American Airlines Crash

[*bfine32*]

As a frequent flier who has flown in/out of DC a few times this is sobering.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dc-plane-crash-live-updates-030900358.html

Prayers to the family and hoping for the best

[Goalpost]

More than likely, this was unsurvivable.

[basballguy]

I fly roughly 40 RT flights a year on American. Never in the American Eagle planes like this one though. Looks to be totally preventable.

The airspace around DCA is an absolute shit show. As I understand it, military aircraft’s like this helicopter are supposed to stay over the river or something and veered off path I guess? Such a tragedy.

[XenoMorph]

absolutely tragic

[masonbengals fan]

Bad deal

[jfkbengals]

(01-30-2025, 11:32 AM)basballguy Wrote: I fly roughly 40 RT flights a year on American. Never in the American Eagle planes like this one though. Looks to be totally preventable.

The airspace around DCA is an absolute shit show. As I understand it, military aircraft’s like this helicopter are supposed to stay over the river or something and veered off path I guess? Such a tragedy.

The latest thing I’ve seen states the helicopter was above the permitted ceiling of 200 feet.

[kalibengal]

(01-30-2025, 02:38 PM)jfkbengals Wrote: The latest thing I’ve seen states the helicopter was above the permitted ceiling of 200 feet.

new admin fired a ton of people last week, so not surprising

[Goalpost]

Welp. And more problems surface.

The very night before...a plane did a 'go around' instead of landing because of... a helicopter.

Also, 'normal' staffing in the control tower is 30, and yet there were only 19 people working the night of the crash.

[cinci4life]

Sadly this is local. A student from Cedarville University in Dayton was on the plane and presumed dead. She was coming back from Wichita KS after attending her grandfathers funeral.

https://www.whio.com/news/local/student-local-university-among-those-killed-dc-plane-crash/K2Q3GVUGCZGJVM5WWARZFWTAU4/

[*bfine32*]

(01-30-2025, 09:17 PM)cinci4life Wrote: Sadly this is local. A student from Cedarville University in Dayton was on the plane and presumed dead. She was coming back from Wichita KS after attending her grandfathers funeral.

https://www.whio.com/news/local/student-local-university-among-those-killed-dc-plane-crash/K2Q3GVUGCZGJVM5WWARZFWTAU4/

Tragic, also reported that there were members of the USA Figure Skating Team and family. 

The last time I was at Reagan I had to spend the night in a chair. Flight kept getting pushed and then we finally loaded. We spent a lot of time on the ground and finally were 2nd in line for takeoff, when the engines shutoff. The crew had reached their max hours for the day.

Took us back to the terminal and unloaded us and were told to standby while they "rounded up" a new crew. After a couple more delays around 11:30 PM they said we'd have to wait for the original crew to get their "crew rest" and we'd takeoff at 6 AM the next day. 

Of course everything in that shithole Airport closed down around 11:00 PM

[BFritz21]

Amazing with radar and everything now that they don't have some alert system on the plane and helicopter to alert if there's another aircraft in the area, or at least in the path of flight.

Or every aircraft should have a tracker or something so other aircrafts know when there's another one nearby.

Smells fishy that something like this could happen in this day and age,

[*Nate (formerly eliminate08)*]

Air Traffic Control needs to be on their game and they clearly weren't and they were understaffed on top of it it seems.

Needs to change. Just saw another plane went down in Philly and it was going down like a missile right after take off, so not ATC's fault on this one.

[reuben.ahmed]

"At the time of the collision, one air traffic controller at Reagan was overseeing both helicopters and planes, an air traffic control source told CNN. Though the jobs are typically handled by two people, the source said having one person handle both isn’t uncommon.

Still, a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report found that staffing at the airport’s traffic control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the New York Times reported Thursday. That corresponds with an issue highlighted in one of the previous near-miss reports from 2022, in which a controller said that there wasn’t enough staffing at the airport tower."

If you're going to fire people, at least replace them with AI.

[FormerlyBengalRugby]

(02-03-2025, 06:48 PM)reuben.ahmed Wrote: "At the time of the collision, one air traffic controller at Reagan was overseeing both helicopters and planes, an air traffic control source told CNN. Though the jobs are typically handled by two people, the source said having one person handle both isn’t uncommon.

Still, a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report found that staffing at the airport’s traffic control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the New York Times reported Thursday. That corresponds with an issue highlighted in one of the previous near-miss reports from 2022, in which a controller said that there wasn’t enough staffing at the airport tower."

If you're going to fire people, at least replace them with AI.

Reduce the traffic in the airspace to allowable levels based on the number of air traffic controllers currently on staff.

Those protocols are in place for a reason, and there needs to be serious ramifications for breaking them.

I have read that up to 90$ or ATC facilities are under staffed, and they have fallen behind in tech as well as. Might be more to the story that will be uncovered as well in the weeks to come?

[Stewy]

(01-31-2025, 01:04 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: Amazing with radar and everything now that they don't have some alert system on the plane and helicopter to alert if there's another aircraft in the area, or at least in the path of flight.

Or every aircraft should have a tracker or something so other aircrafts know when there's another one nearby.

Smells fishy that something like this could happen in this day and age,

There is a universal system that monitors local traffic.  One aircraft talks to another outside of Air Traffic Control.  If two aircraft get too close, the system tells one pilot to go one direction and the other to go the other.  It is essentially foolproof......however it is deactivated below 900 feet to account for false positives upon runway approach.

[BFritz21]

(02-03-2025, 08:27 PM)Stewy Wrote: There is a universal system that monitors local traffic.  One aircraft talks to another outside of Air Traffic Control.  If two aircraft get too close, the system tells one pilot to go one direction and the other to go the other.  It is essentially foolproof......however it is deactivated below 900 feet to account for false positives upon runway approach.

Makes sense but there should obviously be something for below 90 feet to prevent things like this from happening.