Damn. We’ve avoided a US airliner having a fatal crash since 2009.
Although Air Canada Flight 759 was far too close for comfort and should be classified as a failure of the system, even if it did not result in an accident.
Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
171–180 of 738 posts
Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Agai…
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She was not rejected.
Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Agai…
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Except that she was not rejected - she rejected them. She simply couldn't get a match with a job that worked for her.
Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
From what I've heard, it's a challenging airport to land at, particularly because one of the approaches has two sharp turns in it, and I think the main winds tend to be annoying crosswinds for the main runway. Also, the airport is surrounded by lots of restricted airspace because, you know, seat of federal government and all that.
Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trains run on fixed tracks with fixed intersections, and one track might see a handful of them per day. Planes around airports come in from all directions in three dimensions, and there can be hundreds of arrivals per hour. These are vastly different scales of problem domain.
> there can be hundreds of arrivals per hour I Googled about this. London Heathrow is widely regarded as the busiest two runway airport in the world. They allow less than 50 arrival per hour. Are there any airports in the world that can have "hundreds of arrivals per hour"? Conservatively, 200 can be considered "hundreds", then you would need 8x runways operating at max capacity. That seems hard to imagine. Google al…
> Serious question: Why is 3D such a hard problem for modern computers? I could imagine a plane enters a cylinder of airspace near the airport and automatically communicates by radio waves information about itself. Then, HAL9000 can provide guidance as a landing plan.
Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe it is a more modern phenomena, enabled by a steady diet of 30 second videos.
Either way, I'm quite disturbed, regularly, recently, by the # of people who breezily stumble through quarter-baked thoughts while speaking dismissively, as if they've covered the surface of a complex universe that has been worked on very many smart people for decades, and now we can get to the real singular problem that'd fix everything, the one thing they've identified.
I don't even know where to begin trying to interlocute when the starting premise is "3D is hard for modern computers."
So I speak straightforwardly, in a way that I wish wouldn't be seen as rude, but it is.
So it goes.
You're right about the arrivals, but you missed the forest for the trees in the comment you're replying to.
Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
#176Earlier 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?
The kind that could land an atomic-powered vehicle on Mars, eight light-minutes from human contact? In 2012?
It's utterly ridiculous to expect humans to do this job for much longer. It's what computers are for.
Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
#177Radar replay: https://x.com/avgeekjake/status/1884823071611363833 UHF feed with comms from the military helicopter: https://archives.broadcastify.com/44114/20250129/20250129200... - 5:41 - AA5342 is given instructions for circling to 33 - 6:45 - PAT-25 reports Memorial - 7:06 - Tower gives PAT-25 traffic advisory, PAT-25 reports traffic in sight and requests visual separation - 8:08 - Tower asks PAT-25 if they have t…
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Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
#178Earlier 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’…
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Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you figure? The videos of the crash that I can find on X just show a small airline light suddenly turning into a low-res explosion. (Edit: ah. yes.)
https://x.com/aletweetsnews/status/1884789306645983319 You see the helo coming from the left on the screen while the airliner appears to be descending. The helo must have gotten in the way (as opposed to catching up from behind). The airliner's lights are unmistakable, so how did the helo pilot not notice them? The airliner's pilots might not have had a chance to notice the helo. Since the helo was crossing an active…
Anyone that can explain what the people on X mean when they comment that it was "intentional"? I'm probably out of the loop but this feels super out of place to me.
These are only a small amount directly from the replies to the tweet you shared, you can find many more if you keep scrolling.
https://x.com/27steph77/status/1884799302947500062 https://x.com/Aangtweets/status/1884793609326666014 https://x.com/Ray4444444444/status/1884824192308134234 https://x.com/OmarGoshTV/status/1884807622588522981 https://x.com/Sgt_Mac87/status/1884795428559814968 https://x.com/dudeodnv/status/1884796307665203456 https://x.com/USBornNRaised/status/1884793041610842420 https://x.com/thatcrazytoast1/status/1884797991678034183