Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

mediaite.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 738 posts

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

#711

Post by foldr »

palmfacehn wrote: post #679
ModernMech wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

I'm not as familiar with Yarvin as I am with partisan media narratives. My problem with these kinds of insinuations, is that one quote or citation of Yarvin is easily spun into the conclusion that the incoming administration is following all of Yarvin's writings, no matter how obscure. Partisan journalists are incentivized to selectively quote Yarvin's works to scare their partisan audience. The wildest and most fear…

We are living in the parallel universe where Curtis Yarvin is being interviewed by the NYT, which is politely asking him to give his thoughts on the pros and cons of slavery in the US. I wish it were true that Curtis Yarvin was obscure and that his friends in the government were unfamiliar with most of his odious ideas. Unfortunately, that’s not the live scenario.

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

#712

Post by warner25 »

theGnuMe wrote: post #703
warner25 wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bad idea. That unit's [1] task is to provide transportation to senior government officials and security forces around the capital, including to and from that airport. If they didn't train to operate there, then their first time doing so would be with someone like the Secretary of Defense onboard or during some other mission that's critical to national security. "Training" here also doesn't imply some 21 year-o…

I am appalled with your opinion. If the system can’t be safely designed with a safe margin of error then it is too dangerous. There are alternative ways and locations to train. If there’s a nat sec issue have the planes hold.

The missions are flown through that airspace multiple times per day, and it's all for national security purposes. You can't put a hold on all commercial air traffic every time, and you need to train the pilots to navigate and communicate through that particular airspace.

Whether the system (i.e. separating rotary-wing and fixed-wing traffic there) can be more safely designed is a question for the FAA. The military aircraft are simply abiding by FAA rules for that airspace. Many more civilian helicopters are doing the same thing.

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

#713

Post by natch »

addicted wrote: post #184
stall84 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t know. this line is really upsetting people tonight.

I’m curious, how many people in your business were elected to their jobs? Do you think people should be electing the ATC agents? Also, what’s your opinion about the entire cabinet, Elon Musk, and the likes, all of whom are also unelected?

Kamala was also unelected for her position as the democratic candidate for the 2024 election.

My opinion is that was a really dumb idea that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for the democrats.

And the cray crays (“Elon is a Nazi”) have the nerve to accuse the other side of being the threat to democracy. Compared to the non-election anointing of Kamala, other unelected people are just noise. You know I’m right. All of this is just fallout from the unelected candidate being pushed on unwanting voters.

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

#714

Post by gamblor956 »

HideousKojima wrote: post #698
gamblor956 wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "correct" answers on a biographical test are to claim to have more experience than your really do. In other words... fraud. If you get caught you lose the job and spend some free time in a cell. You're really stretching to turn this into a scandal. Nobody complained that the answers to the previous test had been leaked.

>The "correct" answers on a biographical test are to claim to have more experience than your really do. That's not what happened, and that isn't what the test questions were about at all: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... >You're really stretching to turn this into a scandal. Nobody complained that the answers to the previous test had been leaked. There hadn't been such a test previously…

that isn't what the test questions were about at all:

The best source you can cite is a series of twitter posts that gets basic facts wrong, like the timeline and "test" contents?

The link claims the new "test" was implemented in 2014. It makes this claim repeatedly. But the BA was implemented in 2013 after years of being refined (including, as discussed by the OIG, by having current ATC staff take it). It was not intended to increase DEI-style diversity; Fox News ran a report in 2015 about a (tribal) Native American candidate who would have aced the BA if DEI-style diversity had been the goal. The original goal was to vastly expand the pool of candidates, because the FAA had a serious shortfall of candidates willing to work in all of the locations where ATCs were required and the hope was that they by bringing in more applicants, including so-called less qualified candidates, this would yield candidates willing to work at difficult-to-staff smaller airports where candidates wouldn't need to be as highly qualified to adequately perform the job.

The claim that the "correct" answers were leaked to the black ATC union (while true) is irrelevant. The "test" was a biographical questionnaire. The only way to cheat was to lie. And notably, members of the NBCFAE who supposedly had copies of the "correct" answers...didn't score any better than the people in the lawsuit suing over the test. Because again...the only way to cheat was to lie... (Unless those of you railing against the BA are suggesting that someone actually needs to be told that having more experience and expressing more enthusiasm about work is better than having less experience and not caring about your job?)

And one final important point: after Congress eliminated the BA in 2018, in 2019 Trump's FAA implemented the diversity hiring program he spent most of yesterday railing against.

Yep, that's right. The evil DEI program that Trump is mad about is his own program.

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

#715

Post by [deleted] »

gamblor956 wrote: post #714
HideousKojima wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The "correct" answers on a biographical test are to claim to have more experience than your really do. That's not what happened, and that isn't what the test questions were about at all: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... >You're really stretching to turn this into a scandal. Nobody complained that the answers to the previous test had been leaked. There hadn't been such a test previously…

that isn't what the test questions were about at all: The best source you can cite is a series of twitter posts that gets basic facts wrong , like the timeline and "test" contents? The link claims the new "test" was implemented in 2014. It makes this claim repeatedly. But the BA was implemented in 2013 after years of being refined (including, as discussed by the OIG, by having current ATC staff take it). It was not i…

[deleted]

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

#716

Post by 7thpower »

jeffhuys wrote: post #234
7thpower wrote: post #24

Oh man. I’m in Wichita and am getting a bunch of texts. Texted my friends that fly that route regularly and most have texted back. It can all be gone in an instant, tell those you love what they mean to you. edit: everyone is accounted for

> everyone is accounted for Happy to hear that.

Thank you!

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

#718

Post by tcmart14 »

alistairSH wrote: post #436
highcountess wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. I wasn't a pilot, just a lowly ABF in the Navy. But when we deployed, on an LHD, most of our flights were what you could probably "classify" as training. We ran flight ops every day because pilots have to maintain hours. We flew every day for 7 months and only 2-3 of those months were we in the gulf. And even in the gulf, not all flights were missions, I would say less than half were. That also isn't counting 4-6 months prior to deployment of work ups where we would go out to sea for a week and come back, everyday pilots flew training missions off our deck. All in all, all in the military probably spend most of their air time training then actually flying missions.

I also recall, even experienced pilots, would rotate out to training units as their "shore" (break from a deploy able unit) duty.

This wasn't a Navy aircraft, but I imagine a lot of that is the same regardless of branch.

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

#719

Post by nradov »

trhway wrote: post #615
jahewson wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Marine radar is trivial compared to air-to-air radar. like in the case of a boat, the air-to-air radar is still peanuts compare to the cost of the plane/helicopter >The Black Hawk, like most aircraft, does not have an air-to-air radar. Pretty surprising for the military. You'd like to know when an enemy fighter or a missile coming for you. And military frequently operates in the territories without any ATC, so you'd…

Lack of air search radar on military utility transport helicopters is only surprising to aggressively ignorant people who can't be bothered to do a few minutes of basic research. Even some tactical jets that operate over hostile territory lack air search radar, although they do have other defensive systems.

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

#720

Post by commandlinefan »

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…

> the four-week interactive online courses

Yikes, is that paid, or is the candidate supposed to do that on their own time?

Post reply on HN