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The Air Catastrophe

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The terrible crash at the DC airport has still not been adequately explained. The Black Hawk pilots were tragically incompetent, and so were the air traffic controllers. I’m shocked that there are people who are trying to justify the pilots by rolling out their experience and how well they performed in school. My students often claim that trying hard should matter more than the results of said trying but we all know they are kids who will grow up and learn how life really works.

Instead of being quiet and apologetic, families of the Black Hawk pilots are pouting publicly how extremely professional and successful their relatives were. It’s possible and commendable to love relatives who committed great evil but it needs to be done quietly. Bragging that your relative who murdered 60+ people was in the top 20% of cadets is unconscionable.

Another thing that is impossible to understand is why there was a Black Hawk flying among passenger aircrafts at all. If its visibility is truly as bad as everybody says, then whose brilliant idea was to fly them there at all? This all needs to be investigated in depth.

15 responses to “The Air Catastrophe”

  1. ed Avatar
    ed

    From what I’ve read politicians in Washington have been increasing flights in DCA at the expense of safety. I’m also not sure why it’s so important to let helicopters fly so close to a major airport, but it probably has something to do with these helicopters being used to ferry VIP politicians around.

    The Blackhawk was supposed to keep at less than 200 ft, but was at or above 300 ft when it collided with the CRJ. It’s looking like a clear human error on the Blackhawk pilots. Having said that, it’s clearly a systemic failure where the margin of life and death is defined by 100 ft of open space.

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  2. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “Black Hawk pilots were tragically incompetent”

    Or were under orders given by a tragically incompetent officer (it happens). I have no idea what went wrong but clearly something did and finding out what should be the biggest priority.

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  3. tatosotele Avatar
    tatosotele

    As in most tragedies, there are, at present, a multiplicity of causes: 1. As noted the helicopter was closer to 300′ than the 200′ limit for that flight corridor; 2. The flight corridor was on the east bank of the Potomic because the airport is on the west bank, but the helicopter was on the wrong bank, putting it squarely in the airliner’s approved landing path; 3. The helicopters are used to ferry top brass to and from the Pentagon, saving 45 minutes in DC traffic; but are also increasingly used by politicians with enough pull to merit this abuse of power to allow them to get to their next meeting more quickly; 4. Said politicians keep forcing more flights from Reagan airport because it is so much easier for them (and those who buy them) to access, than Dulles, even though safety experts at the Congressional hearings unanamously opposed more flights in the nation’s most conjested (and the pilots’ most detested) airspace; 4. Trump has blamed DEI in part. Would he do so, if knowing more about what really happened, he didn’t have, at least in his eyes, “evidence”, when the inevitable push-back “spontaneously” arises in uniform from the “without evidence” media? We know the pilot was not male nor a recognized “minority”. The question Trump is raising then is, but for her gender, would she be where she is now? Does he have memos in her personnel file to the effect: “Ignore that her test scores are lower, we need to make our (how many elite female helicopter pilots do we have to choose from?) diversity quota on the gender criterium. How else will we ever get promoted in today’s Army?” Is he, or his crafty counsel, wise enough to use this information to shut down the opposition without violating federal privacy laws and outraging veterans and anyone else paying attention?; 5. For inexplicable reasons, questioned by the experts quoted in the WSJ, the air traffic controller allowed one of the two controllers to leave shortly before the collision, even though their shift didn’t end for another 35 minutes. This left the lone remaining controller to handle both the airliner and helicopter traffic. Had the remaining controller been on the job, and each only responsible for his own channel, it’s far less likely the remaining controller, who could see on his screen the impending collision, inexplicably, instead of yelling at the helicopter to immediately do X, asked: “Can you see the aircraft?” This baffling failure of course gives rise to those who will blame the wholesale babying and pervasive incompetence of the federal workforce; whether the controller who made the fatal mistake was, themself, a “DEI” hire, or was the controller who got to go home early (for a life or death reason, since his leaving may well have led to lots of deaths?) cut slack because either they or the supervisor shared “protected” status, ad nauseum.

    No doubt, as the investigation continues additional causes will be uncovered.

    There are, of course, a number of conclusions about the human condition that can be drawn from the above.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I didn’t know the part where one of the air traffic controllers left before the collision.

      This really needs to be investigated.

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  4. random reader Avatar
    random reader

    I got the same “I work so hard why my grades are not better” vibe from this situation.

    In the past, I flew very often with AA to/from and through this airport so I find the accident very disturbing on many levels. I am sorry for everyone’s loss of life (from both aircraft) and for their families. However, it is quite clear that the AA pilots were doing exactly what they were supposed to do, it is the helicopter that went the wrong way. It does seem like the problem was both with the air traffic control and the helicopter pilots. Ultimately though, how do you not see a big airplane in your path? If you are at the controls, you have the ultimate responsibility for where you are going. Plus, the story put forward by the military does not sit well with me. These were some of the best, most competent and experienced pilots they say – if this is true, I really hate to see their average pilots. I hope the army grounded every single pilot they have until they can ensure they will not fly into civilian jets again. Allegedly, the purpose of the military is to defend the country so that the civilians can go about their business in peace. Something is very very wrong when a routine training exercise results in killing 64 civilians they are supposed to protect and this is being dismissed as simply an accident by a highly qualified crew.

    Waiting for several days to release the pilot’s identity accompanied by a concerted (clearly prepared) effort to paint her in the best possible light along with using that time to carefully scrub all her social media also raises questions.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      These people do everything to give rise to conspiracy theories. The secrecy, the erasure of the social media records. Why do any of this? Everybody will jump to the worst possible conclusions as a result.

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  5. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    Having flown many thousands of years in both fixed wing and helicopters, it would appear to me to be far too early to know exactly what created this disaster, let alone to affix the blame.

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  6. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    “Waiting for several days to release the pilot’s identity accompanied by a concerted (clearly prepared) effort to paint her in the best possible light along with using that time to carefully scrub all her social media also raises questions.“

    Isn’t this what used to be called a smoking gun? The culture shift that has been taking place over the past fifty years (roughly speaking from the Great Society to Bidenomics – seems to have forsaken what was once a very American, no-nonsense, down-to-earth pragmatism that was the envy of the world.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Its also possible that they are doing this on purpose. Creating a cloud of suspicion that an unqualified female pilot is to blame to obscure something far shadier.

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      1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        It is far, far too early to be blaming anybody. There were two pilots there, she was the senior. The machine was out of position: on the wrong side of the river; and higher in elevation. Hopefully, the black box will help explain that. Flowing water and high lights can induce a sense of vertigo. And having seen snow driven “white outs” with pilots gingerly feeling for the ground trusting cockpit readings, maybe give them some slack until we know.

        Simlarly, we do not know what exactly happened in the traffic tower, why was there only one controller trying to speak to two machines in different channels? That long term shortage of air traffic controllers might be why Trump was questioning DEI.

        That said, I have absolutely zero acceptance of any preference of sexual or racial identity hiring or promotion scams whatsoever. I do not give a shit what any nice pretty sweet little words one tries to camouflage it: DEI, Affirmative Action, Quotas, or Set Asides is racial and/or discrimination intending to deliberately cheat superior applicants out of the positions that they merit.

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        1. Stringer Bell Avatar
          Stringer Bell
          https://twitter.com/escapefrommelos/status/1886095850595590237

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            They are making such a meal out of the top 20% like it’s top 0,2%. The “everybody gets a trophy”mentality strikes again.

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        2. Stringer Bell Avatar
          Stringer Bell
          https://twitter.com/adolfmaxxing/status/1886162756438479003

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        3. random reader Avatar
          random reader

          I do think it is safe to say it was not the AA flight’s pilots who were at fault. Based on the available evidence, they were doing what they were supposed to do at that moment. Whether it was the air traffic control at fault, the helicopter pilots, instrument malfunction or the people who sent the army helicopter with those particular pilots on this particular flight (or a combination of all of those), we may never know. The fact is that 64 civilians died as a result of what army was doing in that airspace. So, I’m not very impressed with the concerted effort of the media to glorify one of the pilots who was flying the helicopter. It comes across too much as an excuse and an effort to hide something. Perhaps it would have been better to wait with all the accolades until after the investigation is finished.

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  7. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    …is racial and/or sexual discrimination… 

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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