Plane Crash In DC

JayUtah said:
Air traffic controllers have a statutory mandatory retirement age of 56 (5 U.S.C. § 8335). This is based on cognitive factors, stress tolerance, and burnout. This is the case for most of the world, not just in the United States. The law allows the Secretary of Transportation to extend the retirement until age 61 for individuals who demonstrate special aptitude or skill. It's also unlawful to hire a controller older than age 31. It's not clear who Elon Musk is talking about, but he cannot simply waive these requirements. They're laws, not regulations.
Click to expand...
Can older controllers be hired back as trainers?
 
Ziggurat said:
Can older controllers be hired back as trainers?
Click to expand...
Absolutely yes. There are no age restrictions on working as an ATC instructor, and moving from operations to training is a very common career transition, as it is also for pilots. You must stop being an active controller at age 56, but nothing says you have to leave federal service altogether. And nothing says you can't be rehired as an instructor, as long as the retirement pension details are properly worked out.
 
JayUtah said:
The "single digit months to failure" estimate is from Musk, not from the FAA. There is no finding from the FAA to that effect. The Verizon contract was for 15 years, for upgrade and continued support, and was just recently granted. This is not a case of an existing Verizon system that is failing and being propped up by a legacy contractor. The dissatisfaction with the Verizon contract has surfaced only since Musk took over.

Having authority to cancel a competitor's contract and substitute one's own privately-held company for it on a no-contest, single-source bid is 100% a conflict of interest no matter how joyfully the supposed merits of the decision are spun.
Click to expand...
It's like his lie about the Biden upgrades to the land based internet in NC. He said billions had been spent but it hadn't. The billions was in the budget but the planning and tender stages were just finishing. He is constrained by his incompetence and self deception.
 
The NTSB Preliminary report is out.... and its bad... very bad

WARNING: PDF 1.35 MB

Between 2018 and 2024​
- Runway 1 accounted for about 57% arrivals​
- Runway 19 accounted for about 38% of arrivals​
- Runway 33 accounted for about 4% of arrivals​
- Runway 15 accounted for less than 1% of arrivals​
- Runway 15 accounted for about 5% of departures​

Which makes me wonder why DCA are even using Runway 33/15 at all.

Between October 2021 and December 2024 indicated a total of 944,179 operations. During that time, there were 15,214 occurrences between commercial airplanes and helicopters in which there was a lateral separation distance of less than 1 nm and vertical separation of less than 400 ft. There were 85 recorded events that involved a lateral separation less than 1,500 ft and vertical separation less than 200 ft.​

From 2011 through 2024,​
- A vast majority of the reported events occurred on approach to landing.​
- At least one TCAS resolution advisory (RA) was triggered per month due to proximity to a helicopter.​
- In over half of these instances, the helicopter may have been above the route altitude restriction.​
- Two-thirds of the events occurred at night.​

The FAA has had all of this data, and did nothing proactive to resolve these conditions.

Hoover (Pilot Debrief) has a 55m video covering most of this. Worth watching for those who follow this stuff.
 
Last edited:
smartcooky said:
The FAA has had all of this data, and did nothing proactive to resolve these conditions.
Click to expand...
The normalization of deviance. Plenty of close calls, but few if any collisions. The operational penalty for a close call is small, and important people (those who live and work in D.C.) impose high production pressure. "We've been doing it like this for years with 'no problem,' so it must be okay." Of course, the way it's supposed to work, all those close calls were the warning that your operational margin was slim to none.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Duffy on air traffic control: "Our system is 25, 30 years old. We use copper wires, floppy disks. It's atrocious the system we use."
Click to expand...
Yet this system was able to achieve a zero fatality rate for the latter half of its existence. The question is whether it works, not whether it's new and flashy.

Andy_Ross said:
Duffy says SpaceX engineers are helping the government implement a new air traffic control system
Click to expand...
And I have no objection to that in principle, so long as they had won a competitive bid to do so. I don't agree with the presumption that SpaceX is competent to do any particular thing, and I am not convinced that the present course of action is anything other than Elon Musk self-dealing.
 
a_unique_person said:
Duffy plans to spend a lot of money to update air traffic control. What are the odds that like a lot of initiatives to update government technology, it goes nowhere due to budget cuts.
Click to expand...
I think they'll get Musk to do it, get 20% of the functionality/service for 150% of the budget, declare it a huge win and leave it for the Democrats to sort out over the next couple of decades.
 
The Don said:
I think they'll get Musk to do it, get 20% of the functionality/service for 150% of the budget, declare it a huge win and leave it for the Democrats to sort out over the next couple of decades.
Click to expand...
Quite likely. None of Elon Musk's companies has demonstrated the ability to engineer something that must work all the time for all cases. In fact, quite the opposite. The "move fast and break things" philosophy presumes that there is some tolerance for failure. Musk's companies have not shown that they can work any other way. This is not business, where you can just ignore the use cases you don't like, can't design to, or aren't profitable.
 
On Friday afternoon there was another incident involving a commercial airliner, a Delta Airbus A319, Reagan Airport and a military aircraft nearby, a US Air Force T38 Talon jet. Fortunately, this time there was no collision. A TV station in Virginia reports:
According to an FAA statement, Delta flight 2983 was cleared for takeoff around 3:15 p.m. Delta said the flight was following regularly scheduled service between Washington, D.C. and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The plane left at the same time that four U.S. Air Force T-38 Talons were flying to Arlington National Cemetery for a flyover, according to the FAA, which did not say where they were flying from...The FAA said that the Delta aircraft got an onboard alert that another aircraft was nearby. Air traffic controllers gave corrective instructions to both aircraft. WAVY TV article link
Click to expand...

1743254396235.png
Approximate positions of the two planes.
 
newyorkguy said:
On Friday afternoon there was another incident involving a commercial airliner, a Delta Airbus A319, Reagan Airport and a military aircraft nearby, a US Air Force T38 Talon jet. Fortunately, this time there was no collision. A TV station in Virginia reports:


View attachment 59708
Approximate positions of the two planes.
Click to expand...
AIUI, it wasn't just a TCAS alert, it was a "Resolution Advisory"….. in which the TCAS instructs the pilot to immediately either climb or decend to avoid collision.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Duffy on air traffic control: "Our system is 25, 30 years old. We use copper wires, floppy disks. It's atrocious the system we use."
Click to expand...
Because it works, and works well. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Andy_Ross said:
Duffy says SpaceX engineers are helping the government implement a new air traffic control system

https://twitter.com/x/status/1902352924459557226
Click to expand...
So what are the SpaceX qualifications for designing and implementing Air Traffic Control systems software? Have they ever done that before? Do they have a sample of their work? Do they launch enough rockets now to require marshalling them in the air so they don't collide?

Unless Duffy thinks that ANY software engineers can design ANY software systems for ANY purposes? Hey, ATC is not just a few lines of BASIC code on your DOS 6.2 PC, guy!

This is SO farqued.
 
I presume "Duffy" is Musk, and yes he does appear to think that. He also, from what I have read (i.e. it's unverified), claimed that he could replace the entire U.S. Social Security computer software suite in 3 months - again, presumably with his 20-something code monkeys he's using in DOGE. That is absurd in my view from multiple standpoints, not the least of which is 20-something coders do not have the experience, as a general rule, necessary to write mission-critical software. Edit: Well, functional and stable mission-critical software. If you want incomplete and buggy software, then by all means get that team to rewrite it in 3 months.
 
Last edited:
JayUtah said:
Quite likely. None of Elon Musk's companies has demonstrated the ability to engineer something that must work all the time for all cases. In fact, quite the opposite. The "move fast and break things" philosophy presumes that there is some tolerance for failure. Musk's companies have not shown that they can work any other way. This is not business, where you can just ignore the use cases you don't like, can't design to, or aren't profitable.
Click to expand...
A quick review via Google indicates Tesla's response to lawsuits involving crashes is to settle out of court. (I could not find a site that did an actual analysis.) The site https://www.tesladeaths.com/ is interesting however.

I guess the same approach could taken until all the bugs are worked out of the new ATC system. :eusa_whistle:
 
Not a crash, thank goodness, but two airliners brushed wings while on the ground at Reagan early Friday afternoon. Noteworthy was that there were six or seven members of Congress on board one of the planes. They were on American Eagle flight 4522, operated by Republic Airways, headed from Reagan to JFK Airport in New York City. A wing on 4522, an Embraer E17 jet, was struck by the wing of another flight, a Bombardier CRJ 900 on Flight 5490, operated by PSA Airlines and headed for Charleston, South Carolina. Reportedly flight 4522 was stationary when struck, awaiting clearance to takeoff. The other plane, flight 5490, was reportedly taxing into position, also about to takeoff.
"While waiting to take off on the runway at DCA just now, another plane struck our wing," Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said in a statement posted to X. "Thankfully, everyone is safe. Just a reminder: Recent cuts to the FAA weaken our skies and public safety." NBC News article link
Click to expand...

There were over 150 passengers and crew aboard the two planes.
 
  • Reporter: "Congressm... Congressman Gottheimer! Sir, you referenced 'cuts to the FAA' in your statement earlier, that public safety has been weakened. Do you blame what happened today on donald trump?"
  • Gottheimer: "Do I blame this on... On trump? Yes, yes I do!"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom