January 31Jan 31 33 minutes ago, ConferenceRoom said: Fuck, that's terrifying. There had to be some passengers that glanced over and saw it coming without the ability to do anything.
January 31Jan 31 4 minutes ago, jdhorn92 said: flight to Atlanta cancelled Lucky you. Hate their Battlestar Galactica shuttles
January 31Jan 31 Yeah that absolutely jives with what that track plot showed a few pages back: hunch is the helo pilot was too high for Track 4, which notes 200’ ceiling north of the bridge. Believe it’s happened before as a close call…are they unknowingly pulling back on the cyclic as they glance up for traffic? Or maybe it really was due to a brown trans epileptic dwarf in the tower.
January 31Jan 31 1 hour ago, Longhorn94 said: For someone who flies to DC monthly, are you suggesting it would be safer to fly out of Dulles? Meh.. I mean.. yeah. I think Dulles is the safer option. But not so much that will always outweigh the convenience. I’ve taken my kids to DC. We flew into DCA for it.
January 31Jan 31 I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen. It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft? Just tragic.
January 31Jan 31 13 minutes ago, Your Mom said: Meh.. I mean.. yeah. I think Dulles is the safer option. But not so much that will always outweigh the convenience. I’ve taken my kids to DC. We flew into DCA for it. It is not the flight into Dulles that kills you. It is the drive. Old DC joke I heard living there. 2 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said: I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen. It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft? Just tragic. Flying too high, saw wrong jet, missing 1 crew member. Fuck up. My quesiton is did not ATC see he was too high?
January 31Jan 31 14 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said: I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen. It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft? Just tragic. The short version of what most people suspect so far: the helicopter was flying higher than they were supposed to, they were possibly looking at an aircraft on final for runway 1 instead of the one on final for 33, they were possibly wearing NVGs which would’ve reduced their peripheral vision. The airplane pilots were doing a circle-to-land approach, it’s not that big a deal but it’s not something you do every week, at 300 feet they were probably pretty much only focused back and forth on airspeed and the end of the runway and not much else. I have avoided watching the videos but they were possibly still in a left banked turn making it harder to see traffic on the right.
January 31Jan 31 14 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said: My quesiton is did not ATC see he was too high? Probably would have if he wasn’t tasked with 2 people’s duties at the moment.
January 31Jan 31 4 minutes ago, Your Mom said: Probably would have if he wasn’t tasked with 2 people’s duties at the moment. I imagine that controller is going to need some pretty intense therapy. I can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like to be in his shoes right now.
January 31Jan 31 A 200 ft ceiling is pretty crazy. The UT tower is 300 ft high.Can you imagine flying a giant helicopter at night, wearing night vision goggles, less than 200 ft off a river that looks like a dark spot below, with bridges, cables and whatnot possibly in your way?
January 31Jan 31 8 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said: A 200 ft ceiling is pretty crazy. The UT tower is 300 ft high. Can you imagine flying a giant helicopter at night, wearing night vision goggles, less than 200 ft off a river that looks like a dark spot below, with bridges, cables and whatnot possibly in your way? It may be crazy, but those are military pilots, and presumably some of the best in the world. Violating that ceiling seems nuts.
January 31Jan 31 1 hour ago, Homercles said: Yeah that absolutely jives with what that track plot showed
January 31Jan 31 1 hour ago, Homercles said: Yeah that absolutely jives with what that track plot showed a few pages back: hunch is the helo pilot was too high for Track 4, which notes 200’ ceiling north of the bridge. Believe it’s happened before as a close call…are they unknowingly pulling back on the cyclic as they glance up for traffic? Or maybe it really was due to a brown trans epileptic dwarf in the tower. You were doing well but then went full stupid post at the end.
January 31Jan 31 53 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said: I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen. It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft? Just tragic. I don’t know shit about flying but my first thought after seeing that video was “holy shit…was he suicidal?!” How does that happen? Edited January 31Jan 31 by 4th&Five
January 31Jan 31 23 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said: A 200 ft ceiling is pretty crazy. The UT tower is 300 ft high. Can you imagine flying a giant helicopter at night, wearing night vision goggles, less than 200 ft off a river that looks like a dark spot below, with bridges, cables and whatnot possibly in your way? I live next to an air guard/occasional air force base, and while you get used to it, they will run stuff of varying stripes much lower overhead than I'd like. Much less cross commercial traffic though which probably helps.
January 31Jan 31 58 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said: My quesiton is did not ATC see he was too high? On Juan Browne's video, he showed what looked like an ATC screen reconstruction. The altitude of each aircraft was shown to the nearest 100 feet, and it looked like the helicopter was rising. So it seems that the time between 249 ft (when it would show 200) and 251 ft (when it would show 300), is not very much. Not enough to assess the situation and make a command to either aircraft before it's too late. This airspace just seems liket a very tight meshing of traffic that requires anyone who enters it to do exactly what they are supposed to or people can get killed. I would imagine this particular helicopter track (so-called track 4, I think) is done for a while.
January 31Jan 31 41 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said: A 200 ft ceiling is pretty crazy. The UT tower is 300 ft high. Can you imagine flying a giant helicopter at night, wearing night vision goggles, less than 200 ft off a river that looks like a dark spot below, with bridges, cables and whatnot possibly in your way? Look at the video. That was pretty clear night. Most likely Didn't even need their NODs, (with the newer white/gray ones are pretty damn good) plus you wear them so you can scan through the goggles and without, below. Should they have been even more vigilant because of the altitude flying at, but missing the right altitude, 200' vs 400'??? If that was the case, means they were missing other things too. Too many heads inside (?) and not at least one or more on a swivel looking out. Swiss cheese unfortunately lined up.
January 31Jan 31 3 hours ago, Evil Bill Obrien said: Was on a flight this past summer that had an aborted landing for what I suspect was this reason, was sitting window seat and got all the way over the runway threshold 50 feet maybe less off the ground when the engines spooled back up to TO/GA and we pulled up and outta there like a rocket, full on pressed into seat with G stuff. Got a nice tour around downtown Indianapolis while we got back in line to try again. Was a little frightening at first till I realized if the engines were responding with full ass thrust and pilots could perform that kind of maneuver still, we were probably ok. We have two go around thrust settings. A soft go around selects the go around mode and then uses a more sedate thrust setting for a calmer maneuver. A 2000 ft per minute climb is commanded for aircraft with the software update. The other involves selecting the FAT detent, Full Ass Thrust, with the thrust levers for a livelier return to altitude
January 31Jan 31 21 minutes ago, Bobby_Batronic said: The other involves selecting the FAT detent, Full Ass Thrust... I've used this detent on more occasions than I'd like to admit.
January 31Jan 31 6 minutes ago, smuggs said: I've used this detent on more occasions than I'd like to admit. Helps if your significant other is a biological 727.
January 31Jan 31 4 hours ago, HenryJames said: Dulles is a schlep. Yeah but they have the big moving boarding area tractor things! I always thought it was silly but my kids thought it was the coolest thing ever.
January 31Jan 31 3 hours ago, royiv said: I imagine that controller is going to need some pretty intense therapy. I can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like to be in his shoes right now. I was thinking this too. Can’t imagine.
January 31Jan 31 2 hours ago, Bobby_Batronic said: We have two go around thrust settings. A soft go around selects the go around mode and then uses a more sedate thrust setting for a calmer maneuver. A 2000 ft per minute climb is commanded for aircraft with the software update. The other involves selecting the FAT detent, Full Ass Thrust, with the thrust levers for a livelier return to altitude livelier lol. I've definitely experienced a lively go round a couple times.
February 1Feb 1 8 hours ago, BabaYaga said: Lucky you. Hate their Battlestar Galactica shuttles We got rid of the cylon voice a long time ago.
February 1Feb 1 On 1/30/2025 at 7:12 PM, Txzen said: As always, Blancolirio is a great source of information. Wow lots of great information but none of the common sense conclusions proposed in the press conferences.
February 1Feb 1 13 hours ago, jimmyjazz said: I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen. It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft? Just tragic. 13 hours ago, 4th&Five said: I don’t know shit about flying but my first thought after seeing that video was “holy shit…was he suicidal?!” How does that happen? If they were suicidal, well there were other people in the cockpit who could have stopped them plus there were probably other more interesting targets to take themselves out with, and they didn't move to adjust to make sure they would hit - that looked like a long track. If they just point it at the airplane, one of the other crew members might have noticed them homing in on the airplane, or ATC, or they might have waited until the last second to do it, so that they couldn't be stopped. It looked like somebody oblivious to the airplane. 12 hours ago, BillyGoatHill said: Look at the video. That was pretty clear night. Most likely Didn't even need their NODs, If you are normally flying low, one of them might have been wearing them just to keep an eye on the terrain/buildings/etc. 200 feet may seem high, but it's not. The ones I used, granted I wasn't a pilot or flying, were early 1990s era gear, and tunnel vision was an apt description, and I did drive with them and it was white knuckle the whole way. I hated them because depth perception was shit, and you could have people literally standing off to your 2 o'clock or 10 o'clock and not realize it. I know they have much fancier stuff now, but I bet it's still not the best for this situation, especially if they think they had eyes on what they thought was the proper aircraft while being in contact with ATC.
February 1Feb 1 21 hours ago, Hate said: You were doing well but then went full stupid post at the end. I see you’re still crying
February 1Feb 1 22 hours ago, Hate said: You were doing well but then went full stupid post at the end.
February 2Feb 2 On 1/31/2025 at 7:57 AM, Herbie Hancock said: The odds of being hit by a car while on a plane have to be pretty low….. But being hit by a plane while in a car... https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ohare-airport-collision-plane-aircraft-tug/
February 2Feb 2 1 minute ago, Captainant said: But being hit by a plane while in a car... https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ohare-airport-collision-plane-aircraft-tug/ ohare-airport-collision-plane-aircraft-tug/car kind of sound like a Lyle Lovett song in the making
February 2Feb 2 20 minutes ago, Captainant said: But being hit by a plane while in a car... delta 191
February 7Feb 7 Quote “we’re all gonna sit down and do a great computerized system for our control towers. brand new. not pieced together, obsolete, like it is, land-based. trying to hook up a land-based system to a satellite system. the first thing that some experts told me when this happened is you can’t hook up land to satellites and you can’t hook up satellites to land. it doesn't work. we spend billions of billions of dollars trying to renovate an old, broken system, instead of just saying cut it loose, and let's spend less money and build a great system done by two or three companies, very good companies, specialists, that’s all it is. they used 39 companies. that means that 39 different hookups have to happen. and I don’t know how many people of you are good in terms of all of the kinds of things necessary for that. and it’s very complex stuff. but when you have 39 different companies working on hooking up different cities at different people. you need one company. with one set of equipment. and there are some countries that have unbelievable air controller systems. and they would’ve, bells would’ve gone off when that helicopter literally even hit the same height. because it traveled a long distance before it hit. It was just like, just wouldn't stop. follow the line. but bells and whistles would’ve gone off. they have ’em where it actually could virtually turn the thing around. but would’ve just never happened if we had the right equipment. and one of things that’s gonna be, I’m gonna speaking to John and to Mike and to Chuck and everybody, we have to get together and just as a single bill just pass where we get the best control system. when I land in my plane, privately, I use a system from another country because my captain tells me, I’m landing in New York and I’m using a sy— I won’t tell you what country, but I use a system from another country because the captain says ‘this thing is so bad, it's so obsolete. and we can’t have that.”
February 7Feb 7 2 minutes ago, Beau Vine said: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-air-traffic-control-system-upgrade-bill-congress/
February 7Feb 7 20 minutes ago, Captainant said: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-air-traffic-control-system-upgrade-bill-congress/ Quote "So we're gonna have the best system and a lot of money, but it's not that much money, and it'll happen fast, and it'll be done by total professionals, and when it's done, you're not going to have accidents," he added. "They're virtually not possible to have."
February 7Feb 7 2 hours ago, Beau Vine said: 2 hours ago, Beau Vine said: but it's not that much money
February 7Feb 7 They’ve been talking about modernizing system for at least 20 years. The money always finds its way somewhere else. I’m sure they have the money for it now, until they don’t when the next flavor of the month issue comes along. If they started training as many air traffic controllers as they could right now, it would still be many years before the ATC system was fully staffed.
February 8Feb 8 6 hours ago, Captainant said: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-air-traffic-control-system-upgrade-bill-congress/ The president said he and congressional leaders will sit down and "do a great computerized system for our control towers, brand new"
February 8Feb 8 Our air traffic control system clearly needs to be on the blockchain. And surely we could get rid of those expensive controllers and just farm it out to people working from home on the internet, kind of open source. We can add cameras to all of the planes and towers and people on the internet will be able to see everything.
February 8Feb 8 I'm sure elmo wants a piece of a privatized ATC, but he's clearly never been a user of one. Try operating in Nav Canada for a peek into inefficient incompetence. But at least they're polite in that Canadian way.
February 8Feb 8 15 hours ago, atomheartbevo said: Our air traffic control system clearly needs to be on the blockchain. And surely we could get rid of those expensive controllers and just farm it out to people working from home on the internet, kind of open source. We can add cameras to all of the planes and towers and people on the internet will be able to see everything. Yep, flight radar 24 subscriptions. Pay them by the safe landing.
February 12Feb 12 F/A 18 just crashed a couple hundred yards from me into the San Diego Bay. Pilots ejected, no damage to anything onshore. Just trying to keep jet fuel away from the Naval dolphin pens that the jet missed by about 50 feet.
February 12Feb 12 https://news.usni.org/2025/02/12/breaking-navy-growler-crashes-off-coast-of-san-diego-crew-ejects-and-recovered
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