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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

#721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

It takes time for all the holes to line up just right.

It's not like this is a team effort where one competent employee can cover for others

Yes it is - there's also the two pilots whose actions could've lead to a totally different outcome.

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

#722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While missing a comma can have great impact, it isn't the same as missing traffic, and ATC doesn't have the luxury of rough drafts.

How does not letting people retry even once produce more competent air traffic controllers?

They get multiple chances to "retry" in the FAA academy. It isn't one pass/fail test; they practice a lot and take multiple tests. They can fail the first few tests as long as they average out to a 70% or greater.

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

#723
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Paid

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

#724
post #692
post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.K. had a documentary in the 80s about civil servants handling ministers, for better and worse.

Was it called "Yes Minister"? :-)

> Was it called "Yes Minister"? :-)

That show was more than a little bit of propaganda:

> In a 2004 documentary, Armando Iannucci compared Yes Minister to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in how it has influenced the public's view of the state. Although Lynn comments that the word "spin" has "probably entered the political vocabulary since the series,"[4]

[…]

> Adam Curtis, in his three-part TV documentary The Trap, criticised the series as "ideological propaganda for a political movement",[14] and claimed that Yes Minister is indicative of a larger movement of criticism of government and bureaucracy, centred upon public choice economics. Jay himself supported this:

>> The fallacy that public choice economics took on was the fallacy that government is working entirely for the benefit of the citizen; and this was reflected by showing that in any [episode] in the programme, in Yes Minister, we showed that almost everything that the government has to decide is a conflict between two lots of private interest – that of the politicians and that of the civil servants trying to advance their own careers and improve their own lives. And that's why public choice economics, which explains why all this was going on, was at the root of almost every episode of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.[15]

> Jay, however, has elsewhere emphasized that he and Lynn were interested first and foremost in the comical possibilities present in government and bureaucracy and that they were not seeking to promote any agenda: "Our only firm belief on the subject was that the underlying conflicts between ministers and ministries were better brought out into the open than kept secret".[16]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister#Politics

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

#725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controller is definitely not White from the audio. Also, the helicopter pilot was female.

Wrong - please provide a source. The pilot's wife has released photos.

sOuRCe?!: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281246/pentagon-jet-mi...

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

#726
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh… which ones? Classic Edgerton’s Fence: If you don’t know why someone put up a fence, don’t take it down.

Typically, the ones that protect me are good, the ones that slow me down are bad. Easy!

Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

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

#727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind that could land an atomic-powered vehicle on Mars, eight light-minutes from human contact? In 2012? It's utterly ridiculous to expect humans to do this job for much longer. It's what computers are for .

Gosh, you'd think someone would've thought of this already.

That's not an answer (and neither are downvotes). Why are humans still doing tedious work that would be utterly trivial for computers?

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

#728

I'm sorry, doesn't matter who you support, but to blame DEI or former presidents for this is just shameful.

They found a new scapegoat. They blame public employees, they just advised all air traffic controllers to find a job in the private sector after this crash.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/us/politics/federal-worke...

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

#729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh you mean the kind that has no conflicting traffic in 0.5 to 2.5 AU?

Really? There were 3 aircraft involved. Game AI in the 1980s was good enough to handle the amount of "conflicting traffic" involved here. You're arguing in favor of automation, not against it. For that matter, next time you visit the Bay Area, drop by the CHM in Mountain View and take a look at what SAGE could already do in the 1960s.

[deleted]

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

#730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh you mean the kind that has no conflicting traffic in 0.5 to 2.5 AU?

Really? There were 3 aircraft involved. Game AI in the 1980s was good enough to handle the amount of "conflicting traffic" involved here. You're arguing in favor of automation, not against it. For that matter, next time you visit the Bay Area, drop by the CHM in Mountain View and take a look at what SAGE could already do in the 1960s.

Yeah no it wasn’t just three, actually listen to the ATC auto between PAT25 calls into the controller and the crash — not to mention it’s still far more than a single aircraft on a remote planet
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