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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

#431

Post by hammock »

deadbabe wrote: post #429
hammock wrote: post #421

I was a controller at DCA for 8 years and this is a normal operation with Helicopters using the Helicopter routes. The problem I see is the controller asked the Helicopter if they had the CRJ in sight, but he never said WHERE HE WAS OR WHAT HE WAS DOING! The controller should have told the Helicopter that the CRJ was circling to RWY 33. The helicopter said he had him in sight, but he really had the Jet in sight that…

The controller will not take blame. It is a blameless culture where mistakes are expected and analyzed and learned from.

Agree with this

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

#432

Post by richwater »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #419
richwater wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when they tried to assert their rights That's an interesting way of phrasing going on an illegal strike which they agreed not to do as part of their employment contract.

The fact that a strike can be illegal is, in and of itself, an erosion of worker rights.

It's a compromise to ensure the functioning of the country.

PATCO members were offered more than double % raises of any other government employee with a small reduction in work hours.

They overplayed their (illegal) hand and it bit them. No sympathy.

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

#433

Post by rapnie »

r00fus wrote: post #428

I wonder if this administration's firing of many FAA civil positions and the federal worker "buyouts" are responsible.

Just learned about it here: https://fallows.substack.com/p/it-had-been-16-years-since-a-...

Likely more affected are learning about the aftermath via investigation, but I am not sure.

Edit: No wait, that article mentioned the disbanding of Aviation Security Advisory Committee a week ago.

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

#435

Post by ghaff »

michaelt wrote: post #392
ghaff wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your airport sounds a lot better than the ones near me! In my area they all want you to arrive 2-3 hours before your flight, without any water, then to shuffle through security without your belt and shoes.

I usually arrive about 2 hours before flight time. For one thing, my car company doesn't really want you to cut things close as they'll tend to catch the blame if you miss your flight for some unavoidable reason. But usually security is maybe 5-10 minutes. Don't remember the last time I needed anything like the margin that I give myself.

Probably doesn't hurt that I'm usually taking early morning flights.

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

#436

Post by alistairSH »

highcountess wrote: post #160
reaperman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[2] shows the helicopter taking off 2 miles away from the old saudi embassy in McLean marked “permanently closed” on google maps. (The current embassy is in DC proper, directly across the river from DCA airport) I don’t think thats strong evidence that it took off from the old Saudi Embassy - thats pretty far away even given your caveat about accuracy. Edit: it looks to me like the black hawk was coming from somewher…

That was clearly a training flight

But does that provide any context? Military pilots perform training flights regularly - it's not necessarily indicative of an inexperienced pilot.

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

#437

Post by dibujaron »

vman81 wrote: post #377

If anyone needs a palate cleanser after listening to a depressing ATC recording, I can recommend this heartwarming first time solo flying teenager dealing with her landing gear coming off after takeoff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ5q7Iv5wTM

This was great, thanks!

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

#438

Post by ghaff »

alistairSH wrote: post #424
addandsubtract wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's pre-check?

TSA pre-check is a pre-screening program that air travelers can use to bypass the normal security line. It's not a huge time-saver (any more, used to be more) but gets you out of a few annoyances like removing shoes, unpacking toiletries, and a few other things. And the lines are usually a bit shorter and the ratio of regular traveller to new traveller is a bit better (less likely to get caught behind somebody who do…

And they don't put you through the nudie scanner (or whatever it's called) which is important to some people. I have pre-check automatically through global entry (that basically lets you bypass immigration coming back into the US).

Just got ETA for the UK and you also have e-entry (which usually works) from the US and a number of other countries as well.

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

#439

Post by davidw »

r00fus wrote: post #428

I wonder if this administration's firing of many FAA civil positions and the federal worker "buyouts" are responsible.

The intelligent response would be "probably not, but we'll see what the investigation says".

But imagine if the tables were turned politically. Fox News would be going off 24/7 about "DEI" or some such for weeks on end. That strategy seems to be successful, so I would expect the other side to start employing it more as well.

Having a bunch of harried, overworked people stressed about their jobs and the future certainly doesn't help anything, in any case.

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

#440

Post by alistairSH »

twoparachute45 wrote: post #137
Rantenki wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Both are "Black Hawk" airframes, right? The VH-60 variant is just a UH-60 that was build/configured for VIP transport vs the normal UH-60 utility variant.

IE, other than paint, they look the same to a casual observer.

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