS gives an extra level of safety to guard against pilot errors. But I think many military aircraft lack TCAS.

And the collision was lower than TCAS would be active, no?

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#96

Post by rayiner »

derektank wrote: post #58
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

If everyone writing regulations were as rigorous as the FAA people wouldn’t be clamoring to reduce regulations.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#97

Post by datadrivenangel »

stall84 wrote: post #62

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,…

Weather was fine tonight.

Also DCA is the most popular airport and congress would stage their own revolution if they had to go further.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#98

Post by rayiner »

bsder wrote: post #69
bryant wrote: post #27

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 w…

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.

Not disagreeing, but is there something particularly wrong with DCA?

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#99

Post by jonathanlb »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #64
jonathanlb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What kind of ai are you talking about? The non deterministic black box LLMs we have now?

Of course not LLMs, but approaches using mixed integer programming, genetic algorithms, and/or simulated annealing.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#100

Post by LeafItAlone »

bsder wrote: post #77
LeafItAlone wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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.

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?

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