DCA Air Collision Discussion

[The AD]

The picture is beginning to get clearer on what happened. Here's a gifted article from the New York Times with some good information of what is known right now:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/b...smid=url-share

Let's try to keep this thread politics free.

[evdog]

Clearly DEI is at fault!

[t-the-east]

Not sure how this discussion could be politics free. Even the article you posted is saying the FAA was short staffed and the air traffic controller was multi tasking, after the orange piece of shit fired one hundred faa employees and failed to hire an faa administrator.

[The AD]

I guess I mean I'd prefer to stick to facts. The FAA being short staffed is a fact, it's not political.

[SKIP IN7RO]

I get it, so "orange piece of shit" should be President Trump.

[MultiVerse]

Trump admin also recently refused cost of living increase for air traffic controls living in expensive cities. But DEI could be a factor in the FAA's hiring practices for over a decade leading to a shortage of air traffic controllers. It will be dry at times—others can editorialize more:

"A scandal at the FAA has been moving on a slow-burn through the courts for a decade, culminating in the class-action lawsuit currently known as Brigida v. Buttigieg, brought by a class who spent years and thousands of dollars in coursework to become air traffic controllers, only to be dismissed by a pass-fail biographical questionnaire with a >90% fail rate, implemented without warning after many of them had already taken, and passed, a skill assessment.
...

People will turn this into a culture war issue, and in one sense, that is perfectly fair: it represents a decades-long process of institutional failure at every level. A thousand things had to go wrong to get to this point, and if people want to harp on it—let them. But this is not a fundamentally partisan issue. Virtually nobody, looking dispassionately at that questionnaire, wants to defend it. Everybody wants competent, effective air traffic controllers. Everybody, I suspect, can sympathize with the people who paid and worked through years of education to have their career path suddenly pulled away for political reasons far beyond their control. "

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/...quick-overview

[2FUNKY]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/busin...ers/index.html


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[The AD]

That's an interesting article and worth reading [the one MultiVerse linked]. This accident will very likely shine a spotlight on the ATC selection process, and it appears rightfully so.

[t-the-east]

I guess I mean I'd prefer to stick to facts. The FAA being short staffed is a fact, it's not political.

I like that. Facts are a great tool to use in a productive conversation

I get it, so "orange piece of shit" should be President Trump.

Up to interpretation, not naming names, sticking to facts

[The AD]

I know this is the era of the hot take, but generally things like investigating the causes of a crash require a bit more consideration.

[AdironRider]

The picture is beginning to get clearer on what happened. Here's a gifted article from the New York Times with some good information of what is known right now:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/b...smid=url-share

Let's try to keep this thread politics free.

The Trump admin had been in place for all of a week when this accident occurred. ATC has been needing qualified candidates for years prior to this (dating back to well into the Obama and Bush terms), so this has been an ongoing problem and one that would not have been solved between 1/20 and the event. In that regard, it does seem like it would be beneficial to look at FAA leadership given they have had well over a decade to ramp up staffing and haven't done so, despite the imminent safety risk.

That said, ATC seemed to be in contact with at least the helicopter one multiple occasions within the minute prior to impact, including ordering it to pass behind. Seems to be less of a an ATC problem here and more of a blackhawk pilot problem to me.

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1...ntroller-radio

[AdironRider]

Retired air traffic controller claiming nationwide staff shortages as of 17 years ago:

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...air-collision/

[The AD]

ATC has been needing qualified candidates for years prior to this (dating back to well into the Obama and Bush terms), so this has been an ongoing problem and one that would not have been solved between 1/20 and the event. In that regard, it does seem like it would be beneficial to look at FAA leadership given they have had well over a decade to ramp up staffing and haven't done so, despite the imminent safety risk.

Which only highlights the point that this is really a non-partisan issue. Both parties have seemed to have dropped the ball here. It's pretty egregious for Trump to blame Biden et al right out of the gate when he didn't do anything to fix the problem during his first term, either.

[MultiVerse]

That said, ATC seemed to be in contact with at least the helicopter one multiple occasions within the minute prior to impact, including ordering it to pass behind. Seems to be less of a an ATC problem here and more of a blackhawk pilot problem to me.

The main question assigning proportionate responsibility is whether a second helicopter controller, as was typically the case for that time of day, would have prevented the Black Hawk from flying too high and along the wrong flight path. With hindsight it looks like the Black Hawk pilot(s) were looking at the wrong aircraft so the "pass behind" directive wasn't helpful without followup. Things that (potentially) went wrong:

1 - Too few air controllers leading to not enough attention paid to Black Hawk
2 - Black Hawk flying too high, wrong flight path
3 - Too few crew chiefs aboard Black Hawk causing less peripheral situational awareness
4 - Black Hawk pilots flying with night vison further reducing peripheral view

[ötzi]

The roots of this start with Reagan, so there's a political aspect but yeah it's not the Orange Fuckstick's fault. He hasn't had much time to make it worse yet but he's working on that.

(Pilot) Ted Striker posted a good video in poliass. It was entirely the Blackhawk pilot's fault in my view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfgllf1L9_4

[Cisco Kid]

<p>
Kind of hard to discuss any facts now that liars are honored and truth is dead.</p>

[Danno]

Hey look, everyone has moved on from being a vaccine expert or a health care expert or a wildfire expert to being an air traffic expert!

[dunfree]

It’s DCA or KDCA. DCI is an Italian air base on Sardinia.The two senators responsible for expanding/changing DCA landing slots are McCain and Cruz by my memory, because Congress doesn’t want to drive to Dulles.

[dunfree]

Hey look, everyone has moved on from being a vaccine expert or a health care expert or a wildfire expert to being an air traffic expert!

eh, the problem with the internet is the people who know something won&#39;t talk for good reason often. There&#39;s at least one ATC or former ATC here, and multiple commercial pilots current or former, but even with that DCA is just a fucked up place.

[Ted Striker]

The FAA stuff is 100% a red herring. Seriously. The majority of people opining on this are grasping at straws, and/or pushing an agenda.

This was primarily pilot error on the part of the helicopter. There are secondary contributing factors, but they don't amount to a smoking gun.

One of them being "would another controller on shift have prevented this?" Maybe yes, but probably not, because controllers don't really overlap (much). As an aside here, these mixed traffic aerodromes have tried various operating procedures to reduce workload, and mitigate conflicts. Typically, having dissimilar traffic that might conflict on the same radio has been found to work better than there being discreet frequencies for helicopters, seaplanes, etc.

So those two aircraft still would've been on the same controller's screen. And the helicopter pilot repeatedly stated they had the CRJ visual and would maintain visual separation. And due to the line of other traffic on final to Rwy1, the heli pilot aiming to pass close behind the CRJ would look normal to the controllers right up to the last 20 or so seconds.

[MultiVerse]

Not according to the reporting. Typically there's a second controller at that time of day working with helicopters. Regardless, since the helicopter was too high then shouldn't the pilots been told "you're too high, maintain height at 200feet" or something to that effect?

[Skistack]

I’m not an air traffic expert, just a simple dentist that also likes to ski.

So why did the Blackhawk need to there in the first place? Seems like crossing the flight path of commercial aircraft that are landing and taking off should not be something that is allowed to happen.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[Ted Striker]

@ multiverse

Thank you for proving dunfree's point.

Your inability to resist hitting reply on literally every thread armed with nothing more than hearsay and second hand info tends to diminish any perceived authority you may think you possess.

[MultiVerse]

Zero perceived authority. If you don't want to answer my question, then at least try to answer Skistack's question? Like, per dunfree's point, if we're all supposed to defer to you as a commercial pilot with expertise then it seems like it's fair to mention that the helicopter was in the wrong place in the first place, right?

[The AD]

Thread title typo noted and fixed.