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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

#131

Post by mbreese »

gonzo41 wrote: post #103

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.

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.

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

#132

Post by jonnybgood »

anigbrowl wrote: post #60

[flagged]

> Given the strange way the helicopter appeared to fly right into the jet there will be no end to the speculation.

There's an ATC recording. No speculation necessary. The Army helicopter pilot is likely at fault.

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

#133

Post by dylan604 »

rayiner wrote: post #96
derektank wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#134

Post by AngryData »

nradov wrote: post #7

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 p…

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.

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

#135

Post by NaOH »

nradov wrote: post #7

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 p…

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.

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

#136

Post by throwaway2037 »

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.

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.

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

#137

Post by twoparachute45 »

Rantenki wrote: post #117
twoparachute45 wrote: post #19

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…

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.

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.

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

#138

Post by dylan604 »

joezydeco wrote: post #29
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…

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’…

> 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.

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

#140

Post by readyplayernull »

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.

Let's go back to AI non-stop 24/7, hallucinations are saner.
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