cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17843817
Important context:
- January 20: FAA director fired
- January 21: Air Traffic Controller hiring frozen
- January 22: Aviation Safety Advisory Committee disbanded
- January 28: Buyout/retirement demand sent to existing employees
- January 29: First American mid-air collision in 16 years
Ironic that it happened at the “Ronald Reagan” airport, named after the guy who once fired thousands of air traffic controllers at once.
You’ve got massively incompetent idiots whose only goal is to hurt people and steal money in control of these things now. Thanks non-voters!
We’ll be lucky if we all make it to 2029 without another million deaths due to incompetence. This isn’t a good sign.
Being objective, I dont see how this one is a political failing… Trumps dumb administration decisions didn’t cause this… it looks like pilot error from the helicopter pilot… it’s an accident and a tragedy nothing else.
“The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport’s vicinity Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways. Those jobs typically are assigned to two controllers, rather than one.”
Staffing shortages directly exacerbated by Trumps actions led to an unsafe situation that would not have happened if Trump were not president.
It’s like where theres a fire at a school and someone tries to use a fire extinguisher, but its empty and was never recharged, so the school burns down and 67 people died. Then you find out the new mayor had disbanded and re-foremed the fire department, which usually is in charge of re-charging extinguishers at the school, but the chaos the department went through caused that task to be overlooked.
The mayor didn’t start the fire. But his fucktarded short sighted actions created the scenario that got those 67 people killed.
But if the controller gave the correct instructions, and they were acknowledged and then ignored, having two controllers doesn’t prevent the accident. It prevents other accidents.
The focus should be on military helicopter pilot competence and training.
It appears at the moment that the instructions were acknowledged and that the helicopter pilots were mistaken about which plane they were avoiding, not that they ignored instructions.
And regardless, the purpose of an air traffic controller is to monitor traffic continuously. Having the prescribed number of atcs would have made space for the tower to see that the helicopter was on a collision course and act to avoid it.
Thanks. I see what you mean. And also OP’s addition.
One more controller on duty means they can spot instructions not being followed instead of having to pay attention to something else. Both are important to look at, as an event like this is not because one person messed up; it’s because multiple people were not able to spot the problem before it turned deadly
You are seeing people angry about his ridiculous comments about how this was DEI. Which is justified anger.
I agree that going straight to DEI without knowing anything about the “merits” of the responsible parties is just plain stupid. But we saw Trump do a lot of stupid things his first term, and this is no surprise.
I also agree that firing many federal workers and leaving agencies leaderless will lead to much pain and suffering.
It’s just in this case, the dumb moves with the FAA are probably not linked to the crash. At a minimum we should wait for better info. Criticize the bad moves for other reasons.
Oh jesus fucking christ… admit that your stupid fucking orange god is at fault, already.
I fucking hate that Cheeto but he did ask a valid question and other people did respond with information that helped shaped and change that understanding, not a glib pointless comment like yours.
Thank you, fellow orange god worshipper.
Edit: Apparently the sarcastic end to that was not obvious.
You don’t want to create situations where pilot error causes loss of multiple aircraft. They did it in part because air traffic control had one person doing two jobs. Doing that is a political decision in the name of “efficiency”
Leaving out emotion and reading what has been reported has lead me to believe that it was helicopter pilot’s fault. What Trump is doing to the FAA is abhorrent and it will cause issues going forward, but I don’t see his actions having caused this issue. The air traffic controller DID their job and tried to cofirm that the blackhawk go behind the CBJ. The pilot fucked up.
This time.
