Plane Crash In DC

jeremyp said:
Serious question: what's hard about NOTAMs? It's basically just emails to pilots. I get that they need to be reliable, but the technology exists practically off the shelf for that.
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There's a bit more to it than that. If anything, a lot of NOTAMs is arguably spam. A random selection from the current NOTAMS at Sydney International Airport:

NOTAM H0692/25: Sydney Kingsford Smith International Airport (YSSY)​

H0692/25 NOTAMNQ) YMMM/QOBCE/IV/M/AE/000/999/3357S15111E005A) YSSY PART 1 OF 2B) 2501290747 C) 2502280000 ESTE) OBSTACLE CRANES AT FLW LOCATIONS: ERECTED190FT AMSL BRG 002 MAG 2444M FM ARP904FT AMSL BRG 003 MAG 5.28NM FM ARP656FT AMSL BRG 003 MAG 5.19NM FM ARP 1025FT AMSL BRG 003 MAG 5.23NM FM ARP276FT AMSL BRG 004 MAG 2.84NM FM ARP531FT AMSL BRG 004 MAG 7.28NM FM ARP 901FT AMSL BRG 006 MAG 3.98NM FM ARP614FT AMSL BRG 006 MAG 4.17NM FM ARP682FT AMSL BRG 006 MAG 4.77NM FM ARP 587FT AMSL BRG 006 MAG 4.97NM FM ARP797FT AMSL BRG 006 MAG 4.64NM FM ARP614FT AMSL BRG 007 MAG 4,42NM FN ARP389FT AMSL BRG 008 MAG 3.08NM FM ARP 407FT AMSL BRG 008 MAG 3.06NM FM ARP 315FT AMSL BRG 012 MAG 2.86NM FM ARP 359FT AMSL BRG 017 MAG 2.93NM FM ARP289FT AMSL BRG 019 MAG 3591M FM ARP348FT AMSL BRG 019 MAG 2.69NM FM ARP289FT AMSL BRG 024 MAG 2.01NM FM ARP 246FT AMSL BRG 026 MAG 2.56NM FM ARP OBST MARKING NON-STANDARD414FT AMSL BRG 032 MAG 3.16NM FM ARP369FT AMSL BRG 032 MAG 3.26NM FM ARP413FT AMSL BRG 033 MAG 3.09NM FM ARP415FT AMSL BRG 033 MAG 3.16NM FM ARPEND PART 1 OF 2CREATED: 29 Jan 2025 07:54:00 SOURCE: YBBBZEZX
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Everybody got that? It basically spells out every single crane that has been erected within a few miles of the airport. And it's part 1 of 2. And every flight crew operating into Sydney International Airport is expected to read and understand it. One alternative would be to simply say: Numerous cranes raised within x miles of airport up to a height of y feet. Flight crews are advised to excercise caution.
 
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And by spam, I mean stuff like this, from the ongoing NOTAM war between LGGG Athens and LTSB Istanbul.

A0390/25 - REF (A) GREEK NOTAM A0333/25 (050901 EUECYIYN FEB 2025).
REF (B) TURKISH NOTAMS A0548/25 AND A0506/25 (070830 AND 040848
EUECYIYN FEB 2025).
NAVIGATIONAL WARNING TO ALL CONCERNED:
THIS NOTAM IS ISSUED TO STATE THAT THE REF (B) TURKISH NOTAMS
A0548/25 AND A0506/25 (070830 AND 040848 EUECYIYN FEB 2025) ARE NULL
AND VOID SINCE THEY REFER TO TURKISH MILITARY ACTIVITIES WITHIN
ATHINAI FIR, WHERE THE ONLY COMPETENT AUTHORITY TO PROMULGATE NOTAMS
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE INTERNATIONAL RULES AND REGULATIONS IS THE
HELLENIC CAA THROUGH THE HELLENIC ATS AND AIS UNITS.
FURTHERMORE THE HELLENIC POSITIONS REGARDING THE SAID MILITARY
ACTIVITIES ANNOUNCED BY REF (B) TURKISH NOTAM A0506/25 HAVE ALREADY
BEEN EXPRESSED IN THE REF (A) GREEK NOTAM A0333/25, WHICH IS THE
ONLYVALID AND EFFECTIVE WITHIN ATHINAI FIR, AND THEY REMAIN
UNCHANGED. 07 FEB 18:00 2025 UNTIL 11 MAR 17:00 2025. CREATED: 07 FEB 11:44
2025
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Every flight crew passing through Greek and Turkish airspace (which, due to the closure of Russian and Ukrainian airspace to most flights, is a lot) has to read that Greece and Turkey disagree over who has SAR authority over a bit of airspace. And this has been going on for decades.
 
jeremyp said:
Serious question: what's hard about NOTAMs? It's basically just emails to pilots. I get that they need to be reliable, but the technology exists practically off the shelf for that.
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Back in 1990 there wasn't off the shelf technology for it. And once you have a system built and working reliably, it's very hard to get a buy-off for public spending on a new system just because a new system would be newer but just as good.

The problem is that the FAA's Philips DS714 systems and their integrated networks don't just manage NOTAMs. They also run the systems for weather and flight plans. This system handles between 1.5 and 2 million transactions per day, which is not much by today's standards but was astounding back then. When you file a flight plan, it goes into a 1990s-era mainframe that was meant to last 30 years and was custom-programmed for optimal performance on that hardware. In contrast I've got a bunch of Dell pizza-box servers in my garage waiting for a neighbor kid to come pick them up to use as Minecraft servers or whatever. They're obsolete in 10 years. That's the way we think now, but it's not the way we thought back then.

KDLarsen said:
There's a bit more to it than that. If anything, a lot of NOTAMs is arguably spam. A random selection from the current NOTAMS at Sydney International Airport:

Everybody got that?
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While the shorthand was once for reasons of bandwidth, it's kept around on the pretext that it's machine readable. The notion that you have to "resort" to a software parser to read it and render it in plain language isn't quite accurate. It's pretty much expected. And believe it or not, there is some resistance to moving to plain-text NOTAMs such as the ongoing feud between airports.

But the point you want to make is that NOTAMs are spam. Of the 18 active NOTAMs for my airport today, there are a couple having to do with out-of-service equipment, but a bunch of them are the standard warnings to climb smartly out of the northbound departure so that you don't hit the F-35s flying out of Hill AFB. And there's one I can't even make out. If your system combines messages that say, "The vending machines are out of order" with "Don't fly here or you will die," it's recipe for disaster. Yes, we need a revised technical solution, but it has to be a technical solution to a conceptual problem that has changed over 30 years.
 
Oh wow, turns out we completely missed the ball on this one. Y'see, when trump and elonia announced they would be fixing the NOTAM system, we thought it was the actual system.

As it turns out, it meant changing the meaning of NOTAM from "Notice to Air Missions" back to "Notice to Airmen". I wish I was kidding.
 
I have a question I hope JayUtah or someone else in the know could answer.

I read somewhere in the last few days that NOTAMs are also read by UAVs, weather balloons, etc. Are pilots (airmen) happy with drone pilots on the ground and science geeks being called airmen as well? Or was I misinformed?
 
MostlyHarmless said:
I have a question I hope JayUtah or someone else in the know could answer.

I read somewhere in the last few days that NOTAMs are also read by UAVs, weather balloons, etc. Are pilots (airmen) happy with drone pilots on the ground and science geeks being called airmen as well? Or was I misinformed?
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Notice To Air Minions.
 
KDLarsen said:
There's a bit more to it than that. If anything, a lot of NOTAMs is arguably spam. A random selection from the current NOTAMS at Sydney International Airport:

Everybody got that? It basically spells out every single crane that has been erected within a few miles of the airport. And it's part 1 of 2. And every flight crew operating into Sydney International Airport is expected to read and understand it. One alternative would be to simply say: Numerous cranes raised within x miles of airport up to a height of y feet. Flight crews are advised to excercise caution.
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But you are taking about the content, which is presumably written by a human being and is just a convention. I was talking about the delivery system. Where do these things have to be delivered? Is there special equipment on the aircraft to read them? For people who are not in the air, you could just put them in an RSS feed or on a web site.
 
jeremyp said:
...you could just put them in an RSS feed or on a web site.
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Yes, here's the official site: https://notams.aim.faa.gov/notamSearch/nsapp.html#/

Today, my airport (SLC) has 24 NOTAMs ranging from those telling me that ISL is out for runway 16R to the now-ubiquitous advisory that the airport is under construction. LAX has 79 active NOTAMs this morning, including notice of four cranes that may be considered obstructions.
 
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KDLarsen said:
There's a bit more to it than that. If anything, a lot of NOTAMs is arguably spam. A random selection from the current NOTAMS at Sydney International Airport:

Everybody got that? It basically spells out every single crane that has been erected within a few miles of the airport. And it's part 1 of 2. And every flight crew operating into Sydney International Airport is expected to read and understand it. One alternative would be to simply say: Numerous cranes raised within x miles of airport up to a height of y feet. Flight crews are advised to excercise caution.
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There are also standing NOTAMs.

When I was a service technician on a TACAN station at Whenuapai AFB in Auckland, we used to have a three hour maintenance period from 9am to 12pm on the first Tuesday of every month. Ours was a dual system (URN-25) which we would switch over at 9am. The associated NOTAM told pilots the TACAN could be unreliable for that period, and might go offline unexpectedly.
 
A few of the updates from NTSB :—

The helicopter crew may not have heard the "Pass behind the—" part of the "Pass behind the CRJ" order from ATC because the helicopter was keying its mic on that frequency at the same time.

The second request ATC request to the helicopter to confirm visual contact with the airliner was in response to an automated ATC conflict alert.

The airliner elevators were at maximum commanded nose-up 2 seconds before collision, the last DFDR data frame. The airliner was at 9º nose-up, 11º left roll, radar altitude 313 feet.

The helicopter radar altitude was 278 at the time of the collision and had been steady for 5 seconds prior. This is not necessarily the altitude indicated to the helicopter crew, which would have been a barometric altitude.

Data and CVR conversation indicate that the helicopter crew may not have coordinated their actual altitude—either 300 feet or 400 feet—as they headed toward the approach to DCA runway 33. 2 minutes prior to collision, the instructor pilot then reported an altitude of 300 and ordered the pilot flying to descend to 200 feet. The NTSB is attempting to reconcile conflicting altitude data from the helicopter sources. The FDR on the helicopter did not record the barometric altitude or the altimeter setting.
 
1/29 Crash in DC
1/31 Crash in Philly
2/5 Delta flight struck in Seattle
2/6 Crash in Alaska
2/10: Crash in Scottsdale
2/12: Military jet crash in San Diego
2/16: Crash in Covington, GA

7 crashes since Donald congratulated himself on improving flight safety by getting rid of Woke.
 
Andy_Ross said:
1/29 Crash in DC
1/31 Crash in Philly
2/5 Delta flight struck in Seattle
2/6 Crash in Alaska
2/10: Crash in Scottsdale
2/12: Military jet crash in San Diego
2/16: Crash in Covington, GA

7 crashes since Donald congratulated himself on improving flight safety by getting rid of Woke.
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" Give him time! He can't fix everything at once!" / MAGArat. :ROFLMAO:
 
Andy_Ross said:
1/29 Crash in DC
1/31 Crash in Philly
2/5 Delta flight struck in Seattle
2/6 Crash in Alaska
2/10: Crash in Scottsdale
2/12: Military jet crash in San Diego
2/16: Crash in Covington, GA

7 crashes since Donald congratulated himself on improving flight safety by getting rid of Woke.
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And now he and Mushie are getting rid of air traffic controllers.....
What a pair of idiots.
 
catsmate said:
And now he and Mushie are getting rid of air traffic controllers.....
What a pair of idiots.
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How many of the quoted accidents have been attributed to a shortage of air traffic controllers?

Besides, the information I saw did not involve actual controllers.

Facts are important no matter which side you are on.
 
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A team from SpaceX is visited the Air Traffic Control Command Centre in Virginia today to help overhaul the system in the wake of last month’s deadly air disaster in Washington, DC, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has announced.
 
Duffy statement on Air Traffic Control.

"Mayor Pete failed for four years to address the air traffic controller shortage and upgrade our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system. In less than four weeks, we have already begun the process and are engaging the smartest minds in the entire world.

Here’s the truth: the FAA alone has a staggering 45,000 employees. Less than 400 were let go, and they were all probationary, meaning they had been hired less than a year ago. Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.

Mayor Pete chose to use this amazing department—that is so critical to America’s success—as a slush fund for the green new scam and environmental justice nonsense. Not to mention that over 90% of the workforce under his leadership were working from home - including him. The building was empty!

When we finally get a full accounting of his mismanagement, I look forward to hearing from him.

In the meantime, I will not rest until I return the Department of Transportation and its incredible employees to its mission of efficiency and safety"
 
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