sherpa

Good find. I saw it and couldn't believe it. Insanity. Buttigieg madness, among many other fronts.

While their hiring practices are not related this tragedy, it is completely known throughout the FAA and the airline industry that the FAA has a serious issue with their quota system of hiring and promotion. Their own employees talk about it constantly, and it a serious morale issue. During the last four years, it has become more and more an issue, as they have tried to expand it into pilot licensing. I saw a video last year where about five senior FAA folks were pushing some stupid :ramp to cockpit" policy seemingly aimed at getting ramp workers to get their pilots license. Completely crazy, but along with spending lots of time, money and manpower on de-genderizing language, this is what they were up to. Everybody knows all about it.

Late addition. I had never heard of this committee so I looked up it's charter, member and policies. It did not report to the FAA, as suggested by another poster above. It was a security group formed after the Pan Am explosion over Lockerbie in 1988. It met four times per year, and advised the TSA. Again, nothing to do with the FAA, and absolutely nothing to do with this midair.

For those not familiar with this industry, this is quite misleading. There are scores of safety groups in both the industry and the FAA, and constant contact between them. Lots of them.

Yes he did, but it is not clear who the helo may have been looking at. He obvious never saw the Eagle flight. I don't know the clearance parameters the helo was given, but it might have been wise to tell him to remain clear of the rwy 33 final approach path, no matter what his altitude restrictions were. I have heard that directive issued to many helos operating at very low altitudes.

There are specific mission requirements that involve currency, not total hours. As I pointed out, you could have hundreds of carrier landings in your logbook, but if you haven't done so, and day is different than night, in a certain time, you are not qualified. Still, the point is that no matter what each flight was doing, they should have been separated, as there is no surprise in this.

Could be as you state. But, being an ex military pilot, we operated with exclusions that were not applicable to civilian pilots. As an example, the speed limit is 250 knots below 10,000'. We had an exemption that allowed us to operate at 350 knots, because that was the speed we needed to relight the engine if it failed. My suggestion is what I have stated for years in the airline industry, having exposure to both. This nonsense of operating a helo taxi capability for pols is ridiculously foolish and expensive. There is simply no justifiable reason for an Army helo squadron operating with night vision goggles around Reagan National. None. I have never flown with night vision goggles, but I have operated, extensively, with FLIR, which is forward looking infra-red, including weapons delivery, and it is really different, and has no use in this environment.

There are specific mission requirements that involve currency, not total hours. As I pointed out, you could have hundreds of carrier landings in your logbook, but if you haven't done so, and day is different than night, in a certain time, you are not qualified.

Not quite. There are built in redundancies, and ultimately, in that airspace, it is the controller's responsibility to see that and ensure separation. That is all they are responsible for, in this case, a very small amount of low altitude airspace.

I get it and apologize for being unclear. You opined that they were "doing night flights all the time," and questioned that if so, why they might need this currency requirement. I stated that those requirements are per individual. A squadron may do things all the time, but there may be a need to get a person a certain sortie to satisfy their individual requirement. Happens all the time. The issue, in my view, will come down to this, and I have no doubt that I will regret this. The transportation of political figures via helicopter in this congested airspace is idiotic, unnecessary and ridiculously expensive. That may well be what this is ultimately about, as there is no military defense benefit to operating a helicopter unit in that area. It is pointless and intrusive, and the capability isn't worth it.

What you stated was that "they were doing many night flights all the time..." These are individual quals, so there is no info on whether or not this particular person needed an qual. The rest of your post indicates a lack of knowledge. No harm there, but I'm not going to spend more time on transponders or TCAS, when they are turned on and off and the algorithms involved. Not hard to do, but not worth my time as it will all come out eventually.

What you have done is posted an opinion as fact. Currency requirements apply to individuals. I have no idea who was involved, but if an individual needed to satisfy a currency requirement, they would generate a sortie to accomplish that. Total "all up rounds" are a required, reported performance stat in the military, including aircraft and personnel. If you had an airwing on a carrier, and only 20% were qualified at night, you'd have a serious problem. I have no idea about helo flying with night vision goggles, but I assume it is similar. I just wonder how those two aircraft tried to occupy the same airspace at the same time, being under full ATC control and known flight paths.

I have no reason to delete anything.

Not to cause a fork in the road, but you brought it up. Simple question. Are you in any way aware of who was running PATCO at that time, and what they we were offered and demanded? That is beyond the issue of breaking the law.

The military, and all aviation for that matter, has currency requirements. As a carrier aviator, I had to have a certain number of carrier landings, both day and night, in a certain period. The night vision thing is clearly similar.

Great question. TCAS runs by an algorithm that discounts/eliminates various modes at various altitudes near ground. During flight, it provides a traffic advisory, which is informational, and if the situation isn't resolved, and is bad, a resolution advisory, which actually tells you what to do, and displays the suggested command on the vertical speed indicator. Ten mins or so are spent on this issue and response in every simulator training period. While you don't turn the transponder on takeoff until just prior, there would still be so many that it would alert to that it cancels them out.

Not going to be anything in that. They got rammed.

Have I ever claimed he was the only one? Ever? He is simply a useless pos that was inserted into a major Secretary job and failed miserably because he was worse than useless. That is my claim. Simple. He now seems to be defending his uselessness by trying to jumpstart a moribund career by using this tragedy. He disgusts me.

This is not a subject I am comfortable with, and quite reticent about, but I am absolutely knowledgeable about. The FAA, especially during the last four years, and before, is an organization all about quota hiring and promotions. It suffers morale problems from this, and Buttigieg was a disaster. Got the job as payback from Biden for getting out of the primary system, back when the Dems used to allow one. Simply horrible.

No offense, but you're way off target. This is done every day. This is the droppings of a despicable clown trying to fertilize a political career. Hated by FAA employees. Hated by the airlines. Useless. A self promotional, ignorant moron.

Good. I cannot believe the media/youtube/political vector nonsense about this. I have been in and out or Reagan hundreds of times, initially as a narrow body captain, then as a commuter to NY, Miami and Chicago, to fly bigger airplanes, mostly in the jumpseats while hitching a ride on many carriers, and I am extremely familiar with the way it operates. It is disgusting to me how those "outlets" can put this crap out. Purely commercial and horrible.

Ya. If they point out traffic and ask if you have it in site and you say yes, there is no way to determine if they mean the same traffic. The point is that the helo was responsible to see and avoid, and the tower controller was responsible for allowing monitoring both in the same airspace, and relying on the helo to avoid.

Not necessarily. The helo guy could have been flying in a corridor and altitude profile that was standard, but if landing on 33, that corridor should have been shut down. No matter what, unless there was intentional disregard, that is the tower's airspace, and should have been controlled to the point of deconfliction This guy is a youtube geek who is a civilian pilot background and who specializes in being very fast with this stuff. I watched this for 15 seconds, until he made his first mistake.

Good question. What should have happened is that the tower controller should not have let the helo in the final approach airspace for runway 33. That is a "circle to land" runway, which means that you start the approach to runway 1, and are sequenced in that traffic then do a quick dog leg to the right, and a left to align with the centerline of 33. The helo was obviously in that airspace. That is OK as long as he is well below the flight path of a landing RJ. When that happens, or there is other activity, the tower will clear you land with a caution; ie., "caution low level helo traffic," or "caution low level wind shear reports," or anything you need to know. Either way, the two aircraft should have never been in that airspace at the same time, and I guarantee that the RJ was flying a standard profile to land. To answer you question directly, what I would have wanted to hear is, "go around, helo traffic on final," or land on rwy 1, but I'm guessing they had somebody in the way for takeoff or inadequate separation for landing, so the main runway was not an option. Either way, unless there was a direct violation by the helo guy, this is a tower screw up.

ATC is a complicated term for the non aware, but the "tower" is responsible for the immediate low altitude area. At some distance, you are handed off from approach control, who sequences you with other traffic, to the tower, which controls takeoff and landing. This airspace would have been in that purview. Flying an airliner involves trust in these guys, and getting bopped within a few miles of the runway is completely unacceptable. I'm not aware that the helo guy was disregarding ATC, but I am immediately reminded of something an instructor told me when going through basic Navy jet training. He said that at one time or another, a controller will try to kill you, and that happened a few times over a 40 year career flying off carriers and doing the airline thing. This Reagan thing is screwed up airspace, and if there is a systemic problem, it needs to fixed. But, one way or another, those two aircraft should not have met, and that is an ATC thing, unless there was a direct disregard from whoever was flying them.