#if anyone with a bit more education/experience than 'I watch a lot of Disaster Breakdown on YouTube' would like to chime in ... feel free

[mass-convergence]

On Plane Crashes and Coincidences

Would like to take a moment to comment on the recent plane crashes and such from the perspective of a nerd who’s way too into aviation mishaps for someone who doesn’t even have a pilot’s license. I've been hearing a ton of shit about "huh, funny how Trump fucked with the air safety folks at the FAA and now these aviation accidents have happened". Here's why I don't think that's the case...

First off: I am not a fan of what’s going on with the federal gov right now, believe me. So yeah, Trump firing and/or furloughing a bunch of air safety folks is not a good thing.

However - most likely: the aviation accidents that have occurred in the past few weeks have nothing to do with the current situation in the FAA.

Diving deeper into the specifics:

Potomac Collision (and this by no means is a comprehensive list of details)

it was between an army Blackhawk and a CRJ.

Because one was military and the other was civilian (I assume that's the reason at least), they were on different frequencies. ATC was monitoring both frequencies and therefore were in communication with both but neither flight crew could hear each other so they didn't have full situational awareness

The flight path for these helicopters cross the approach path for the planes ... not really great when helicopters fly at lower altitudes anyway and then planes coming in for landing have to get to those low altitudes. This was not well thought out and I believe there have already been many concerns brought up about this in the past

Honestly, IMO: Ronald Reagan Airport needs to be shut down. It's like right up against the DC "no fly" zone, there's a shit ton of traffic going in and out of it, it was almost inevitable some shit was going to happen

The CRJ was instructed to land at another runway, adding to the CRJ crew's workload and also the ATC controller's workload

As far as I've heard, there's no indication if the ATC tower at Reagan was understaffed at the time. It may have been and that may be a factor here, but the ATC has had staffing issues long before Trump took office.

There have been a lot of close calls in recent years between aircraft in "conflict" ... aka, about to hit each other. I believe recently, there was an incident in Arizona where a flight coming in for landing nearly collided with another flight ... and that was before Trump took office. Air travel's become more and more popular, and there are more planes in the sky. There's been a lot of discussion about how an incident like this was inevitable and the only shocking thing is that it hasn't happened sooner.

Did the fact that the ATC guys likely got the "Fork" email play a role in their stress levels? Maybe but even if that was the case - that may have been a contributing factor but it didn't cause the accident.

The Blackhawk pilots may have been wearing nightvision googles which would have restricted their peripheral vision and depth perception. The CRJ's landing lights may have blended in with the backdrop of the city lights and made it super hard to see and avoid.

Philadelphia Crash

Yeah this one sounds like it could have been spatial disorientation since the pilots were flying in the clouds at the time. I haven't heard much else but it's very unlikely the FAA stuff had anything to do with this.

Japan Airlines (JAL) and Delta (DAL) "fender bender"

So ... SeaTac airport's kind of smushed. It doesn't have a whole lot of real estate to work with as there's like city all around it. The Seattle Times has an article from Dec 2022 about how de-icing operations have been harder and harder to do since it's hard to find space to do de-icing. Some planes get de-iced at the gate, some go to designated areas, and some even get de-iced on the taxiways.

Why is this important? The collision happened while the Delta flight was getting de-iced. The JAL flight apparently was passing behind the DAL flight and clipped the tail. If the DAL flight was on a taxiway, getting de-iced ... it could just be that the JAL crew got distracted and didn't realize how close they were to the DAL flight. It sounds more like this was due to the fact that SeaTac's pretty friggin' crowded and doesn't have a lot of room.

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Look ... I know that hearing all this stuff going on on top of the shit happening in DC is overwhelming and it's real easy to find a connection when Trump/Elon's been fucking around with literally every agency in the goddamn government. However, it's more than likely that this really is a case of shitty timing.