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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

#281

Post by netsharc »

ghxst wrote: post #179
cryptonector wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/Ray44444444…

Because too Allah-damned-many people are worm-brained conspiracy theorists nowadays: https://archive.is/sS3W1

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

#282

Post by Brybry »

craftsman wrote: post #228
dylan604 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Congress directed the FAA--by law--to delegate certain aspects of certification to non-FAA entities. This directive was issued by H.R. 302 - FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, 115th Congress.

Is that the 49 USC 44736 Organization designation authorizations part?[1]

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/302/...

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

#283

Post by modriano »

stall84 wrote: post #83

We really can't have this type of accident, a midair collision happen anywhere in the United States, much less the nation's capital, especially considering the Washington area is some of the highest controlled airspace in the country. DCA has been a high-risk airport really since the jet-age, and I have a feeling this might be the end of it as a major passenger airport (at least for Part 121 operations). DOT/FAA are…

> DOT/FAA are really going to need to step up after this and figure it out, for good.

Yeah. First, we should fill the currently vacant US Secretary of Transportation role. Then we should fill the currently vacant FAA Administrator role. Then we should fill the FAA Deputy Administrator role [0]. Then we should fill the currently vacant DoT Inspector General role that Trump just opened up by illegally firing this watchdog without the required 30 days notice to Congress [1]. Then we can start investigating.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20250129122818/https://www.faa.g...

[1] https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2025/01/trump-fires-multip...

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

#284

Post by netsharc »

anigbrowl wrote: post #226
justinspace wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you speaking from experience?

Yes, I research and write on extremists and have become depressingly familiar with conspiratorial narrative formation in real time, as well having read a huge number of research papers into social media dynamics. I used to spend a lot of time and effort debunking CTs but frankly it seems increasingly pointless to do so nowadays.

Your first sentence, being startled to learn about remote-controlled flying, gives the impression that you're one of those conspiracy theory hobbyists (a term I'm conjuring for idjits who speculate conspiracies when anything happens)...

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

#285

Post by rich_sasha »

jonathanlb wrote: post #33
joezydeco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

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.

Ages ago, I watched a documentary about ATC that showed a drill involving ATC work under power failure (mains and generator). I'm probably misremembering some details but there were battery-operated radios and little tablets being passed around with scribbled information.

I guess AI can work while the lights are on, but if this is your backstop scenario, you still need the meat ATC controllers, and they really need to know their stuff.

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

#286

Post by mapt »

jonathanlb wrote: post #33
joezydeco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

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.

Tower systems are the last place in the world you would want a 97% accurate large language model, and the very last place we would culturally tolerate this sort of thing. Innate conservatism is what happens when deviations from perfection lead to collisions, and for the most part "AI" success remains a stochastic matter, gigabyte to terabyte sized tensors that are not human-intelligible. A black box which cannot be readily, safely validated in the real world.

With that said - algorithmic, automated, and digital systems for collision avoidance at the very minimum have and could continue to make ATC jobs significantly easier. The radio voice channel is a particularly low fidelity, low bandwidth way to mete out information and directives.

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

#287

Post by unsnap_biceps »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Potomac_River_mid-air_col... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-30/washingto... | https://archive.today/n1ark https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/plane-crash-dca-potomac-was... (CNN live updates) https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1idbkyd/crash_at_dc... https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1idba8i/plane_cra... https://x.com/aletweetsnews/status/1884789306645983…

https://archives.broadcastify.com/44114/20250129/20250129200... contains the ATC feed in addition to the PAT-25 (helo) radio.

~5:41 mark 5342 is given instructions for circling to 33. ~6:45 mark PAT-25 reports Memorial ~7:06 mark tower gives PAT-25 traffic advisory about 5342 and PAT-25 reports traffic in sight and requests visual separation ~8:12 mark tower asks PAT-25 if they have the CRJ in sight. PAT-25 again reports traffic in sight and again requests visual separation. ~8:21 mark, crash occurs, exclamations, go arounds issued

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

#288

Post by rich_sasha »

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?

> ATC please advise, I'm about crash

> Thanks for reaching out! As you probably know, crashing an aeroplane is not generally recommended. There are many factors that may contribute to a crash, such as weather, technical malfunction or human error. Appropriate training, regular maintenance and flight planning are some of the best practices which help minimise the likelihood of a crash. I recommend revisiting these factors. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

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

#289

Post by stouset »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #126
stouset wrote: post #86

Earlier 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…

I should have said “arrivals and departures”. KATL has 2,100–2,700 arrivals and departures per day. Even if we assume those are equally spaced throughout the day (they aren’t) we’re over 100/hour.

But sure. It’s a mild exaggeration. It still doesn’t change the core point.

3D isn’t just “magically hard” for computers, but the process for routing traffic is wildly complex and a bunch of planes arriving and leaving at semi-random times, directions, and with different requirements and capabilities is where the problem starts not finishes.

The happy path is relatively easy. The exceptions are innumerable.

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

#290

Post by wiredfool »

jcranmer wrote: post #174
rayiner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Short runway too. 9/11 restrictions only made it that much worse.

It was discussed post 9/11 about closing National Airport, but congress wouldn't hear it. It was too convenient from DC. (At a time when IAD was way the hell out there, rather than being 1/2 the way out the sprawl.)

I won't fly through DCA in the winter, because when I was a kid there was the Air Florida crash. I'd much prefer IAD with it's 3 mile runways and straight approaches.

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