First, Donald Trump is President of the United States which makes him CIC of the military and the head of the FAA. He knows things we don't know because he's been briefed. Personally, I can't say that DEI was a direct factor but it might have played a part. By the way, the news reports on the tower manning is misleading. There are always multiple tower operators in a tower at an airport with the volume of traffic as there is at DCA - one on ground, one handling takeoffs and one handling landings. DCA also normally has one assigned specifically to handle helicopter traffic over the river. For some reason, one controller was handling landing traffic and the helicopters over the river. They also have radar in the tower cab. ATC is a job that requires high intelligence and the ability to solve complicated problems quickly.
Second, I am a retired professional pilot. I worked for a time in Virginia and frequently flew into Washington National, as it was called before it was renamed. I continued flying in there often when I took a corporate job with a major corporation. There have ALWAYS been helicopters operating in that area. They fly up and down the river and are supposed to stay below 200 feet. For some reason, this one was at around 400 feet. The pilot also made an odd turn to the west instead of staying near the east bank as they're supposed to. It's possible the pilot flying was using night vision goggles since it was a proficiency flight. I almost hate to mention this but one of the helicopter pilots was a woman. I haven't tracked the figures in a long time but at one time female pilot trainees in the Air Force had a higher accident rate than males. There have been issues in aviation due to DEI. An airplane contracted to Amazon crashed here in the Houston area a few years ago. It turned out that the copilot was flying and he had a history of substandard performance, but he had been passed because of his ethnicity - he was from an island in the Caribbean.
I believe he’s referring to the Atlas Air flight 3591. The first officer was the very definition of a diversity hire. He seems to have accidentally hit the Go Around button while on approach and then mistaken the resulting nose-high attitude for an incipient stall. He then pushed forward on the control column, putting the plane into a dive from which the captain was unable to recover.
There’s a fair amount online about it. The NTSB report is pretty scathing.
From following Juan Browne's "blancolirio" YouTube channel—the best I've found anywhere online—it appears the chopper, which was restricted to 200ft and below in the immediate DCA area, steadily climbed all the way to 400ft where it was rudely surprised to find a jetliner occupying that space in perfect accordance with a standard landing on DCA Runway 33.
I've also noticed the long and detailed airport conditions report given by the tower to approaching planes (and then parroted back almost word-for-word by the pilot to the tower) takes a LOT of time and attention (away from controlling air traffic) and is uncomfortably present in many recent "close calls" and minor accidents with no loss of life. It is maddening (think screaming at the screen) to watch the chopper and jet get closer and closer as weather and wind and visibility are blithely bandied about by the tower and a plane miles away from landing.
“But, we should be reminded that DIE did raise the odds of our long national airliner safety streak coming to an end.”
This is a very nuanced and balanced take. I believe Trump was over his skis in blaming this tragedy on DEI before the facts are even in, but a realist can’t ignore the fact that the heavy-handed promotion of DEI for air-traffic controllers, airline pilots, and the military would not have a ripple effect at some point. I understand that one of the three soldiers in the helicopter that died was a female. Was she the pilot of the helicopter and not adequately qualified??? Too early to tell. But from staffing shortages (concerning the air controllers on duty that night) to lower standards across the board for highly qualified professional positions (pilots), it is not absurd to assume that the DEI strategy had some effect here. There was a story not too long ago about an all black female flight crew (American Airlines). I’m sorry, but corners had to be cut for this to happen and I wouldn’t want to have a seat on that flight.
The issue is you cannot select for a pilot so you go into every flight unaware.
In another areas of life, you can pick your provider based on their CV or bio. When I choose doctors, I choose older Jewish or East Asians. I will almost never go to a younger doctor (tired of everything being politicized like those dumb pride pins and lanyards) and I will definitely not go to a minority doctor. If I want a plumber, it will be through word of mouth and I meet them first for an estimate.
When you fly, you know nothing whatsoever about the pilots on your flight, including years of experience. You are flying blind.
Obviously if trying to maximize for accuracy, the best policy is to wait, but "ex abundantia cordis os loquitur." And as you and many others (like Patrick Casey) the system is not optimized towards avoiding failure, but to try to hold it together while incorporating progressive dogma. In other words, total bullshit.
Whether Trump is "right," he did after all not speculate excessively in the limited footage I saw, he did get ahead of the narrative of the Cathedral. The DIE insanity needs to die, and as sage once opined "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
As we have seen recently, contra Yarvin (per his own admissions), you can just do things and if Trump is wrong so be it, but if not this becomes more leverage to overthrow the progressive religion. While I would not say by any means, this sort of strategy is definitely an acceptable cost imo.
If I recall correctly, and I can't promise that I can, so I strongly hope I'm not slandering some 95 year old retired airport worker in Italy, my hearsay recollection is that he implied the problem was that the fuel tank cap wasn't fully screwed back on after one of the tanks was last refilled, so the lightning strike of the plane spread to the fuel tank.
So, they had to come up with a system to prevent that in the future.
But maybe I'm all wrong about that. The FAA report doesn't state that.
The FAA report does obsess over one particular fuel cap that appears to have been blown off by the initial explosion. The parts of the plane came down over a swathe of ground three kilometers long, but this one fuel cap was just about at the front end of the scattered parts, suggesting it was perhaps the first thing to get blown off the plane.
But if I read the FAA report correctly, it doesn't appear to clearly state the cap wasn't screwed on fully. It focuses instead on vents.
The recommendations at the end are pretty weak tea: airplane companies should conduct research into fuel vapor leaks, and airlines should try not to fly in dangerous weather conditions.
Maybe I got the story wrong, or maybe this is one example of why a bunch of guys in short sleeve dress shirts with mechanical pencils in their pockets managed to use the Watergate era to get the FAA out of plane crash investigations in favor of the more independent new NTSB.
Thanks. That does make sense. That must have been a very hard job to do, especially in the days before data and voice recorders.
The Super Constellation was a lovely plane. If you ever get through JFK, the old TWA terminal has been converted into a hotel. They have a restored Super Constellation in TWA livery that is now a cocktail lounge.
That sounds great. I think I landed at Saarinen's TWA terminal at JFK in 1965 coming back from Ireland. I can recall Saarinen's Dulles terminal from the flight to Europe.
Since when do family’s request trump the public’s right to know.
This horrific tragedy remind of my Trumps assassination attempt, where the tiny and chubby secret service woman was literally a head shorter than the man she was to protect and fumbled her gun. You couldn’t hide her because there were photographers but you can hide the helicopter pilots. Ridiculous and an outrage!
(In that case, a Russian man--whose wife and kids died in the crash--murdered the air traffic controller involved. He served a few years in prison, then was treated as a hero upon returning to Russia.)
Hmm....so if they really fuck up, they stand a good chance of being killed by relatives of the dead driven insane (or just driven). So how would that realization affect day-to-day ATC operations? What steps would controllers take to increase passenger (and thus their own) safety? Perhaps there's some fertile ground to be tilled here...
(Something less than the death penalty, but something more than "Oh well, everyone makes mistakes...")
There you go again with the 'concerning'. Feminine language. You don't think Waugh did that, do you? Please switch to 'worrisome' which every literate person used before about 1995.
As a guy who 1) sometimes reads NTSB incident reports for fun and 2) has spent hours at Gravelly Point watching planes take off from and land at Reagan National, I feel like I should write down some thoughts.
- DCA is an extremely busy airport, thanks to the same Congressmen who care about flight safety. From the US Capitol, it's 15 minutes by car without traffic (30 minutes by train).
Comparable travel times to Dulles and Baltimore are 30-45 minutes (1 hour), and on top of that the intra-terminal walks at the latter two airports are much longer; Congressmen thus can save *many* hours of travel time if some of DCA's limited capacity is used for a nonstop flight to their district.
- DCA has around half of the annual takeoffs and landings as LAX, on a much smaller footprint.
Whereas LAX has 4 long parallel runways with substantial lateral runways, DCA has 1 moderate length runway (long enough for 737s / A320s) and two shorter runways (nothing bigger than a regional jet) - and the runways intersect. It requires a constant, intricate ballet from the controllers and pilots, whereas planes approaching LAX can just get in one of two lines, relaxed with the knowledge that departing aircraft are on completely different runways.
- At night, a plane approaching DCA Runway 1 will be plainly visible to the south over the Potomac, whereas a plane approaching Runway 33 might be lost amid the buildings on the DC side.
I work not too far from there so I'll try to go by tomorrow to check out the last hunch.
DCA is one of these old fashioned but super convenient Propellor Age mini-airports that are much closer to the city than the Jet Age super airport out in the 'burbs.
LAX has its problems but takeoffs and landings are pretty calm and orderly.
The Northern Virginia SPRAWL had just begun when Washington National Airport and the Pentagon was built. If DC needs another airport, it might be good to build it in Prince George's County.
National has a flying curfew between 10 pm and 7 am, which doesn't help matters. In the 70s, I took sailing lessons at the marina just south of it, and we had frequent pauses of instruction for the noise. They told us about the Potomac: the water's warm, and you know why. That at least has changed for the better.
The second and last time I flew into National, the pilot banked severely one way and then the other as we came down over the narrow, curvy part of the Potomac between Georgetown and the Rosalyn high rises, neither of whom want overflights. My friends and I were nearly sick. There's much more width below the airport--could that have made the helo pilot complacent?
Seems like the Army ought to be training between 10 and 7. I suppose the great and good in DC don’t like to be kept awake by helicopters any more than by airliners.
It is wise to limit one's speculation so soon after a plane crash that killed over 60 people, many of them young skaters. But I would ask why helicopters are flying about in the night sky around a very busy urban airport as is Washington National. It seems like an accident like the one that just occurred was just waiting to happen. Inevitable. Our host is of the age to remember in 1979 a terrible plane crash in San Diego. A small Cessna collided with a Boeing 727 trying to land in San Diego. The Boeing had lost sight of the Cessna in the clouds. But why was the Cessna flying into the path of an airliner. In the end, 144 people died including nine people on the ground.
Senator Hawley asks the pertinent question. Why fly helicopters near the airport? Sometimes people have to die before needed reforms are made in transportation. In December 1974, a plane crash on Mt. Weather on approach to Dulles Airport was caused when the pilots and the air traffic controllers were using different jargon when preparing to land the airplane. This was rectified after 92 people were killed on Mt. Weather. After the Titanic sank with 1500 dead, rules were made so that there would be enough lifeboats for all.
DIE worked at the top of the funnel which meant fewer people who could pass therefore ATC are overworked? Waaaaay too complex for the middle of the bell curve to follow so it will get no traction.
Blacks were under represented relative not to their US population but their government employee population? So they get to choose whatever number they want when looking for disparate impact? And we're the innumerate unscientific ones?
hahaha What could possibly go wrong. Somewhere in the higher realms of intelligent consciousness, former Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson is tearing out his angelic hair.
Best breakdown I’ve read on the impact AA has. It’d be helpful if more policy makers understood this, then we could at least have an informed discussion on where AA can be tolerated (I.e., hiring interns for The View) and where it has deadly consequences (military, cops, firefighters, aviation, etc.).
First, Donald Trump is President of the United States which makes him CIC of the military and the head of the FAA. He knows things we don't know because he's been briefed. Personally, I can't say that DEI was a direct factor but it might have played a part. By the way, the news reports on the tower manning is misleading. There are always multiple tower operators in a tower at an airport with the volume of traffic as there is at DCA - one on ground, one handling takeoffs and one handling landings. DCA also normally has one assigned specifically to handle helicopter traffic over the river. For some reason, one controller was handling landing traffic and the helicopters over the river. They also have radar in the tower cab. ATC is a job that requires high intelligence and the ability to solve complicated problems quickly.
Second, I am a retired professional pilot. I worked for a time in Virginia and frequently flew into Washington National, as it was called before it was renamed. I continued flying in there often when I took a corporate job with a major corporation. There have ALWAYS been helicopters operating in that area. They fly up and down the river and are supposed to stay below 200 feet. For some reason, this one was at around 400 feet. The pilot also made an odd turn to the west instead of staying near the east bank as they're supposed to. It's possible the pilot flying was using night vision goggles since it was a proficiency flight. I almost hate to mention this but one of the helicopter pilots was a woman. I haven't tracked the figures in a long time but at one time female pilot trainees in the Air Force had a higher accident rate than males. There have been issues in aviation due to DEI. An airplane contracted to Amazon crashed here in the Houston area a few years ago. It turned out that the copilot was flying and he had a history of substandard performance, but he had been passed because of his ethnicity - he was from an island in the Caribbean.
Is that Houston crash you mention the one where they bounced the nose gear repeatedly?
I believe he’s referring to the Atlas Air flight 3591. The first officer was the very definition of a diversity hire. He seems to have accidentally hit the Go Around button while on approach and then mistaken the resulting nose-high attitude for an incipient stall. He then pushed forward on the control column, putting the plane into a dive from which the captain was unable to recover.
There’s a fair amount online about it. The NTSB report is pretty scathing.
Oh goodness, that was awful, especially the part where he's singing "Jesus Take The Stick" as the plane is crashing.
Pretty awful.
One of the things I enjoy about the Sailer comments section is the diversity of expertise. Thanks.
Nice piece, Steve.
From following Juan Browne's "blancolirio" YouTube channel—the best I've found anywhere online—it appears the chopper, which was restricted to 200ft and below in the immediate DCA area, steadily climbed all the way to 400ft where it was rudely surprised to find a jetliner occupying that space in perfect accordance with a standard landing on DCA Runway 33.
I've also noticed the long and detailed airport conditions report given by the tower to approaching planes (and then parroted back almost word-for-word by the pilot to the tower) takes a LOT of time and attention (away from controlling air traffic) and is uncomfortably present in many recent "close calls" and minor accidents with no loss of life. It is maddening (think screaming at the screen) to watch the chopper and jet get closer and closer as weather and wind and visibility are blithely bandied about by the tower and a plane miles away from landing.
“But, we should be reminded that DIE did raise the odds of our long national airliner safety streak coming to an end.”
This is a very nuanced and balanced take. I believe Trump was over his skis in blaming this tragedy on DEI before the facts are even in, but a realist can’t ignore the fact that the heavy-handed promotion of DEI for air-traffic controllers, airline pilots, and the military would not have a ripple effect at some point. I understand that one of the three soldiers in the helicopter that died was a female. Was she the pilot of the helicopter and not adequately qualified??? Too early to tell. But from staffing shortages (concerning the air controllers on duty that night) to lower standards across the board for highly qualified professional positions (pilots), it is not absurd to assume that the DEI strategy had some effect here. There was a story not too long ago about an all black female flight crew (American Airlines). I’m sorry, but corners had to be cut for this to happen and I wouldn’t want to have a seat on that flight.
The issue is you cannot select for a pilot so you go into every flight unaware.
In another areas of life, you can pick your provider based on their CV or bio. When I choose doctors, I choose older Jewish or East Asians. I will almost never go to a younger doctor (tired of everything being politicized like those dumb pride pins and lanyards) and I will definitely not go to a minority doctor. If I want a plumber, it will be through word of mouth and I meet them first for an estimate.
When you fly, you know nothing whatsoever about the pilots on your flight, including years of experience. You are flying blind.
Obviously if trying to maximize for accuracy, the best policy is to wait, but "ex abundantia cordis os loquitur." And as you and many others (like Patrick Casey) the system is not optimized towards avoiding failure, but to try to hold it together while incorporating progressive dogma. In other words, total bullshit.
Whether Trump is "right," he did after all not speculate excessively in the limited footage I saw, he did get ahead of the narrative of the Cathedral. The DIE insanity needs to die, and as sage once opined "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
As we have seen recently, contra Yarvin (per his own admissions), you can just do things and if Trump is wrong so be it, but if not this becomes more leverage to overthrow the progressive religion. While I would not say by any means, this sort of strategy is definitely an acceptable cost imo.
Ok Steve, I just read that FAA report from 1959. Amazing how similar the cause was to that of TWA 800 in 1996. Officially, that is.
Where did your father differ from the FAA?
If I recall correctly, and I can't promise that I can, so I strongly hope I'm not slandering some 95 year old retired airport worker in Italy, my hearsay recollection is that he implied the problem was that the fuel tank cap wasn't fully screwed back on after one of the tanks was last refilled, so the lightning strike of the plane spread to the fuel tank.
So, they had to come up with a system to prevent that in the future.
But maybe I'm all wrong about that. The FAA report doesn't state that.
The FAA report does obsess over one particular fuel cap that appears to have been blown off by the initial explosion. The parts of the plane came down over a swathe of ground three kilometers long, but this one fuel cap was just about at the front end of the scattered parts, suggesting it was perhaps the first thing to get blown off the plane.
But if I read the FAA report correctly, it doesn't appear to clearly state the cap wasn't screwed on fully. It focuses instead on vents.
The recommendations at the end are pretty weak tea: airplane companies should conduct research into fuel vapor leaks, and airlines should try not to fly in dangerous weather conditions.
Maybe I got the story wrong, or maybe this is one example of why a bunch of guys in short sleeve dress shirts with mechanical pencils in their pockets managed to use the Watergate era to get the FAA out of plane crash investigations in favor of the more independent new NTSB.
Thanks. That does make sense. That must have been a very hard job to do, especially in the days before data and voice recorders.
The Super Constellation was a lovely plane. If you ever get through JFK, the old TWA terminal has been converted into a hotel. They have a restored Super Constellation in TWA livery that is now a cocktail lounge.
That sounds great. I think I landed at Saarinen's TWA terminal at JFK in 1965 coming back from Ireland. I can recall Saarinen's Dulles terminal from the flight to Europe.
I have the same memories from a few years later.
The Army is refusing to name the female PIC from the helicopter involved in the mid-air collision. That’s at the family’s request.
This is starting to look like it might not be so simple.
Since when do family’s request trump the public’s right to know.
This horrific tragedy remind of my Trumps assassination attempt, where the tiny and chubby secret service woman was literally a head shorter than the man she was to protect and fumbled her gun. You couldn’t hide her because there were photographers but you can hide the helicopter pilots. Ridiculous and an outrage!
I agree. It will come out sooner or later.
They lengthened the main Dulles building a couple of decades ago. Despite matching the style, it ruined the proportions. Coulda been worse.
Short-staffed air traffic control? Reminds me of this mid-air collision:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision
(In that case, a Russian man--whose wife and kids died in the crash--murdered the air traffic controller involved. He served a few years in prison, then was treated as a hero upon returning to Russia.)
Hmm....so if they really fuck up, they stand a good chance of being killed by relatives of the dead driven insane (or just driven). So how would that realization affect day-to-day ATC operations? What steps would controllers take to increase passenger (and thus their own) safety? Perhaps there's some fertile ground to be tilled here...
(Something less than the death penalty, but something more than "Oh well, everyone makes mistakes...")
There you go again with the 'concerning'. Feminine language. You don't think Waugh did that, do you? Please switch to 'worrisome' which every literate person used before about 1995.
As a guy who 1) sometimes reads NTSB incident reports for fun and 2) has spent hours at Gravelly Point watching planes take off from and land at Reagan National, I feel like I should write down some thoughts.
- DCA is an extremely busy airport, thanks to the same Congressmen who care about flight safety. From the US Capitol, it's 15 minutes by car without traffic (30 minutes by train).
Comparable travel times to Dulles and Baltimore are 30-45 minutes (1 hour), and on top of that the intra-terminal walks at the latter two airports are much longer; Congressmen thus can save *many* hours of travel time if some of DCA's limited capacity is used for a nonstop flight to their district.
- DCA has around half of the annual takeoffs and landings as LAX, on a much smaller footprint.
Whereas LAX has 4 long parallel runways with substantial lateral runways, DCA has 1 moderate length runway (long enough for 737s / A320s) and two shorter runways (nothing bigger than a regional jet) - and the runways intersect. It requires a constant, intricate ballet from the controllers and pilots, whereas planes approaching LAX can just get in one of two lines, relaxed with the knowledge that departing aircraft are on completely different runways.
- At night, a plane approaching DCA Runway 1 will be plainly visible to the south over the Potomac, whereas a plane approaching Runway 33 might be lost amid the buildings on the DC side.
I work not too far from there so I'll try to go by tomorrow to check out the last hunch.
DCA is one of these old fashioned but super convenient Propellor Age mini-airports that are much closer to the city than the Jet Age super airport out in the 'burbs.
LAX has its problems but takeoffs and landings are pretty calm and orderly.
The Northern Virginia SPRAWL had just begun when Washington National Airport and the Pentagon was built. If DC needs another airport, it might be good to build it in Prince George's County.
That's where Andrews (formerly) AFB is already.
I'm thinking that an airport could be built south of Bowie, a few miles south of the BaySox Stadium.
It was the airliner's LED headlights.
National has a flying curfew between 10 pm and 7 am, which doesn't help matters. In the 70s, I took sailing lessons at the marina just south of it, and we had frequent pauses of instruction for the noise. They told us about the Potomac: the water's warm, and you know why. That at least has changed for the better.
The second and last time I flew into National, the pilot banked severely one way and then the other as we came down over the narrow, curvy part of the Potomac between Georgetown and the Rosalyn high rises, neither of whom want overflights. My friends and I were nearly sick. There's much more width below the airport--could that have made the helo pilot complacent?
Seems like the Army ought to be training between 10 and 7. I suppose the great and good in DC don’t like to be kept awake by helicopters any more than by airliners.
It is wise to limit one's speculation so soon after a plane crash that killed over 60 people, many of them young skaters. But I would ask why helicopters are flying about in the night sky around a very busy urban airport as is Washington National. It seems like an accident like the one that just occurred was just waiting to happen. Inevitable. Our host is of the age to remember in 1979 a terrible plane crash in San Diego. A small Cessna collided with a Boeing 727 trying to land in San Diego. The Boeing had lost sight of the Cessna in the clouds. But why was the Cessna flying into the path of an airliner. In the end, 144 people died including nine people on the ground.
Breaking Bad based a whole season on that airplane crash.
Senator Hawley asks the pertinent question. Why fly helicopters near the airport? Sometimes people have to die before needed reforms are made in transportation. In December 1974, a plane crash on Mt. Weather on approach to Dulles Airport was caused when the pilots and the air traffic controllers were using different jargon when preparing to land the airplane. This was rectified after 92 people were killed on Mt. Weather. After the Titanic sank with 1500 dead, rules were made so that there would be enough lifeboats for all.
“numeric ability, prioritization, planning, tolerance for high intensity, decisiveness, visuality, problem-solving, and movement detection”
Sounds like White Supremacist values to me.
DIE worked at the top of the funnel which meant fewer people who could pass therefore ATC are overworked? Waaaaay too complex for the middle of the bell curve to follow so it will get no traction.
Blacks were under represented relative not to their US population but their government employee population? So they get to choose whatever number they want when looking for disparate impact? And we're the innumerate unscientific ones?
It’s the heads I win tails you lose mentality. They can claim disparate impact based on whatever is the highest metric, not the most applicable one.
Looks like Trump just signed an order telling them to work on undoing DIE in art traffic control hiring
A press release from Lockheed dated 17OCTOBER2024 headlined: "Command an Autonomous Black Hawk Helicopter from 300 Miles Away" Have a look:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2024/command-an-autonomous-black-hawk-helicopter-from-300-miles-away.html#:~:text=During
hahaha What could possibly go wrong. Somewhere in the higher realms of intelligent consciousness, former Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson is tearing out his angelic hair.
Best breakdown I’ve read on the impact AA has. It’d be helpful if more policy makers understood this, then we could at least have an informed discussion on where AA can be tolerated (I.e., hiring interns for The View) and where it has deadly consequences (military, cops, firefighters, aviation, etc.).