Odds that this has anything to do with the government falling apart?
ATC are fed employees, this happened at the worst-named airport in DC ....
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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Possible but probably not. ATC have been understaffed and overworked for years and this is the inevitable result.
Combine that with a military that has historically always done whatever the fuck it... err, support the troops and thank you for your service. Can I have my salmon tossed under the broiler please?
But yeah. This is less a consequence of trump and more a consequence of our fundamentally broken culture and government that predates him.
I'mma let you in on a secret:
The CEO doesn't do shit. ANYWHERE.
This is going to have very big ramifications even medium term. But the work culture and lack of personnel were already a major problem long before... last week. At most, trump accelerated this.
Now, the horrific response to this is all fuckface.
As an aside: it is REALLY obnoxious to post two giant images as a reply.
Literally impossible for this to result in that crash
I know we want to associate everything bad with the new admin but this was just regular old american calpitalist incompetence
They even just removed it from their website.
We then find out the real reason for the crash is empty seats https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/air-traffic-control-staffing-plane-crash.html
How many air traffic controllers recieved Elon's buyout email?
Please stop already concluding what the cause was. It's been little over 24 hours, the bodies are barely cold.
Real actual aircrash investigations take weeks, months, sometimes years. I know that this particular one likely won't get any investigation at all, but can we please stop doing the exact same thing as trump (only in our case slightly based on facts)? You're probably right, but still, it bugs me that everyone already has their scape goat ready.
Airplane safety has always been written in blood, the last thing we need is starting to write them with plain ink, causing us to add many, many more chapters
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My friend is an ATC and I saw him last week. From my conversations with him they haven't been hit with Trump shenanigans...yet
Knowing a lot of families are going to be affected by this, this a tragedy no matter who or what is to blame. This is scary as hell all things considered, but we (or at least I) have to remember that a vast majority of investigations following crashes like this implicate a series of tiny but compounding errors. Regardless, it will still take time to figure out.
My speculation based on the video that could point to human error: It appears the aircraft were possibly closing in on each other somewhat perpendicularly for an extended amount of time. With their relative speeds/distances to the crash point, the aircraft may have appeared as remaining at the same point in each other's respective windows, with nighttime glare and light pollution effects making scale and distance hard to judge.
However, just from a momentum and maneuverability standpoint, the aircraft with the "right of way" here was almost certainly the jet on course for landing, and it would have been the helicopter's responsibility to establish and maintain visuals.
But who knows at this point. All I know is I'm tired of tragedy in every form.
I mean, ATC would also normally be keeping an eye on traffic? Either one if the aircraft ignored ATC, or they weren't warned.
According to commenters on reddit who listened to the ATC recordings: ATC asked the blackhawk to confirm visual of the passenger aircraft. When the blackhawk confirmed ATC told them to wait and then manoeuvre behind the passenger aircraft.
The military aircraft was therefore responsible for maintaining a visual separation which clearly they failed to do. Possibly they were looking at the wrong aircraft. Therefore it seems likely ATC wasn't responsible.
Obvs this all based on idiots on reddit claiming to have expertise so trust it as much as you would ChatGPT.
It’s in the article too. I don’t know if that’s a later addition but it’s there. Blackhawk pilot was told to see the incoming jet and pass behind. It didn’t.
At the surface, clear human error but it’s never that simple. Was communication missed or misunderstood? Was there another jet that looked to be where they expected it? At that altitude did things get lost in the clutter and ground lights? Was the jet really where it was supposed to be? While responsibility was passed to the pilot and the aircraft was too low for radar to be clear, why didn’t the tower scream?
It’s in the article too. I don’t know if that’s a later addition but it’s there.
It really would not surprise me if it were an edit and the journalists' source was the reddit thread
smashed into a military Blackhawk helicopter
Speaking from DC there's way the fuck too many low-flying helicopters around here. If it's indeed a blackhawk it's probably some military bigwig going to or from the pentagon a mile away.
I'm pretty pissed that an army blackhawk was anywhere near a commercial jet's flightpath. Who do these moron army pilots and pentagon bigwig dickheads think they are? Our government has been a crooked clownshow for a while now but now its the military as well? If everyone on the helicopter wasnt already dead I'd be looking for some jail time for the helicopter people. Heck of a job.
And Vances response is an ask for everyone to "say a prayer?" Is that some sort of joke? What an arsehole.
What are you basing these assumptions on, to be in a position to attribute responsibility at this stage?
As if Congress wouldn't already be having hearings if Biden was still president. If it happens on Trump's watch, then it's Trump's fault until proven otherwise. Some people don't get the benefit of the doubt.
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Helicopters have every right to be there too. Even if it’s just a training flight, they need to be familiar with the complexities so they can do their job when they need to.
What we know so far the helicopter was fine, right up until they confirmed they saw the jet and would pass behind it. Sometimes it can be tough to see in the clutter, and I imagine it’s worse at low altitude and night
JBAB and the Marine One hangar are directly across the Potomac from DCA. I'm honestly kind of surprised this is the first time this has happened.
Id tell JD to gargle my balls if he wasn't so desperate for some attention.
Agreed, but also-- Better be real sure a ball gargling is what you'd be OK with before you suggest that to him.
As others have said, it's far too early to attribute blame. But beyond that, airspace control philosophy is basically that everyone deserves to be in the sky. The collision occured at 400 feet which is a very normal place for a helicopter to be. This occured very near the approach end of a runway, which is more unusual, but doesn't mean they're automatically in the wrong for being "anywhere close to a commercial jet's flight path".
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They have to be. Basically helicopters fly low enough to be out of controlled airspace, below where airplanes should be. They’re slow and maneuverable and may want to go anywhere so control basically doesn’t care as. Long as they stay below controlled airspace. It usually works
In this case they were clearly talking to control, but the tower relied on them to see and follow. Where did that normal procedure go off track? At the surface they said they saw the jet so it’s one them, but it wont be that simple and I’m sure there will be confounding factors
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Just horrible. There are so many safeguards to prevent this from happening. I'm very curious to find out more details on who's to blame.
With the current administration, it will 100% be the immigrants on the passenger flight.
They'll blame it on a "DEI hire" somewhere in the incident chain.
Called it!
10/10 prediction.
Well Trump and Pete Hegseth did just take control of the Pentagon
While I appreciate the political sentiment, those people have nothing to do with this accident.
This accident was so preventable and there needs to be regulatory and cultural changes to prevent it from happening again.
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Looks like an American Airlines passenger jet with 60 passengers and additional crew collided with an Army Blackhawk Helicopter when attempting to land at Reagan Washington National Airport, causing the AA plane to crash into the Potomac River. This is very very not good.
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Do Black Hawks come with TCAS?
I just find it so unbelievable, not in a conspiratorial way, that such a thing could happen with all the safe guards in place.
From information on flightradar24's article, the collision happened at around 300-400 ft. Those altitudes are too low for TCAS to issue alerts. The Black Hawk had a transponder broadcasting with mode S, so it would be visible to TCAS and the tower, but it was not broadcasting ADS-B, which would let you see it on most flight tracking websites.
The jet would have received an audible TCAS alert if this happened at a higher altitude.
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Watching the video, it's also very weird the helicopter didn't seem to try and avoid the collision at all.
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Planes scare the fuck out of me these days what the shit is going on up there?
Still safer than car travel per passenger mile, by quite a large margin
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