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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

#571

Post by davidw »

fundad wrote: post #570
davidw wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 certain…

RW media and the POTUS himself is making the dubious claim that DEI practices are responsible for low standards of hiring for air traffic controllers in the FAA during the Biden presidency. I don't think POTUS was serious because he also claimed people shouldn't be hesitant to fly. 'He is later asked by a reporter if people should be hesitant to fly, and he says: "No, not at all."' https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy7kx…

Basically, their idea is that only white men can do these kinds of jobs. It's just racism.

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

#572

Post by chowchowchow »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #555
bayarearefugee wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are some things in life that don't revolve around identity politics Not anymore.

Simply wild coming from the person who introduced it where it was not being discussed. If this is true, it's because you and people like you are inserting it in otherwise innocuous, productive discussions. Have you considered not doing that?

are you serious? https://www.fox5dc.com/news/trump-blames-dei-dc-plane-crash

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

#573

Post by fundad »

dehrmann wrote: post #489
throw0101c wrote: post #481

"FAA Got Rid of Its Leader Before D.C. Plane Crash—Thanks to Elon Musk": * https://newrepublic.com/post/190942/faa-no-leader-dc-plane-c... "FAA Administrator Quit on Jan. 20 After Elon Musk Told Him to Resign": * https://www.thedailybeast.com/faa-chief-michael-whitaker-qui... "The FAA is facing a major crisis without a leader because Elon Musk pushed him out* * https://www.theverge.com/news/603113/faa-chief-musk-dc-p…

If we see more accidents a year from now, you have a point. The most you can really blame on leadership changes right now is stress from worrying about your next paycheck. Even then, this looks like a military pilot screwed up doing a routine training exercise.

It's important to consider what the administration was focused on during a life-or-death crisis.

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

#574

Post by Dylan16807 »

refulgentis wrote: post #562
Dylan16807 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

?? I have no idea what this means. Are you implying your reply would make the previous post become dismissive?

"It" is an indefinite pronoun, meaning, "it" is by definition unclear to anyone but the speaker. Here, "it" means "your involvement in this discussion" To put it a bit more plainly, and apologies if it is hard to hear currently, I'd find this very helpful to hear this if I were you: - The first comment was objectively, straightforwardly, dismissive. You questioned one statistic, then ignored the thrust of the comment…

I'm a different person from the guy you originally called dismissive.

Your advice would make sense if I was the same person, but if I was the same person I would have responded very differently to the criticism. I gave a brief reply because I'm a third party.

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

#575

Post by NaOH »

talldayo wrote: post #528
Auracle wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I thought Trump instantly blaming DEI was ridiculous in this case but I’m somewhat reconsidering. How much less of a shortage of ATCs would we have now if it wasn’t for that debacle?

> How much less of a shortage of ATCs would we have now if it wasn’t for that debacle? Probably not much, considering the biggest constraining factor is pay. For example, San Carlos airport is shutting down ATC entirely because they can't pay anyone enough to live locally to the tower: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-airport-losing-... There would be no problem filling the seats if the compensation was h…

Starting salary is US $90,000 along with government benefits.

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

#576

Post by mrandish »

ModernMech wrote: post #554
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if the orders weren't so ineptly or maliciously ambiguous and overly broad, then people would have more confidence that safety critical jobs aren't being cut.

I think they really do want to hollow out the federal government, and we should expect things like planes falling out of the sky as part of that. Given the release of this memo[1] offering the buyout of any federal employee who wants to step down, what I think we are looking at is the Musk-Vance-Thiel axis of the MAGA movement is implementing Curtis Yarvin's "R.A.G.E." plan to install a king dictator atop a neo-feuda…

> I think they really do want to hollow out the federal government, and we should expect things like planes falling out of the sky as part of that.

I am no fan of Trump but it is possible that 1) The Federal government has grown far too large and is bloated in many areas. And 2) The size of the Federal government can be reduced while maintaining safety and essential services.

I don't know if the current administration is doing or even can do that but it's hard to deny there is a very real problem or that the problem is, at least in concept, solvable.

That said, I highly doubt this tragic accident was caused by or related to the change of administration last week. It could just as easily have happened two weeks ago under the prior administration. It's unfortunate that it seems to have become politically polarized (by partisans on both sides) even before the flames had been extinguished.

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

#577

Post by ModernMech »

mrandish wrote: post #576
ModernMech wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they really do want to hollow out the federal government, and we should expect things like planes falling out of the sky as part of that. Given the release of this memo[1] offering the buyout of any federal employee who wants to step down, what I think we are looking at is the Musk-Vance-Thiel axis of the MAGA movement is implementing Curtis Yarvin's "R.A.G.E." plan to install a king dictator atop a neo-feuda…

> I think they really do want to hollow out the federal government, and we should expect things like planes falling out of the sky as part of that. I am no fan of Trump but it is possible that 1) The Federal government has grown far too large and is bloated in many areas. And 2) The size of the Federal government can be reduced while maintaining safety and essential services. I don't know if the current administratio…

I think that would be a reasonable take if the people implementing this plan (Musk, Thiel, Vance) weren't literally citing Curtis "a government is just a corporation that owns a country" Yarvin as a thought leader.

Although you are right they're trying to do what Musk did with Twitter, but the thing is that didn't go very smoothly, and he thinks it went great. At Twitter it meant downtime and also making users feel unsafe. At the federal level, regardless of the motivation (reigning in spending or a neo-feudal takeover), it will mean planes falling out of the sky, an increase in fraud and scams, civil rights violations, and so forth.

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

#578

Post by alistairSH »

JTbane wrote: post #497

Real talk, the helicopter was operating night VFR, right? How is this safe when the jet is moving extremely fast relative to the chopper and the only separation is a visual reference to some navigation lights?

Right or wrong, the US has fewer (but not quite zero) limits on night-time VFR.

This differs from some of the EU, where night VFR can have more stringent operating parameters than day-time VFR.

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

#579

Post by wiredfool »

rob74 wrote: post #415
wiredfool wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 runw…

The Air Florida crash had very little to do with the airport and a lot to do with the pilots who took off with dangerous amounts of ice/snow on the wings. Fortunately, de-icing procedures have also improved since then - in the 80s, it was possible to have a long time between deicing and takeoff; today, deicing is done at the end of the runway, shortly before lining up for takeoff. Full story: https://admiralcloudberg…

I was in 6th grade. It was a shitty day all around -- there was a metrorail accident under the river. I was on a school bus for 4 hours while getting home in the snow. The plane hit a bridge and went into the river.

Think of what you know about DC traffic when there's a flake of snow in the air, and put an airliner crash and a metro accident on top of that.

Maybe it's not logical, but I'm still not a fan of flying through National in the winter.

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

#580

Post by rtkwe »

amazingamazing wrote: post #445
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

unpopular opinion - but public workers should not be able to go on strike, and in fact shouldn't even be allowed to unionize. it's antithetical to democracy. they should simply run for office and change things, not hold taxpayers' services hostage. unions make sense for private organizations because private organizations are effectively authoritarian entities, not democracies. there is no mechanism in which you could…

The people in federal workers unions aren't in elected positions, no country or government anywhere has voters weigh in on every clerk, office manager, etc.... They're just jobs, no one votes for them beyond in some cases voting for the head of their agencies but more often by voting for the people that will select the agency heads.
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