Ooops…posted already…
Nice post @BeachAV8R. Totally agree.
Also, anyone see (a particular leader)’s comments on this yesterday? DEI?! 
@jross I corrected you above for this…
Turns out you were correct. I based my correction on the last flightaware track which had the helo at 200’. NYTs says closer to 400’ at impact. Sorry.
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He must have been referring to the black boxes /sarcasm
My first thought when I heard the news was overloaded ATC staff missing something. Ever since the Pandemic I knew ATC (and just about everyone in general) was short staffed but the fat cats at the top want operations to be lean so they continue to be short staffed, leading to a whole bunch of near-misses over the past couple years I’ve been watching the Blanco Lirio channel. It was only a matter of time before a near-miss ended in a collision, I thought.
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You thought right. Last month part of my crew, the third pilot called an IRO, had recently returned to flying after serving 13 years as a tower controller. He explained the staffing issues that caused a big disruption in Newark last year (and likely will again this spring). The COVID staffing shortage was caused by the people at the top but propagated by the people on the bottom. Short-staffing means overtime. It’s why workers need unions: not just to protect us from our bosses, but to protect us from our own worst instincts. If enough money is involved, workers will work until they drop dead on the job. This has been normalized at the FAA.
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A couple of years ago I listened to a talk by the guy responsible for recruiting new staff at EUROCONTROL, about why they had to close down so many sectors over Europe… The conditions he described were horrible. He mentioned they are recruiting in the same pool of people as Microsoft and Google, but are very far from being able to offer their conditions.
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Not trying to be political here, just my observations, but, as @BeachAV8R noted this is humans being humans. After ~33 years of doing it, military and civilian (FAA), the majority being the latter I’ve seen, and had to deal with:
- Discrimination (use whatever term you want here; Affirmative Action, DEI, I don’t care). Was it a good thing? Yes, up to a POINT.
I had a unique perspective at the start (I mentioned this briefly elsewhere here) when I applied to the FAA, I was one of three people in my facility that took, and passed, the entrance test, I was hired last, even though I had the highest score.
This was 1987-ish - it’s not a new thing. You need balance.
But we rooted for each other. I moved on. And so did they (I lost track of one over the years; heard the other was doing exceptional). In the FAA I was discriminated against because I came from the military!. At some level it was warranted: the standards (screening process) for the AF wasn’t as stringent as it was in the FAA. Time being a big factor IMO.
This was pre-Desert Storm when things, to my view, changed. Briefly.
Humans being humans.
I had ‘grown up’ in the 80’s air force with a fluid mixture of people. We all got along fine. Compared to what I’ve seen in the last 15-20 years it was great (note we were all young, which helps); we worked and played together.
- Short-sidedness, aka ‘money’ - greed: Mid 2000’s the administration decided it was too expensive to not only pay controllers what they were currently getting but to drastically cut funding for the screening process (4-6 months, it has varied).
Imagine higher-ups in the flying world deciding something similar. To cut this short: you get a fresh new crew member that has only taken a computer course on flying an airplane (“I play MSFT/DCS!”) - you now have to teach them fundamentals WHIILE you are flying your plane.
Then imagine, after 2-3 years they are now fully certified yet making 40% less than their coworkers - and will never go any higher. The few that were nearing successful completion started to think, “this is BS”. And left. Don’t blame them.
- Lowering Standards: I watched a young person (who had completed this simplified process) get handcuffed and ‘escorted’ out of the facility. She could not accept that she was being ‘cut’, crying out, “but you said I could be a controller [when I was hired]”! It was embarrassing - for the FAA!. She knew the information apparently (book work) but was oblivious when it came to identifying conflicts; I watched her run 2 sets (that’s 4 airplanes) right through each other without any idea there was a problem - the targets flash when this is happening though that feature may have been turned off (was all in the simulator lab of course.) to remove the ‘crutch’.
IMO, the union was just as much to blame here - they want the ‘numbers’ (bodies == power in their terms) on their roster. I was not mad at her, far from it - I was angry because they just wasted 2-3 years of this persons life. Years where she could have been progressing in some other pursuit.
There needs to be Balance. The leadership on both sides was lacking.
Overtime: this was ramping up as I was leaving - 6 day work weeks. You had those that salivated at the extra pay and those that said, no thanks but didn’t have a choice. Looking back at the late 70’s, pre-strike, and some controllers I knew that had ‘moved up’ to the FAA were bragging that they only worked [airplanes] about an hour a day. Not normal but not uncommon. That is not balanced.
We used to have a saying (not unique to this career field I’m sure), “nothing will change until somebody gets hurt, or somebody ‘important’ is affected”. Etc, etc. Yeah, that’s harsh, esp. right now, but without good leadership and a fundamental change in the attitude of the general public, it will not change.
I’ve recently noticed the same issues with the fire department. I did 2 years (my heart was sending signals that, “you might not want to do this” - most FF die of heart attack it seems) and expect others to volunteer too. But they don’t. Yet the people administering everything are getting paid, well, but guess who is NOT getting paid? Yes, the firefighters - the ones dong the job. It’s not a priority at some level.
Until it is.
In the end, this is humans being humans.
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I know that most of the victims’ loved ones will disagree, as I would if I were in their shoes, but the ratio of passenger miles, flight hours, or any other metric to accidents is so astronomically high, that looking for a culprit is almost moot. Let’s hope that the cure is not worse than the disease.
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Also true. As others have said, we’ve had a great run. But I believe that this historic record of safety has been in spite of rather than because of the systems outside the cockpit, including ATC. TCAS, enhanced GPWS, training and crew threat and error management (CRM/TEM) have combined to give us our moment (until 48 hours ago). ATC is broken in the US. The “N90” fiasco here in NYC is just one datapoint. Airlines aren’t helping. We’re adding more metal while the FAA mades due with less bodies.
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LOL, that reminds me…
I went on a boondoggle as a union rep (I got ‘softly fired’ from that position cos I didn’t agree on something later) circa 1997 to planning conference in SAN. Something to do with new routes into SoCal via Mexico, and such.
My recollection was they were all ‘bidding’ (don’t recall the exact terms) over time slots - and they overlapped! My buddy and I turned to each other, 'ahhh, this is all great but in the END somebody has to make sure it all works out over the numbers!"; you can’t break the flow up into 4 lanes and expect it all to ‘just work’ when it must merge back into one. Looks great on paper. Lets throw a thunderstorm into the mix.
Before…forget the term…profile descents we had to do it all [sequencing] ‘manually’ (pre- 9/11 things often got crazy!, multiple times per day). You got really good at it over time. But these techniques used more gas (we understood the physics and used this as a ‘tool’).
Which cost the airlines Mo’ Money. We got this too; its why you berated a trainee for wanting to use altitude to solve the problem instead of a small vector (performed early enough) - “you’re costing them gas with these altitude changes” sorta thing. Enroute of course.
The ‘descend via’ thing only moved the sequencing problem further away, it didn’t solve it.
We need airliners that can do .8 mach - and hover.
I thought tail hooks; cables on the runway; turn the passenger seats around [to absorb the landing shock]; would be the answer - It’s didn’t take 
Somewhere, It was about money.
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Not familiar with that
DCA is hairy, even VFR because of the controllers desire to accomodate everyone. Special VFR is really special - been there, done that. IMHO, the only safe way to approach DCA is IFR.
I suspect the Helicopter pilot had visual contact with the plane that had just departed DCA, shown in a left climbing turn away from the river. He mistook that airaft for the one he was to pass behind. Chopper crew was probably looking at the airport, rather than at the approach to 33. Their altitude excursion didn’t help either. The RNAV 33 plate shows crossing the 1.4nm IDTEK fix at 490’, on 3 degree approach slope, which puts the jet at around 300’ at the east shoreline.
Any pilot scanning outside during a visual approach should have noticed an object not moving but getting larger, so I also suspect that all eyes in both aircraft were not scanning outside.
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Welcome!
Thank you.
Sounds familiar. Late 80’s we had a “VFR” position that covered all the 'banner tow’s along the beach. Was prompted by a collision (and a few nearly so) earlier.
It was the busiest position, by far, during the spring break and summer. No Class-B but you were supposed to coordinate with the VFR towers where their airspace overlapped the beach.
But people hated saying “unable” to flight-following requests. Then you end up with ABC tower calling, “Why is there a ‘Get crabs at Angie’s place’ sign crossing the approach end of 36???”. Oops.
Think they culled that back in the 90’s. It was, no pun intended, getting outta control. Likely similar to that thing they have going, or used to, over the grand canyon.
24 hrs before…
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Looks like there may have been another plane crash in the US
@BeachAV8R are you still all good
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Different company i think. What an awful event 
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The medivac flight was “Jet Rescue”, a Mexican company using Lear 55s.
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Yeah. I was flying from Sarasota back to Charlotte when it happened…the guard frequency lit up. Then my phone started getting messages. Tragic. I have no idea on the cause… I haven’t seen the FlightAware track yet… but that impact was something else. Almost looks like what would happen if a control lock was left in or something… Really tragic. With all that has happened in the last month or so I think my company is considering a 24 hour safety standdown. It’s a weird phenomenon… When sometimes a cluster of these accidents occurs you kind of feel like the other shoe is about to drop. Sometimes taking a breath and reassessing is a wise decision. Like calling a timeout when a basketball game is running away from you…
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Glad you are ok chris. Must have felt close to home that one, a tragic event by any metric
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