After last night’s horrific collision of an American Eagle jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, there’s been a rush to pushing pet agendas.
- Some people want to shut down Washington’s National airport, or curtail flights. This is especially true for those who were against adding a mere 5 new slots there as part of FAA Reauthorization (flights that haven’t started yet, by the way). It’s at least as good a question what purpose having so many military aircraft operating inside the approach path of that airport serves.
- Others (on the left) are quick to blame President Trump, because the FAA Administrator chose not to serve into Trump’s second term and – a mere 10 days into the new administration – there’s not yet a new, permanent, Senate-confirmed leader at the agency.
- While a pet issue on the right points to diversity hiring of air traffic controllers as an issue, when there are much bigger issues with air traffic control in the U.S. and the individuals hired by the FAA were qualified.
Mostly, though, we don’t have a sufficient understanding of the causes of the incident yet to jump on a pet horse. Be very skeptical of anyone pushing solutions of laying blame at this stages.
It’s worth laying out further the ‘diversity hiring’ angle to this discussion, because as I wrote a year ago, every time we wind up talking about DEI and aviation, we get stupider.
- There is an issue here
- But it’s not what most people think that it is
The Major Air Traffic Control Problem Is Technology And Bad Regulation
U.S. air traffic control is antiquated. They’ve done a terrible job managing technology upgrades for several decades. Airspace is congested in the Northeast, so many processes are manual, and they don’t have enough people to manage the manual process. There are strategies to address this, but those mostly get rejected (like remote towers). And there are now hundreds of near-collisions per year.
Unlike in much of the world, the federal government doesn’t just regulate air traffic control it performs the service itself. That means they regulate themselves. Plus, they’re captive to annual congressional appropriations cycles which makes capital investment difficult.
FAA air traffic control still uses paper flight strips. They’ve been trying to go electronic since 1983. And they won’t get most of the way even this decade, as transportation researcher Bob Poole notes:
On July 17, the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report on the slow progress of FAA’s program to equip U.S. airport control towers with electronic flight strips (to replace traditional paper flight strips physically handed from one controller to another). The bad news is that instead of only 89 towers scheduled to receive this improvement by 2028, there will now be only 49 towers equipped by 2029.
Wait until you explain paper flight strips!https://t.co/fyU7aSILWr pic.twitter.com/gOBIHME3oK
— gary leff (@garyleff) July 2, 2023
The FAA set out a plan in 1983 “to equip 150 to 250 airport control towers by 2000.” They went way over budget and didn’t accomplish much. Most recently, a “contract with Lockheed-Martin (now Leidos) was to equip 89 towers with TFDM by 2028.” That’s been scaled back to 49 towers, but “only 27 of them will get the full version that includes surface management functions, while the other 22 will get only the electronic flight strips.”
They’ve cut airports including Honolulu, New Orleans, San Juan, Anchorage, Burbank, Hartford, Ontario, Orange County and Sacramento among others.
Meanwhile, all of Nav Canada facilities went electronic 15 years ago (and all control towers and TRACONs even earlier). Their solution is used in Australia, Italy, the U.K. and Dubai. We could license the Canadian solution, or other commercial ones, but instead the FAA has been working on contracting for their own solution since three years before the Beastie Boys were fighting for your right to party.
In addition to an ability to make capital investment decisions as easily as NavCanada, FAA’s procurement systems are byzantine and ineffective.
Look at NavCanada. How many primary radar types do they have for terminal surveillance? One. How many does FAA have? Three, dating back to the 1980s. The manufacturers of two of them are out of business. FAA has four types of secondary/beacon radars. NavCanada does a wholesale replacement, launching a project at the end of life to replace them all at once. NavCanada has one primary switch for all systems: tower, approach, and en-route. One backup switch for all. They just did a replacement tender for them all…FAA is never a single buy. All are indefinite quantity contracts. So suppliers deliver 10 to 20 systems a year.
We don’t have enough people given the limited technology, and better technology would promote safety. FAA has chosen not to use technology, as well, that would limit the need for more staff at particular facilities. And since FAA regulates itself, there’s little accountability. While some prefer a NavCanada model, it would be an improvement even to split out regulation and standard-setting from service provision into different agencies.
So What’s The Diversity Hiring Issue?
During the Obama administration, the FAA moved to ‘off the street’ hiring with diversity as a criteria, passing over graduates of FAA-approved university air traffic control programs.
- The FAA launched the Collegiate Training Initiative in 1997, working with colleges and universities to offer air traffic control degrees, and making their graduates the primary source for hiring controllers. This trumped the previous requirement of a high school degree and three years of (unrelated) work experience.
- In 2005 the FAA Inspector General recommended adding coursework to these schools to reduce training time at the FAA’s academy. The FAA didn’t do this, and Congress directed a study of the move in agency’s 2012 reauthorization.
- Instead, during the Obama administration, the FAA started an Air Traffic Controller Recruitment Campaign which bypassed graduates. A decision made by the FAA, and not by the Air Traffic Organization, meant that both high school graduates and those with air traffic control degrees had to apply through the same program and pass both the standard aptitude test for controllers and a biographical test.
This was done for diversity. The people hired still were qualified. But they were less experienced, when the FAA Inspector General was calling for greater experience prior to application (in part because the FAA’s own training academy lacked sufficient spaces to fully train controllers to meet demand given technology in use). Note that leaving behind qualified applicants from Collegiate Training isn’t why we don’t have more controllers, since the FAA doesn’t have enough spots to train people.
Facing pressure to diversify an overwhelmingly white workforce, the FAA began using a biographical test as a first screen of candidates. Minority candidates were fed “buzz words” to bump their resumes up to top priority. Apparently saying your worst subject in school was science served as a golden ticket. Correct answers to the take-home biographical questionnaire were given in their entirety. These questionnaires were later banned. This was dumb, but it’s not the problem.
Pinning Last Night’s Disaster On Diversity Hiring Is Unsupportable
First, we don’t have enough information to explain what happened to the American Eagle CRJ-700 and the Sikorsky helicopter. We have some limited information, that supports theories which are then worth investigating, but we can’t yet offer conclusions.
Second, there’s not any indication that diversity hiring at the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization has led to unqualified controllers. Controllers don’t work with the best equipment possible, under the best standards and conditions possible, and the FAA doesn’t have enough throughput to train sufficient numbers of controllers to meet staffing needs given current technology.
Alternative hiring paths wouldn’t change that, even if you’re reasonably outraged by FAA hiring policies started under Administrator Michael Huerta the second Obama administration who sought to “transform the (FAA) into a more diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects, understands, and relates to the diverse customers” it serves.
They have been working on improving the ATC system since at least the 1980’s. Too hard. Too political. Too bureaucratic.
I just listened to tRump’s sympathy speech. What an insult to everyone. Accusing the FAA is hiring the mentally disabled as air traffic controllers is a blatant lie.
Isn’t it time to stop pandering to someone that lies to inflame?
I don’t care what party anyone is, the BS needs to stop.
It was dark, lots of lights in the area, someone messed up, maybe altimeter settings, missed visuals or some combination, that’s why we do accident investigations.
I really feel for everyone involved.
give it a rest, Gary. Seriously.
Not a think you wrote about here was a contributing factor to this accident.
intense military aviation activity in civilian airspace with both operating under very different procedures and technology WILL be shone to be the issue.
I just listened the President’s press briefing. It’s a shame He had to ‘not let this tragedy go to waste’ as they say. There was an option for Him to unite the country, but instead, He went with blaming the previous administration and the ‘DEI’ people–that is not what caused this tragedy. Let the NTSB genuinely investigate and share their findings.
@Tim Dunn: Did you not catch that the whole article is about what *ISN’T* a contributing factor?
And why the things people are claiming are a factor definitely are not?
So ‘they qualified’ but…. ‘they had less experience’…… That means they were LESS qualified. Don’t try to talk this right, They’re hiring people LESS qualified. This no doubt has added to this disaster and more to come.
Why not partially close DCA? Make it into a really niche airport by only allowing shuttle flights to LGA or a 499 mile perimeter? IAD is fine. Or allow 10 landing slots per hour, 120 per day.
…Yes, a 500 mile perimeter and allow only 10 landing slots per hour, which could be raised if the number of gates at Dallas Love Field is increased by more than 10 gates.
@derek
That’s overkill. No need to shutdown DCA indefinitely. DCA is one of the most convenient airports for the DC, Arlington area. Unless you can easily hop on the Acela, flying into there really is far superior to IAD or BWI. Gotta say, other than LGA, there isn’t a better ‘approach’ for aviation geeks than DCA in the USA, in my opinion.
because the volume of traffic isn’t the issue, derek.
If you happened to be in the that one flight that was permitted when the other pieces that contributed to this accident didn’t line up as they should, it doesn’t matter how few flights operate.
The problem is that military and civilian aircraft operate in far too close proximity in the DC area including on the very doorstep of DCA and they do so with very different procedures and technology.
it is abundantly clear THAT is the reason or major contributing factor(s) for the accident and it needs to end.
rehashing Gary’s one million hobby horses only to say “it doesn’t matter” is hardly what is needed right now.
That press conference was just vile. The suggestion that DEI might have anything to do with this is irresponsible. And if you’re MAGA, go ahead and try to defend that statement.
@Tim Dunn – You’re a smart person but your confidence here is likely misplaced. The instructions from ATC to the helo were pretty clear and they simply were not followed. I could be wrong, but my own prediction is that this is going to boil down to a very simple matter of pilot error far more than any other single factor.
“transform the (FAA) into a more diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects, understands, and relates to the diverse customers” it serves.
I’m honestly trying to understand what this even means. When it comes to aviation safety, in what sense are its customers diverse? I’m pretty sure everyone, regardless of race, sex, creed, or national origin, shares a common belief that airplanes should take off and land safely. What else is there to understand?
Too much military traffic and trump admiration love their helicopter rides
Shut down all vip flights in the area
Why did the controller allow a helo next to an active runway, in Class B airspace to boot.
It’s early and we don’t have all the facts, but that one seems strange.
Mike
Yes, it was undoubtedly pilot error but the clarity of ATC instructions to the helicopter might have been part of the problem – but ATC addressed the helicopter the way they address VFR pilots, military or not.
I think (and we all can do that) that the issue is probably pilot error but the root cause is that the military is allowed to operate VFR helicopter operations so close to IFR commercial operations and use very different technologies.
the problem is that two very different systems for aviation exist in such a tight amount of space. There should be a larger margin for error and for one common set of rules and control to apply to all traffic.
as for the politics, Trump in his statements and others in the military including Hegseth do not seem to be afraid of allowing the government to be blamed even if Trump threw in some of the same stupid comments that Gary threw in here – only to say they aren’t relevant.
This should not have happened and it justifiably should result in a top to bottom reassessment of how aviation operates around DC and at DCA – and I can’t help but believe that it is the military that is going to have to do the changing and not those that propose impacting commercial aviation or the operation of DCA as a commercial airport.
It was undoubtedly pilot error but the clarity of ATC instructions to the helicopter might have been part of the problem – but ATC addressed the helicopter the way they address VFR pilots, military or not. I think (and we all can do that) that the issue is probably pilot error but the root cause is that the military is allowed to operate VFR helicopter operations so close to IFR commercial operations and use very different technologies. the problem is that two very different systems for aviation exist in such a tight amount of space. There should be a larger margin for error and for one common set of rules and control to apply to all traffic.
This should not have happened and it justifiably should result in a top to bottom reassessment of how aviation operates around DC and at DCA – and I can’t help but believe that it is the military that is going to have to do the changing and not those that propose impacting commercial aviation or the operation of DCA as a commercial airport.
Saying you’re a racist without saying you’re a racist: blame DEI. That too with the victims of the tragedy being an afterthought for him.
Having flown thousands of times to/from DCA and having years of having a view of the military helicopters flying down the Potomac and around DC/VA along with the planes landing at DCA, it’s long been in the back of my mind that a plane and helicopter collision would happen along the Potomac. But I had always presumed for the VIP military choppers’ movements they would sort of restrict the airspace temporarily but free them up when they were without VIPs. Never really cared to look into that either way.
I am guessing the helicopter crew got confused over the plane situation and not realizing there may have been two planes to consider and not just the one they may have already visually cleared and thought was cleared.
They shut down DCA after 9/11, so the feds certainly don’t necessarily prioritize commercial traffic operations over VIP interest. It was a bad month or so for me when it was shutdown and no one new when or if ever we would see it reopen.
Seems like multiple factors here – blaming ATC is very premature, especially.if you look at the video.
But since it happened on Congress’ doorstep, perhaps now they will stop letting the ATC modernization flounder in a lack of accountability.
@Ren… “… They’re hiring people LESS qualified. This no doubt has added to this disaster and more to come.” What was the experience level of the controllers in the tower? You don’t know. How can you lay the blame on that? Pure speculation.
In the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes: ” It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
I’m guessing from the comments that not a lot are from pilots that have flown on severe clear winter nights with crisp, clear city lights being the background. That’s not to excuse low level VFR traffic being mixed with IFR traffic. That, in my opinion, is seldom a good idea, especially at night and especially in congested airspace.
Break one link in the accident chain and most can be avoided. My condolences to all those involved.
@Mikey B is correct. ‘Vile’, indeed. This still appears to have been an simply accident–Not ‘DEI.’
I cannot help but recall in the literal hours after the Twin Towers fell in 2001 when He went on TV to brag that His building, 40 Wall Street, had become the tallest building in NYC (it wasn’t), and that He heard Muslims in NJ cheering (they weren’t). New Yorkers have known not to trust Him.
A good leader would give us the facts, reassure the public and the world that the country is doing everything it can to make things right, then actually provide the resources to see that through.
That did not happen here, or following the 2020 election (we got the J6 ‘coup’ attempt), or during the pandemic (hundreds of thousands of preventable excess deaths).
We’re lucky we weren’t onboard last night–but it could have been any of us. There are pilots, crews, and frequent flyers who comment regularly on VFTW. What if all the sudden our dear friend @AndyS no longer graced us with his comments–I’d miss him, a little.
Hopefully this is a one-off, not a ‘new normal’–either way, it’s a wake-up call. When we villainize the civil servants that dedicate their lives to our safety, bad things seem to happen. We cannot blame or de-regulate our way out of this. He will need to actually govern and fix stuff, for once.
@GUwonder – You and I rarely agree but I think you hit is exactly right here. First of all it was going to happen at some point (sorry but was inevitable) given the congestion and mix of military and commercial aircraft (just like a collision over LA was inevitable before it happened a few years ago). No one wants to be right in predicting an air disaster but, given the circumstances, it was simply a matter of when, not if, it would happen. I’m not sure advanced technology or better staffing/training would have helped.
Understand the helicopter was flying a night recertification flight. The pilots were likely wearing night vision goggles (it has been confirmed they were on board) which further restricted their vision. When ATF said to watch the ATR and go behind them it is reasonable they picked up the wrong plane that was climbing, not landing, if you saw the video. Also the ATR likely couldn’t see much below them so this happened with no warning to them (only saving grace is most, of not all, on board went instantly and didn’t suffer).
A question I have for any pilots on here – wouldn’t the collision warning system on the ATR have alerted? Maybe no time for any action, especially that low to the ground, but seems that could have at least helped to some extent. I’m sure NTSB will look into any failures on the part of avoidance systems, flight planning for the helicopter, controller instructions or pilot error. Likely a combination of these things but it looks, at least from the video, that AA has no liability here (although I’m sure they will be sued) as it was on a glide path to land and the helicopter just flew into them.
“since three years before the Beastie Boys were fighting for your right to party.” Hahaha
…absolutely no way is there any indication that DEI was the cause of this at this point. . Way too soon for that kind of speculation. If there is any speculation to be made it should factor in that ATC got an affirmative from the Blackhawk to “see and avoid” PSA who was doing exactly what he should be doing and had no way of preventing this. Both ATC and the PSA crew appeared to be doing exactly what the situation called for. That leaves only the Blackhawk who made a mistake, or…..was a victim of his night flying googles malfunctioning, or an optical illusion or even a sudden medical emergency. We don’t know.
Tim Dunns point about military aircraft too close to civilian traffic is a valid one. DCA is a very tight corridor that you have to basically weave through prohibited airspace to get to, that will likely be looked at.
The sad thing is I had had high hopes for the Presidents press briefing as he started out…..but he quickly politicized it to the extreme and my concern is this investigation is going to be heavily focused on politics and pleasing the President more than learning something from it.
AC, the GPWS is inhibited for landing, so at 300′ he wouldn’t have a warning.
This is in regards to Trump pointing fingers at Biden and DEI, Vance, Hegseth pointing fingers at the previous politicians and so on…May I say this clearly and distinctly,,,,
Out of respect for those who died – KEEP YOUR TRAPS SHUT!! The ONLY thing that is known for sure is a commercial jet and an Army helicopter collided last night and no one survived! That’s it….thats the only thing ANYONE knows for sure!
Let the experts get in and do their job and find out exactly what went wrong so it can be fixed. Until then keep your blame game to yourself.
Picard
Let’s be for real, this area (DC) and many like it ( New York – NJ area, Dallas Fortworth, Atlanta, Chicago) they are all operating on the “EDGE”.
The air traffic is crazy and things are certain to go wrong. Don’t blame the pilots and controllers, they are doing there best.
Blame the system and the people who run it.
AC. ATR and ATF? Huh?
TCAS resolution advisories are inhibited down low, around 1000 feet AGL.
@johnW
Could you imagine if this happened under President Biden’s watch?
For his sake and ours, I’m honestly glad he did not have to put up with this. It would have still been an horrible accident, regardless, but right-wing media would have 24/7 blaming ‘woke’ Democrats and Secretary Buttigieg until they all resign.
Even if it had been President Bush, he’d have simply given the facts, expressed condolences, stated there would be an investigation, and ended the press conference with ‘now, watch this drive’ *hits a hole in one*
JohnW. Do you mean TCAS? GPWS is a different system altogether.
The investigation needs to play out and stop saying Donald Trump. Nothing Trump could have done in one week would have “fixed” anything that needed to be “fixed.” Is it DEI? No way to know but it might be. Too many people here just blabbering without facts.
Let’s recap:
1. Elon fires the head of the FAA.
2. Elon then threatens to fire air traffic controller as part of a government wide purge.
3. Plane crashes.
DEI has nothing to do with this crash. It’s the pathological liar in the white house trying to distract people from his maneuvers to get his agenda thru. DON’T LISTEN TO him. In time, the NTSB will figure out the causes of this tragedy. BTW, the USA has not suffered a hull loss with fatalities since the Colgan Air flight in Buffalo, NY in 2009.
@charlie
‘Louder, for the people in the back!’
Seriously, though, it was just an accident–Helo pilot error, probably. Let them investigate.
Though, if you want a blame-game ‘thunderdome,’ we can do that, too. After all, Mel ‘Passion of the Christ’ Gibson did say, ‘Daddy’s home, and he’s taking off his belt.’ So, we must all deserve a beating.
Immediate politicization of any tragedy as your initial response is sad for every one of us, whatever your political associations. Especially for those who lost loved ones and friends. It will only serve to delay changes or worse, implement the wrong changes, delaying the real fix even longer. Instead of a Mars shot or going to the Moon, maybe we should invest in all the technology and training upgrades here on earth to make our skies safer. Including better integration of domestic civilian-military flight ops. Politics aside, if reasonable solutions exist, given the state of affairs, those should be given priority. And perhaps at some point AI can mitigate personnel shortages, though not without its own set of challenges. This one-off accident is tragic. Until I read the comments of those on this discussion, I was ready to get back on a plane. Now, with all the enumerated challenges other learned readers have posted, including the number of near-misses, I am going to make sure my life insurance policies are paid up until these overhauls are implemented.
Tim, yes, thanks! And right you are 1990. This shouldn’t be a political issue at all. Aviation is incredibly safe when you think of the complexity of what we take for granted….1000’s and 1000’s of daily flights operate without a problem all over the world. All accidents are always a very rare confluence of circumstances. This needs to be learned from and if politics effect this investigation it will suffer.
NTSB press briefing right now: ATC was understaffed that night.
Hold on everyone—more turbulence!
Robert Isom, AA CEO (but you all already knew them), says he’s relying on the NTSB as the ‘sole source of truth’ following the incident–that’s going to upset our king, but probably a good idea.
Fox News reporting: The co-pilot (of the military helicopter)… “was a female who had 500 hours flying experience.” @AndyS, since you’re the ‘DEI’ expert, does this mean ‘case closed’ to you?
1. Horrible tragedy. The shock and grief of (likely) thousands of people right now is hard to imagine.
2. Everything Trump says and does is a lesson in leadership…i.e. how not to be a leader. Going out in public as the commander-in-chief without an iota of information on the causes of a tragic accident and blaming DEI fits the sociopath playbook to a tee.
Signing off from the “radical center.”
I find it ironic that a midair collision occurs at an airport named after a President that destroyed the air traffic control system. It has never recovered.
Both aircraft were talking to ATC. They were operating under visual separation but a controller should have seen it coming anyway.
@Jay Lasner
If you see Gary’s first post on this incident, from earlier today, not this one, we (who frequent this blog) did our best to not get political–you know, wait for the facts–it was really only after the President blamed ‘DEI’ (instead of actually leading us) that this ‘became’ political. It is indeed sad.
You’re fine to fly again, but if you wanna take a break, that’s alright, too. You do you.
Speaking of life insurance, you’d better read up on that fine print, otherwise your beneficiaries may be disappointed. Remember, those insurance companies are talented at denying claims. of course, it really depends which state you reside in since they write those specific laws. Let’s hope you (and them) don’t need it.
@ MAGA morons — Stop being so stupid. You are the ones to blame for this total idiot POTUS.
Well said Gary.
The AA flight was on a strait in approach and asked to circle to 33. Circling approaches are dangerous as you bank hard and need to be stabilized for landing at a very low altitude. It is crazy they have this at DCA with such a short runway. DCA,SNA, SAN, and Burbank should be GA only
ATC should of told the helo to climb, descend, alter course, or put in a holding pattern since it was on collision course. They should not of said do you see the CRJ
The left blamed Trump for this accident minutes after it happened but are upset when he pushes back.
@gene and @Gene
You guys should join the FAA or ATC and help them out, you know, since you knew better.