Posts by user "Wide Mouth Frog" [Posts: 27 Total up-votes: 65 Page: 1 of 2]¶

Originally Posted by SASless

The following article may not have a direct connection to the Collision being discussed but it certainly does mention issues that bear on the general environment under which the aircraft were operating and on how ATC capability might not have had assets that would have assisted in enhancing safety. It does mention DEI, the efforts to privatize the ATC function in the United States to a system similar to those in the UK and Europe and provides some background to why that has not happened. What it does point to is the question of if the US ATC system is adequate to today's needs of the Aviation Industry within the United States.

https://www.city-journal.org/article...control?skip=1

Originally Posted by Torquetalk

Now, if the article made that point clearly, and did not concern itself with:

The promise of Elon Musk\x92s DOGE
DEI
Democrats blocking privatization legilsation
Donald Trump sorting it out
etc etc

\x85then I would see what you mean.

But as it was a blatantly political article that did not focus at all on the key things that are pretty much obvious as causal from this discussion, then it is surely just a distraction to serious discussion in this thread.

The controller does not appear to have done anything wrong, so what have DEI policies to do with the ATC side of this accident?
The passenger aircraft followed a procedure and got hit, so what bit of the federal bloat caused that?
The 2-crew helicopter apparently never properly identified the aircraft they were supposed to avoid visually. You going to really argue that the DEI or the government caused that?

Unsafe procedures caused this. SASess, please take the ridiculous politics to Jet Blast.

Originally Posted by deltafox44

+1
I think many pilots would have made a mistake indentifying : seen from the helo, there are 3 aircraft in final, plus 1 on take-off, at the same bearing, how can you tell for sure which is the one "just south of Wilson Bridge" ?

Originally Posted by parabatix

deltafox44
Not at all. The briefing indicated there may be a possibility that the altimeter in the BlackHawk displayed an inaccurate altitude reading and that the discrepency was in the order of approx 100' given the height at which the collision is known to have occurred.
Briefing the RT comms, NTSB stated that a portion of the ATC instruction to the BlackHawk to 'pass behind the CRJ' was received in the Blackhawk (according to the CVR), truncated due to the BlackHawk keying the mic at the same time. Apparently, the words 'pass behind the' were missing from the BlackHawk CVR.

Originally Posted by deltafox44

She said there were no defined boundaries, though there were marked in blue on the maps. As already noted here, the width of the routes (as marked on the maps) is different from one map to another, especially when not at the same scale. There is a good reason for not having precise boundaries, they are VFR routes and there is no means to determine the position from the center of the route with a good accuracy, it is just visual navigation. And at night.

Originally Posted by WillowRun 6-3

Easy Street:
"However, as there was no vertical separation built into this procedure, all of this is at best a distraction. The more important questions are why procedural barriers were not in place to stop the route being used during landings on runway 33, and whether visual separation at night is an adequate barrier to collision when airliners and their human cargo are involved."

Aircraft accidents bring lawsuits - like it or not.

I'm not a member now, nor have I been a member, of the part of the profession which specializes in suing usually anybody plausible as a defendant. That doesn't mean, as an attorney first and SLF second, I don't see big problems looming ahead. (A prior post on legal factors was junked by the mods, but that was then, this is. . . .)

The FAA and the U.S. Army are privileged with sovereign immunity, as a general rule. A federal statute - the Federal Tort Claims Act - enacted a waiver of sovereign immunity BUT with an important exception. If the allegedly negligent act (or omission) was taken (or failed to be taken) as part of a "discretionary function", immunity still exists. The basic explanation is that discretionary functions involve policy judgments which, in the view of Congress, cannot be "second-guessed" in lawsuits over alleged federal agency negligence. The other half of the equation is that immunity is waived for "ministerial" actions, sort of (to over-simplify) plug-and-chug activities.

Is the construction and operation of the airspace around DCA a matter of policy judgment? I can almost hear the lawyers planning to file suit arguing that airspace rules which make simple, obvious sense are not derived from policy judgments. I can almost hear them issuing subpoenas (through the necessary international process) of Network Manager or MUAC senior managers to gain testimony that in European airspace, as others have observed about Heathrow, the airspace rules are more like "plug-and-chug" than the sometimes esoteric, and usually vague and/or ambiguous, factors which inform the choices made in - offensive phrase coming - "the policy world."

And will our fine feathered legal eagles sue American too, just to go after the deep pocket, and try to force the airline to take a position on the federal immunity questions?

It's too bad so much attention is focused on the dumb shows and noise currently meant to entertain the grandstands (if you get my meaning). There should be a way to compensate the families of the people who perished in this awful, tragic, and ultimately senseless midair collision. Is the United States civil justice system really going back to 1960 and pretending that what we are dealing with is the December 16 1960 DC-8 - L-1049 Super Constellation midair?

As another poster way, way upthread said, I feel rage.

Originally Posted by MechEngr

How did the top many measures that are in place to prevent this not prevent this?

TCAS
ATC
ADS-B
See and Avoid
Filing a flight plan
Not operating in controlled airspace without a transponder
Not operating at a landing altitude for aircraft on final for a well used runway
Announcing an intention to cross a well used approach
Position lights/strobes
Landing lights

Just spitballing, but there's a non-zero chance NVGs were in use in the helicopter.

It sucks that the best part of this is the airplane was a CRJ, not a larger airliner. Most all those passengers would have survived the initial collision and been aware during the fall to the river.

I feel rage.

Originally Posted by galaxy flyer

KDCA 01 visual to 33 (note: not circle, 121 carriers are not circling authorized in the US) has been a standard procedure for, at least 45, that I flew there. Expediting, moving more planes is always one of the goals. Sure, we can make it safer, only one plane flies on each side of the Mississippi. After that, it\x92s a negotiation.

I\x92m very much opposed to the helicopter routes, both in planning and execution. The routes shouldn\x92t exist, if DCA is to remain open. But, to say safety trumps (excuse me) everything is unrealistic. As soon as the wheels leave the runway, there\x92s risks. This case someone is government accepted too much risk; crews accepted too much risk and normalized that risk. Maneuvering to a different is generally very acceptable, putting a helicopter on final is way too much risk. The system failed to see it for what it was.

Originally Posted by galaxy flyer

Taken literally, it means nothing moves. Safety is not an absolute, it’s an array of acceptable and unacceptable risks. What’s the benefit, what’s the risk.

Originally Posted by Chiefttp

Those helicopter routes NO NOT HAVE LATERAL BOUNDRIES. According to a few military helicopter pilots I spoke to, there is no listed lateral BOUNDARIES outside of common sense and following the charted route. , but there are HARD ALTITUDE BOUNDARIES.

Originally Posted by notwithstanding

I would say the very simple, & totally effective, following: NO helicopter route, NO helicopter, BUT commercial aircraft with NOTHING to conflict with it = NO collision. Can anyone argue with those simple facts . Leaving aside whether equipment was working properly , pilots were making errors, or anything else contributed to the collision. Simple solution.