Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport • Hacker News Board

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

#601

Post by xienze » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

coddingtonbear wrote: post #581

xienze wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

This would, if the system is working, be the blood that future regulations are written in. That these kinds of things happen so rarely came to us at a cost of past lives.

OK then, what regulation do you think was missing that could have prevented this

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

#602

Post by kristjansson » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #354

mplanchard wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then why is there an ATC union if, apparently, it can't affect any change?

The ATC union has some unique history [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...

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

#603

Post by singleshot_ » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #453

consp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> over noisy radio I've been told the noise on the recordings is always a lot worse than in practice due to the location of the recording antenna not being ideal. I have no idea if this is correct or not. Maybe someone can enlighten this.

I watch a lot of pilots on Youtube. Most of them use some kind of audio splitter to record sound. You hear what the pilot hears. But minus the plane noise, vibrations, etc (unless that's mixed in via some open microphone). So, it's actually better. So, it really is that bad. Especially when flying low, on the edge of the range of the radios, etc. VHF radio is ancient technology. It's not great even under ideal condit…

> This is how phones sounded half a century ago. "can you hear me .... are you there ..... can you talk louder ...."

No, landlines in 1975 sounded outstanding. I didn’t hear the phrase “can you hear me now” until I got my first oki (1992?)

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

#604

Post by ToucanLoucan » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

gosub100 wrote: post #591

recursive wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did that come from? There are some things in life that don't revolve around identity politics, and I'd venture to say, ATC is one of them.

It's been culminating for years. they don't fire incompetent people and they use skin color and gender as a factor in deciding who to hire. It's federal employment and is linked greatly to politics.

If it's been "culminating for years" why is this the first time this has happened in 16 years? Or are all the white men just doing that great of a job compensating for their dumbass POC/non-male colleagues? It's not like this is a team effort where one competent employee can cover for others; if an ATC is genuinely unqualified, shit is going to go wrong immediately.

Your grievance politics are nonsensical on their face.

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

#605

Post by jahewson » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

trhway wrote: post #547

wyldfire wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the video from the webcam there's another plane which is much easier to see. Could they have asked about "the aircraft" and the helicopter pilot mistook which one they referred to? "yes I can see the plane flying much higher"

> easier to see. One has radars even on recreational boats. That was a military helicopter. At night. It would be hard to believe that it doesn't have nor radar nor IR cameras, and the plane would be lightened up like X-mas tree in both.

Marine radar is trivial compared to air-to-air radar. The Black Hawk, like most aircraft, does not have an air-to-air radar. IR cameras would be completely inappropriate for the situation but night vision goggles are a possibility I guess - though still have all the same drawbacks as using your eyes - you have to look in the right direction and recognise what that small dot is that you’re seeing.

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

#606

Post by randomopining » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

venusenvy47 wrote: post #511

neuronexmachina wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Considering that the head of the FAA and TSA were forced to resign For context, the heads of the FAA and TSA are supposed to serve 5-year terms. The FAA Admin (Michael Whitaker) who was forced out started serving in Oct 2023. The TSA Admin (David Pekoske) was first appointed in 2017, and then nominated for another 5-year term in 2022. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time those positions have ever been told t…

I've been avoiding the typical outrageous statements from the current POTUS for many years, but his comments at his press conference today, about how DEI hiring could be responsible for this accident, are just unbelievable. And all of a sudden it seems to have made him to decide that the FAA needs a director today.

Yeah same here. Somehow these latest today by T have gone overboard and struck a chord. What an absolute bozo he is.

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

#607

Post by netsharc » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

jeffhuys wrote: post #561

netsharc wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I feel like Q is much more prevalent in discussions here and on reddit than between actual conspiracy theorists... Q didn't start that, it's just part of it. But I do think it shows that we should help people understand more. A lot of secrecy nowadays.

It doesn't have to be connected to QAnon, a lot of people now just jump into "it's a conspiracy, I'm sure of it!" and when they find X and Y and create a connection between the 2, their brain rewards them, even if that connection isn't there in reality. And imagine how exhausting it is for debunkers, when they try to say "you're hallucinating", the conspiracy theorist holds strong to his belief, thinking the debunker doesn't get it or they're part of the lying pack.

> As game designers would expect, it works very well — because when you “figure it out yourself,” you own it. You experience the thrill of discovery, the excitement of finding the rabbit hole and tumbling down it. Because you were persuaded to “connect the dots yourself,” you can see the absolute logic of it, even if you made it up.

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

#608

Post by mncharity » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

sorokod wrote: post #344

mapt wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but, as with collision avoidance systems... Years ago a VA thoracic surgeon was trying to find someone to build them a tool to listen in an OR for surgeon commands and team member acks, and if it saw a command without an ack, to nudge. Context is surgeons are both team managers and individual specialists, and when heads down as specialist, the managerial role gets load shed. So a dropped command may not be caught before bad things happen. The VA does OR pickup teams, so there isn't the polished but idiosyncratic load sharing of long-standing teams. And the acks are more formal. He was fine with a high false negative rate (catching anything is good), and a moderate false positive (nudges are low cost). That seems now plausible. Aside from tech maturity, the biggest challenge then envisioned was willingness to be recorded. Though perhaps the real fix is staffing the team management role, but that was above his pay grade.

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

#609

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #534

talldayo wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATC (as well as most government jobs) are a real case of "you get what you pay for". When you bring wages down so low that educated engineers don't want to work your job, your options are to lower the qualifications or leave empty seats. DEI might have contributed to this, but we wouldn't be hiring unqualified people in the first place if America could naturally compete for talent. The lesson learned seems to be less…

Did you read the link that I replied to? Because in that link, what I am responding to, it EXPLICITLY says that the FAA changed the ATC selection process to exclude candidates based on demographics (being not diverse) regardless of their aptitude as tested using a standardized and validated cognitive assessment. These were candidates who had already completed multiple years of schooling and explicitly wanted to be AT…

No, you read a link that says people suing the FAA claim the FAA didn't hire qualified candidates on diversity.

Except that none of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit actually bothered to apply for jobs with the FAA (see this blog post from their own legal team crowing about winning a procedural matter over whether they had standing to sue given that they never applied for a job and thus were never actually rejected by the FAA https://mslegal.org/press-releases/mslf-prevails-over-faas-a... )...

What actually happened was that the FAA invalidated a bunch of AT-SAT[1] scores to align with its new diversity policy, and a bunch of people who barely passed the first time didn't want to re-take the test again and risk failing. So they did the American thing and sued instead.

The FAA has not rejected qualified candidates on the grounds of "diversity." And at any rate, the controller in the DC tower last night was hired during the Trump administration and the Blackhawk pilot that caused the crash wasn't the kind of candidate who would have been selected on DEI grounds...

[1] it's like the SAT, but for controller jobs instead of college admissions

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

#610

Post by jahewson » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

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?

It’s not. That’s the simple answer. Accident waiting to happen.