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.
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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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.
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
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 ....
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.
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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
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.
PSA Airlines, doing business as American Eagle.
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
Yea this was the first crash since 2009 I believe. At least in the US. Still not okay, but we've been doing well/also been pretty lucky a few times.
Aviation infrastructure has been strained to the breaking point since Covid. ATC, ramps, pilots, crew, everyone in the chain except the executives.
Aviation is designed so that one minor mistake does not snowball into an incident or accident.
When capitalism stretches those constraints, you start stacking small issues and now you have a very big one.
Welcome to the collapse of empire.
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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I always assumed military aircraft didn't have TCAS or any other such technology that could give away the position of the aircraft. But thinking about it, why not? They do have transporders, they just have an off switch for them.
So I don't know. Maybe they don't have TCAS, maybe they forgot to turn it on. Either way, TCAS probably wouldn't work at low altitude during a landing.
We will probably have to wait for the accident report.
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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