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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

#341

Post by sofixa »

stouset wrote: post #86
ekianjo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> one track might see a handful of them per day.

In the middle of nowhere. A metro track can have a train every 60s.

But it's still entirely fixed, with easy to deploy sensors on both the tracks and trains.

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

#342

Post by RHSeeger »

addicted wrote: post #186
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.

Why don’t you identify all these easily found regulations then? There’s a whole YIMBY movement, for example, that has identified specific regulations that are no longer valid and have made tremendous strides in proving and changing these regulations for almost universally better outcomes. So where are all these specific regulations that are so terrible and the evidence that they are indeed net negatives. I absolutely…

> Why don’t you identify all these easily found regulations then?

That was rude, and didn't at all speak to OP's point. They indicated that not all regulations are equal. Some are important and put into place because people died without them. Others are put into place for less important reasons. And the fact that _some_ regulations were removed doesn't mean that "ones written in blood" necessarily were.

There are definitely regulations out there written by people that have no idea what they are talking about, and that are a net negative on the area(s) they impact. Does that mean we should remove Chesterton's Fence? No. But it does mean that, if you see someone removing a fence, you shouldn't immediately accuse them of causing harm.

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

#343

Post by Alcor »

rayiner wrote: post #326
SenHeng wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because Trump just offered an 8month severance package to all fed workers. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvqe3le3z4o > US President Donald Trump has offered federal workers the option to resign and receive pay for eight months, in a major effort to shrink and reform the US government.

[flagged]

This time around it seems less targeted, which gives the perception that it is not really about streamlining, feel free to prove me wrong though.

From the document you linked: > The buyouts were not offered in a random fashion, however. We targeted them to reduce the layers of bureaucracy and micro-management that were tying Government in knots. We made sure that departments and agencies tied their buyout strategies to their overall plans to streamline their bureaucracies. As a result, almost 70 percent of our buyouts in the non-Defense agencies have gone to people at higher grade levels, such as managers.

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

#344

Post by sorokod »

mapt wrote: post #286
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.

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 r…

There will be a list of scenarios competing for that "last place".

Operating rooms, certain military/police situations and self driving cars come to mind. A shared characteristic here is that errors lead to fatal outcomes exacerbated by unclear accountability.

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

#345

Post by 1986 »

rayiner wrote: post #326
SenHeng wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because Trump just offered an 8month severance package to all fed workers. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvqe3le3z4o > US President Donald Trump has offered federal workers the option to resign and receive pay for eight months, in a major effort to shrink and reform the US government.

[flagged]

> The buyouts were not offered in a random fashion, however. We targeted them to reduce the layers of bureaucracy and micro-management that were tying Government in knots. We made sure that departments and agencies tied their buyout strategies to their overall plans to streamline their bureaucracies. As a result, almost 70 percent of our buyouts in the non-Defense agencies have gone to people at higher grade levels, such as managers.

this isn't how it's being done now

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

#346

Post by Molitor5901 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #334

DCA has two runways. The longer runway is aligned with the river’s north/south direction at that point, so planes flying the approach to this runway from the south track along the western shore of the river, leaving the eastern shore clear for other aircraft like helicopters. The vast majority of flights on approach from the south [1] use this longer runway. The secondary runway is set at a diagonal NW/SE. Planes fly…

The press conference this morning mentioned that this was a new flight path. I wonder if the helicopter crew were not fully briefed on the new path, if that is the case.

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

#347

Post by francisofascii »

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.

Here we get air traffic controller recordings, and people who are ammeter pilots. It is more informed speculation than my "normal" friends or co-workers.

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

#348

Post by ghaff »

tayo42 wrote: post #164
bsder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the inconveniences that you and I have to endure. What are those? With pre check you just more or less walk through and use a metal detector.

A lot of people here like to go on about security. I agree there's a certain amount of theater, and I try to avoid really peak times, but with pre-check I do tend to arrive early because I don't want stress but, as you say, it's rarely more than a few minute wait and I pretty much toss my bag on the carousel and walk through the metal detector. It's really not a big deal if you're prepared.

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

#349

Post by mplanchard »

NaOH wrote: post #135
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. Agai…

In addition, ATC is not allowed to go on strike, limiting the degree to which they can bargain for better working conditions, pay, etc.

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

#350

Post by xienze »

unsnap_biceps wrote: post #36
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…

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.

> 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.

And which regulation was eliminated that caused this?

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