Yesterday, over 60 people died in a preventable plane crash. 
No Survivors Expected
The Wall Street Journal reports No Survivors Expected After Plane Carrying 64 Collides With Black Hawk Helicopter Near D.C.
No survivors are expected to be found after a midair collision involving an American Airlines regional jet flying from Wichita, Kan., and a military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The collision occurred moments before the jet was set to land, sending both aircraft into the Potomac River.
Flight 5342, a Bombardier CRJ700, had 60 passengers and four crew members on board. The three troops on board the helicopter, a Sikorsky H-60, were conducting a training flight.
Rescue crews have recovered 28 bodies from the plane and one from the helicopter. Confirmation of the deaths of all on board would make the crash the most fatal aviation disaster on U.S. soil in 23 years.
Among the jet’s passengers were U.S. figure skaters, coaches and relatives returning from a training camp. Russian media said two former world champions—a married couple—were on board.
President Trump blamed diversity programs for the crash, without citing evidence, injecting a partisan note just after sounding a moment of unity and grieving.
The paths of the two aircraft took them along the Potomac River where they collided just before 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Urgent FAA Actions Are Needed to Modernize Aging Systems
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Air Traffic Control says Urgent FAA Actions Are Needed to Modernize Aging Systems
FAA had 64 ongoing investments aimed at modernizing 90 of the 105 unsustainable and potentially unsustainable systems; however, the agency has been slow to modernize the most critical and at-risk systems. Specifically, when considering age, sustainability ratings, operational impact level, and expected date of modernization for each system, as of May 2024, FAA had 17 systems that were especially concerning. The investments intended to modernize these systems were not planned to be completed for at least 6 years. In some cases, they were not to be completed for at least 10 years. In addition, FAA did not have ongoing investments associated with four of these critical systems.
A contributing factor to the lengthy implementation schedules is that FAA does not always ensure that investments are organized in manageable segments.
Until FAA takes urgent action to reduce the time frames to replace critical and at-risk ATC systems, it will continue to rely on a large percentage of unsustainable systems to perform critical functions for safe air travel. This reliance occurs at a time when air traffic is expected to increase each year.
FAA has had longstanding challenges with maintaining aging ATC systems.
For example, the Notice to Air Missions system, which enables air traffic controllers to provide real-time updates to aircraft crew about critical flying situations relating to issues such as weather, congestion, and safety, is over 30 years old.
For over 4 decades we have reported on challenges facing FAA’s modernization of its ATC systems.
About One-Third of FAA ATC Systems Are Considered Unsustainable
- During fiscal year 2023, FAA determined that of its 138 ATC systems, 51 (37 percent) were unsustainable and 54 (39 percent) were potentially unsustainable.
- FAA categorizes its ATC systems by criticality. Of the 105 unsustainable or potentially unsustainable ATC systems,
- 29 unsustainable and 29 potentially unsustainable systems have a critical operational impact on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace
- 16 unsustainable and 9 potentially unsustainable systems have a moderate operational impact on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace
- 6 unsustainable and 16 potentially unsustainable systems were mission support systems and were not considered critical.
Aging Components of Systems
- 73 systems were deployed over 20 years ago, with 40 being deployed over 30 years ago, and six of those deployed over 60 years ago.
- 32 systems were implemented within the past 20 years
- Only four systems as recently as 2020.
GAO Analysis of FAA Systems
Top Issues: System Obsolescence and Finding Replacement Parts
According to a February 2024 response from FAA technicians, the top issue facing the agency is system obsolescence and difficulty in finding replacement parts.
The response also indicated that inadequate staffing of FAA facilities posed a challenge to maintaining systems because some technicians were responsible for areas spanning hundreds of miles.
FAA has been slow to modernize some of the most critical and at-risk systems. Specifically, when considering age, sustainability ratings, operational impact level, and expected date of modernization or replacement for each system, as of May 2024, FAA had 17 systems that were especially concerning. The 17 systems range from as few as 2 years old to as many as 50 years old, are unsustainable, and are critical to the safety and efficiency of the national airspace. However, the investments intended to modernize or replace these 17 systems are not planned to be completed for at least 6 more years. In some cases, they were not to be completed for at least 10 years.
Without near-term modernization plans for these systems, critical ATC operations that these systems support may continue to be at-risk for over a decade before being modernized or replaced. Specifically, FAA can take well over a decade to implement modernization investments once initiated.
GAO Summary
In summary, FAA’s reliance on a large percentage of aging and unsustainable or potentially unsustainable ATC systems introduces risks to FAA’s ability to ensure the safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of up to 50,000 flights per day.
Yesterday we saw the result.
It’s Time to Privatize Air-Traffic Control
On May 10, 2023, the Bloomberg editorial board said It’s Time to Privatize Air-Traffic Control
It’s no accident that controllers still track planes with little slips of paper. Congress is making the FAA’s job all but impossible.
At least eight serious safety incidents have occurred at US airports so far this year, including a near-miss on Feb. 4 when a FedEx Corp. cargo jet flew within 100 feet of a Southwest Airlines Co. passenger flight outside Austin. A few days later, an Air Canada Rouge plane was cleared for takeoff at Sarasota Bradenton International Airport just as an American Airlines Group Inc. jet was given permission to land — on the same runway. The American crew “self-initiated” a go-around to avert catastrophe.
Under pressure from Congress, the FAA convened a hearing on the mishaps in March, then established an independent team to make recommendations. Such steps are missing the bigger picture: The government shouldn’t be operating the country’s air-traffic-control system.
Outdated technology has plagued the FAA for decades. Notoriously, US air-traffic controllers still use strips of paper to track planes in their vicinity. The agency chronically struggles to hire technical staff. Its main system for preventing collisions between planes and ground traffic is decades old, short of spare parts, and prone to prolonged failures. An outage last year almost led to tragedy when a truck ambled onto the runway at Connecticut’s Bradley International Airport and narrowly missed an incoming plane.
Similar problems have bedeviled the FAA’s emergency-alert system, called Notam, first adopted in 1947. It’s meant to warn of potential hazards along a planned flight route. Yet its notices are composed in all-caps block text, employ arcane codes and abbreviations, and can be so riddled with irrelevant information that pilots overlook crucial alerts. On Jan. 11, the Notam system failed entirely, leading to thousands of flight delays. A planned modernization may not be completed until sometime in the 2030s.
The problem with the Bloomberg recommendation is the same problem with public schools.
We sure don’t want unions running the system either based on seniority, not merit and competence.
Not Exaggerations
The online systems look like the antiquated game of asteroids.
Rep. Thomas Massie provides this Tragic Video.
Please give it a play. A portion of the lead image is from that video.
A friend writes “Almost nobody realizes we are relying on a dinosaur technology when they step on a plane.”
Floppy Disks In Planes and Trains
On May 15, 2024 ZdNet commented on Floppy Disk Usage.
As computer networking and new storage formats like USB flash drives and memory cards emerged, the floppy disk’s reign waned in the mid-to-late 1990s. The end of the floppy disk era came with the introduction of the floppy-less iMac in 1998.
By the early 2000s, floppy disks had become increasingly rare, used primarily with legacy hardware and industrial equipment. Sony manufactured the last new floppy disk in 2011.
Some older Boeing 747 models still use floppy disks to load critical navigation database updates and software into their avionics systems. Indeed, Tom Persky, the president of floppydisk.com, which sells and recycles floppy disks, said in 2022 that the airline industry remains one of his biggest customers.
Closer to the ground, in San Francisco, the Muni Metro light railway, which launched in 1980, won’t start up each morning unless its Automatic Train Control System staff is booted up with a floppy. Why? It has no hard drive and it’s too unstable to be left on, so every morning, in goes the disk, and off goes the trains. It will be replaced, though… eventually. Currently, the updated replacement project is scheduled to be completed in 2033/4.
The number of near misses is high and rising. It’s a wonder we haven’t had more accidents.
Sheesh, we cannot even find replacement parts including floppy disks.
Questions Abound
How much did we spend on DEI, the Green New Deal, Climate Change, and FAA improvements in the past four years?
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If I am not mistaken we have had seriously misguided priorities in the last four years. And in relation to the FAA, we’ve been lucky with near misses for decades.
Why do we keep expecting centralized control via incompetent government workers to solve these problems going forward? Why not dispatch the whole ATC system in favor of a decentralized control model? We can put the entire control program in hardware, install it in a small box in every aircraft, and let the aircraft sort it out amongst themselves like they already do with conflict resolution?
Mike, that ATC screenshot is from a program called “falcon”, it’s not what the actual radar display looks like. Falcon is an internal FAA computer app that takes radar replays and simplifies them for event review.
Thanks
Regardless now this HMI (Human-Machine graphical Interface) is used, 1980s vintage, and far from using modern ergonomic principles. These archaic systems were replaced in industry years ago.
1980s vintage? Meh. It is clear, tidy and very readable.
Let a modern designer loose on something like that and you get 99% increase in clutter and interference.
I think your focus on the obsolescence report misses the point: there is no excuse for the FAA.to permit military helicopter traffic to intersect commercial flight paths at a busy airport. Period. I’ll wager at least 50 cents that not a single passenger on the jet had clear knowledge of the risk he was taking flying into National. Which raises real questions: do the FAA or the airlines have a legal obligation to inform travelers before boarding of hazards known to both institutions?.
If they informed us of everything, we’d never fly.
I think the Army should fly their night missions elsewhere.
Spot on. Just listen to the tower Comms and it’s quickly apparent the Blackhawk crew said they saw the RJ, they were directed to fly behind it, but we may never know why they failed to do that and instead performed a cutoff vector. Nothing to do with obsolete equipment here. A better question is why FAA had never established a Helo corridor across the River a mile or more south of Regan Intl.
Actually – There is confusion as to what the Blackhawk saw.
There was a second confirmed plane in the area.
I strongly suspect the Blackhawk saw the wrong thing.
Trump decries DEI but the Washington Post reports that it was the Trump Admin in 2019 that initiated the DEI program.
Not true.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-01-30/trump-highlights-risks-dei-sky
Sailer described how the Obama Administration gutted it,
“So, as I predicted in 2008, after a moderate first term helped Barack Obama get reelected in 2012, in 2013 Obama let loose his people to pursue their agenda of Diversity-Inclusion-Equity (DIE).”
DEI=. Definitely elevation issues.
Under Trump private co should modernize the Air traffic System. Under Trump gov will shrink. Q3 2025 GDP might hover around zero. In Q3 2026, when demand for highly skilled workers will be high, and bc there are more people in the US, consumption will be high, residential fix investment will be up, import will shrink (less negative), change in inventory will be up, gov down, non-residential fix income down and export slightly down, Sum it up ==> the GDP will be up and gov debt will shrink. Less debt, trust in the US dollar will rise.
Wouldn’t it be a good thing if no one could fly anymore ? That would stop all legal immigration in its tracks. If Trump just lets the system fail, then he can really accelerate his anti-immigration agenda. Close the border and no flying due to antiquated air traffic control systems. Is Trump playing chess or checkers ? Are you sure ?
You shouldn’t lick the windows while the windex is still wet.
Fortunately Ukraine has a modernized ATC system and we gaurantee the South Korean northern border with 20+ thousand army regulars.
Exactly.
When Mish asks “How much did we spend on DEI, the Green New Deal, Climate Change, and FAA improvements in the past four years?”, that list could go on forever in terms of what we have wasted money on besides sensible things like modernizing air traffic control infrastructure.
Trillions wasted on overseas wars and playing globo-cop, for example.
Of course, there’s no Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) phenomenon going on with air traffic control, so Congress doesn’t care until it makes headlines and they see an opportunity to whore around in front of news cameras.
The country actually needs more airports in metro areas that have grown far beyond their capacity. More accidents will happen unless there is a concerted effort to offload or reduce service.
To be fair to flyers, the public should be told which airports have out of date and malfunctioning systems, that way they could avoid those airports.
Privatisation is a poor ideological position. Some things are natural monopolies and ATC systems are just that. Britain has extensive experience with privatising businesses…..it simply brings corruption, poor service and increased expenses for the customer….look at water, energy, railways…..the only privatisation that worked was telephone service.
How can a system installed as little as 2 years ago even be considered unsustainable?
Was it built rapidly just to say the airport has a new ATC?
Because it was likely based on a legacy system that just happen to still be available. If you had to clean sheet a system, it would look nothing like anything we have and would probably take over 5 years to design, build and test. Only then could it be actually deployed and even then it would be phased in very slowly over a number of years. My graduate school project was scoping the design, build and test of a new air traffic control system. My detailed estimate from project initiation to deployment was 7 years.
What data did you have to substantiate your 7 year estimate? Did you model what throwing additional money at it would do to incentivize your contractor to beat 7 years?
No additional money. This is based on fixed resources and simply an estimate of how long it takes to do something based on existing resources. It could probably be accelerated if government worked a bit faster with private sector but not without additional risks. But you can’t squeeze it down from 7 years to say 1 or 2 years. Most of the project is design, build and test of the air traffic control system itself. The deployment part is takes lesser time. Again this was if you clean sheeted it and could start from scratch with no legacy restrictions. That also blows up the time required at the backend due to testing a new system.
Hopefully this makes everyone forget those fires in Hollywood so we don’t have to shell out a bunch of money to California.
If not we can say it was a plot by transexual muslim terrorists. That’s juicy.
You’ll be gone very soon.
I don’t think you understand my relationship with Donald. If I go under the bus, he’s coming with me, and he knows it.
Trump blames the plane crash on illegal workers he said that the dei is responsible in my humble opinion he should hire some Chinese workers seems the are good at tech work have you tried deep seek …
Have you tried punctuation?
The description of staffing being “not normal” sounds accurate.
A second look should be given to what is considered “acceptable”…
in both the control tower…
and in politics.
What does staffing being “not normal” have to do with diversity? It just sounds like President Musk and Sub-President Trump running things on the cheap.
Duh. Staffing not by normal white guys.
https://www.snopes.com/uploads/2014/07/equal.jpg
Normies are a resource to be cherished and exploited.
DOGE is about EFFICENCY, not safety. We have literally hundreds of millions of Americans. We can lose a few hundred now and then.
Trump started the DEI program in 2019.
“White House officials decided in 2013 to purge the hiring list of over 1,000 graduates of the air traffic control course at colleges like Arizona State who had also passed the cognitive exam for hiring. Instead, it made air traffic control job-seekers start over with a new “biographical” test to “add diversity to the workforce.””
Spending 600 billion to blow up the Ukraine into a stalemate-well that could have helped. Joe Biden is such a loser
Oh just wait for the deficits we have in store. As my fragrant, rotund sidekick likes to say “They’re unbelievable!” (presents palms at bellybutton height)
He holds the record, and he’s gonna break it.
Am I the only one second guessing why the military was flying dark so close to a commercial airport?
No, but we’re told it’s super important because … reasons.
I have listened to Trump’s remarks about the accident. First he says we don’t know yet what happened. Then he accuses the Reagan airport traffic controllers of having caused the accident. You can only conclude that Trump is so stupid he will never realize that he is stupid,
Apparently there was only one controller when there should have been 2. So maybe he is right
Right on what? Saying stupid things?
“You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. “
Did the second controller take the early retirement offer?
Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on.
He’s the center of stupids: The Stupidularity… Thought cannot escape it. That’s why he resonates with them…they are all connected, an harmonizing in a perfect symphony of idoicy!!
It’s Beautiful! And mine for the low low price of 270 million.
He’s taking the opportunity to make the perfectly reasonable point that giving important jobs to incompetent people from underrepresented groups because you feel sorry for them leads to this outcome….
Trump Admin started the DEI programs in 2019
Privatize?!?! Really? Those outdated planes are “private”.
As a pilot myself, the Gov need to put money forward to upgrade our systems, not rely on some private company to care for it.
I mean, anyone take a look at a NOTAM, and yes, you need quite a bit of training to even read those damn things written on systems from the 80’s
For example, this is Reagan now:
!FDC 5/5320 DCA IAP RONALD REAGAN WASHINGTON NTL, WASHINGTON, DC.
ILS OR LOC RWY 1, AMDT 41D…
S-LOC 1 MDA 600/HAT 586 ALL CATS. VISIBILITY CAT C/D 1 1/4. VDP AT I-DCA 2.76 DME; DISTANCE VDP TO THLD 1.67NM. TEMPORARY CRANE 344FT MSL 3850FT SOUTHWEST OF RWY 1 (2024-AEA-11610-OE).
2501241200-2503281843EST
Easy read to me translates to “Good Luck Sucker”. I never fly even long trips are by car. I’m not concerned with crashes but with the way airlines treat their customers, I simply will not give them money for shitty service.
The FAA’s Hiring Scandal: A Quick OverviewAn Air Traffic Control nightmarehttps://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
DCA (Reagan) is a special case. It is an antiquated facility (and known to have been so for many decades). The accident is the direct product of allowing VFR aircraft (military helicopters) to fly across the approach path for fixed wing aircraft to short runway 33 (deliberately violating the standard 500 foot separation normally enforced everywhere else in the US, and world, air space). Reagan needs to be closed for safety’s sake, but that’s not going to happen immediately. In the mean time it would be an easy call for the FAA/NTSB to mandate the immediate “temporary” closure of runway 33 for landings until the safety issues are sorted out. And by “temporary” I mean permanent. This would require a significant reduction in traffic at Reagan, forcing some flights to originate/terminate elsewhere (Dulles and Baltimore/Washington). Once the spoiled travelers in Congress get used to that, the gradual closure of Reagan (over, say, 20 years) should happen while more airport capacity is found or built around Washington (e.g. at Andrews Air Force Base or Dulles). Right now the tolerance of the ATC situation at Reagan makes us the enfant terrible among the nations of the first world.
As a pilot myself, you speak with authority, and are so right!
Reluctantly, I agree. I’m a pilot and ex-controller. DCA is also too close to the White House, the Capital, and the Pentagon. One day a fully fueled airliner will depart and become a disaster at one of those locations. Current air defense systems are likely too slow to stop it.
LOL the ride on the beltway to DC will take longer than the flight.
Now, we know that the helicopter pilot was a DEI woman. Now, I want to know if the control tower was also infected with DEI. That is DEI squared.
The tower control was a man, but he was a lesbian. Also, Jewish.
Sarah Tyrone Rabinowitz. Unbelievable
The helicopter pilot involved in the D.C. plane crash was a woman with 500 hours of flying experience, according to Fox News. Well she and air traffic killed 65 people. The problem with DEI in general is you never know if someone actually deserved the job. Thus it calls into question all of them. But go back in time and true brilliance of Justice Thomas was never in question. And why he’s always been against affirmative action.
Well said. Women belong in the kitchen.
Physiological differences
Lung capacity: Women generally have smaller lung capacities than men.
Hemoglobin: Women have reduced hemoglobin, which means they have a lower oxygen carrying capacity than men.
Cognitive differences
Visual memory: Men tend to be quicker on visual memory tasks.
Spatial orientation: Men tend to be better at spatial orientation tasks.
Psychomotor tasks: Men tend to perform better on psychomotor tasks.
Reaction time: Women may have a small but measurable reaction time advantage.
… to say nothing of their exciting mammalian protruberances! Yep, they have everything a man could want.
chesticles?
Careful on generalizations … a particular woman may be better in all things than a particular man. Right?
All said, let’s just pick the best person vs certain criteria — no extra credit to help the lame/infirm (reserve the Presidency for them; ouch!).
Now you want us to ignore the science. Lol
They can also do laundry and churn butter.
To say nothing of the horizontal Hokey Pokey. Wonderous creatures.
Blaming everything on DEI is the same as Adolf blaming all of Germany’s ills on Jews. It’s a pattern that exists only with true racists and bigots.
Yawn. Not blaming it. Making the point when merit is not the basis of success, everything gets called into question…rough day for your puts. Ugh
You are ok with women dragging fire victims out bc they don’t have to carry them? How silly.
C’mon, Midnight.
A woman operating the controls of a helicopter which has been designed from a human engineering perspective to MIL-Standard 1472, and having to go through a pilot training process (and not wash out) to be able to fly it, is not the same as a woman having to drag a man out of a burning building.
Your list of biological differences between the sexes is noted, but have you considered whether they actually matter when the task is operating a helicopter that has been designed from an ergonomic perspective to be able to be operated by 110 lb, 5-foot nothing females up to 210+ pound, 6-foot something males?
I say they don’t.
We’ll go in more or less this order:
Illegal immigrants
Legal non maga immigrants
Transexuals, furries and other sexual degenerates
Gays
Non-whites
Non-christians
Non-MAGAs
Non-evangelical christians
Non-Supply Side Jesus believers
Off to Gitmo they’ll go! It only holds 30k, so we’ll have to find a Solution for that.
If you’re white, you’re pretty down the list already. You have some time to let Supply Side Jesus into your heart.
You have a couple of those in the wrong order.
Which ones?
Yes the Blackhawk pilot is at fault for accepting the request of ATC to fly by VFR “see and be seen” rules. She was accompanied by a seasoned professional who should have known very well the problems those rules encounter at night in a dense urban environment full of point light sources hard to distinguish from aircraft. The overworked controller (at understaffed DCA) failed to follow with an instruction to avoid a specific aircraft at relative bearing xxx and range xx. That controller was also the person who ordered the CRJ to divert to the short runway 33 using a course that put the CRJ on a collision course with the helicopter that was also under his/her control. And the pilot of the CRJ may even have been technically at fault for not seeing the helicopter, it not being crystal clear whether or not the CRJ was flying under VFR or IFR rules (all those faults will be sorted out in the government’s final report). However, the root cause of this accident waiting to happen is the FAA itself (see my comments above) for having operating rules around DCA that invited this accident. Somebody is going to have to have the guts to recommend major changes in the operating rules in the Washington D.C. airspace.
Well done Sir, good explanation without political bias. Straight shooter
Thomas is a DEI hire. It’s obvious he never deserved the job. If he is against affirmative action he should resign.
FAA Report Cites “Urgent Need to Modernize Air Traffic Systems”
NOPE.
FAA Report Cites ‘Urgent Need to End DEI”
YES
Perhaps we can do both?
Think of the money to be saved on investigations over the next 4 years!
If our stable genius needs no facts, you shouldn’t either.
That press conference was so informative, if it weren’t for the split TV screen showing the crash site, I would have forgotten what Trump was even talking about.
As with the current Black Hawk military exorcise flight and collision strike, I’m reminded of the naval exercise gone wrong theory for TWA flight 800’s crash off New York by a rocket shoot down during the floppy disk era as well as mishaps during the IBM tape era. Of course, 9/11 went down during the transition to CDs, but regardless of the medium and machine code there were still lots of incidents from accidents, mechanical failures, to onboard terrorism: eg, an ’84 flight out of John Wayne airport where the flight crew was taken out by a passenger with a 357 magnum and crashing north of San Luis Obispo killing everyone. . .
Twa flight always smelled like terrorism.
What about the punch card era? BTW, the current era is the cloud era (no pun intended).
Merely a Real American exercising his 2nd Amendment Rights with a 357.
He was white, so it was tragic, but understandable. Sometimes they just get the milk fed suburban blues and have to act on it… unlike those DEI hijackers from Sept. 11, hollering about how great their false god was ad they plowed into those buildings in an act of Pure Evil.
Evildoers, as Bush the Second named them. So embrace your white privilege, don’t denigrate it.
And I suspect if all the passengers had been allowed to practice their sec. amend. white privilege packing Bowies or Roman short swords the white dude going postal with a Colt Python six shooter wouldn’t have made it through the locked cockpit door.that was unlocked and would have exited the plane in one of the body bags upon landing.Have a nice day.
Problems with aviation? Hmmm…who here has been ringing the demographic death spiral bell now for years? Was it an inadequately trained pilot? Was it antiquated equipment that needs replaced? Was it poorly trained or insufficient tower personnel? Trump blames DEI but it’s all the same common denominator: people.
It’s along the lines collapsing bridges, falling apart water mains, power grid failures, collapsing condos, endless forest fires, and on and on. There isn’t enough people to take care of all the stuff that has been built.
Too many people retiring, not enough young people and even if there were, the young have an entirely different work ethic preferring to play on tiktok or the latest social fad.
This is the start of downward spiral in services that will get a whole lot worse before it even has a chance of getting better.
Oh and if robots and AI are going to fix all of this, bring it on, I’m still waiting.
More people can’t be hired if there isn’t enough money to pay them because government doesn’t have the revenue stream because taxes need to be raised, not lowered. Or their pay packages need to be lowered.
As neither of the above will change, the ONLY solution is to replace people with robots and automation. This is coming sooner than many anticipate. It’s too bad that it isn’t meeting your timeline.
“The ONLY solution is to replace people with robots and automation”
So where is it? We had massive labor shortages during Covid, why didn’t the robots come out? That was 5 years ago now. Where are they now? When are they going to show up because every day 10,000 boomers leave the workforce and that won’t stop through 2030 then GenX will start retiring. The oldest millennials are pushing 40, guess what’s going to happen 10 years after that with this group!
Gen X is already retiring. I just put my papers in.
People are going to have to learn to accept collateral damage. Sure, AI controlled cars are going to maim and kill people. One might speculate that they are far more dangerous than a human driver, but since I don’t have to provide accident stats anymore, you can just keep on speculating.
Same with Optimus. Sure, there will be a few deaths when the H1B we stuck a Neuralink in to remote control a robot gets a brain infection, instigating a psychotic killing spree, but the overall benefit to mankind, of having a bounty of foreign physical labor without actually having to be around non-white people simply cannot be overstated.
We need H1Bs in those planes. They’ll do it for far cheaper than those old white dudes,
We could get more smart people into important positions if we paid them more. We’d have the money for that if we didn’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year trying to control the entire planet.
Smart people are a lot cheaper if you use H1Bs. We should outsource the government.
Surely Ukraine needs the money more.
If the passengers on the plane that went down had been members of Congress, upgrading the air traffic control system at Reagan airport would move way up in priority. In the meantime, we have more meddling to do in Ukraine and we will probably be sending them more billions of $ in military aid in the coming year.
Only if the members were MAGA Republicans.
Maybe, but they really don’t bat an eye for anybody worth less than 100 million. If Nancy, Chuck and Yertle would have been on it, there would definitely be a shitstorm. We play as enemies, but the relationship is pretty lucrative.
Repeat after me: Real Americans only care about the rich. The REALLY rich.
It’s a nice mantra for when you’re feeling anxious about your safety. You don’t matter!
Maybe, maybe, maybe…
… if Hegseth spent more of his time as the new Defense Secretary verifying the training of his warrior (pilots) instead of filing paperwork to remove security details for Generals he doesn’t like, this never would have happened. Why not include that option?
So sad these types of politically motivated posts are what dominate the blogosphere after we Americans lose some of our brothers and sisters in horrific accidents. I’m disappointed in your contribution to this particular sad state of affairs, Mish (although I can see it’s getting you a lot of clicks, so congrats)
I’m sure quaking under your scowl.
What’s a few hundred suckers and losers? That’s the chance you take when you fly commercial.
High bandwidth comms to airplanes are common now. Why not split the job in two:
1) air traffic control routes for efficiency
2) onboard systems display safety information gathered from ground sources and provided directly to the pilots via cell towers and satellite comms
The problem with prescriptions that you pose is is getting every single airplane on the same program. Congress never wants to spend all the money necessary to modernize the FAA.
Second, no airline wants to spend any money on government ordered changes, including safety, which is the one major reason we still don’t have real-time pilot voice/video beamed to satellite, so we can see exactly what caused a crash almost immediately.
Great idea. Your idea is in place and considered old tech. This is a human error accident, most likely by the H-60 crew, but time will tell.
Interesting how so many items during the Biden administration had to lead to Death before we heard about them. Didn’t we pass a $1.0+ trillion infrastructure bill recently. Must have been over 5,000 pages so no one read it for all of this FAA modernization list to not be included. I agree with the priority of Solar and DEI, over life and safety.
Ah, the hubris prize for the day, congrats
You do remember Trump was President also for 4 years until the day Biden took over, right? Where did all the corrective funding for FAA go that Trump authorized? Oh, that’s right. No fixing FAA, just massive tax cuts (and so deficits) for his private-jet flying buddies.
Hilarious!
The FAA did implement an entirely new computer system during the Obama years. I can’t find a single thing that was done as a result of Biden’s infrastructure bill. The Inflation Reduction Act was also a boondoggle.
Is the problem that we still use outdated radar instead of GPS?
Yeah, let’s privatize air traffic control. Great idea. Just see how well privatized healthcare has been doing. When are we going to stop with this bs that privatization is the solution to all problems?
Government meddling in private healthcare creates problems. Traffic control operators should not be hired for any reason other than merit. If the government can’t hire on that basis alone, they shouldn’t be in charge of the traffic control system.
Racist, sexist, anti-gay! Take your merit the fuck away! /s
The plane was asked to change runways “a few minutes” before landing. This isn’t indicated in timelines I’ve seen.
Think that might be a contributing factor in the crash? (rhetorical question)
Crossair Flight 3597 also crashed after a last minute runway change.
Unless we are going to pull back the Band-Aid and start questioning legacy placements and promotions (starting w Trump and his not so smart son, Don Jr. who both got into Penn because of connections), we need to stop Trump’s kneejerk excuse that everything that goes wrong under his administration is because of a DEI hire. This aircraft crash happened on his watch and he owns it. Just like the Afghanistan exit where Trump was found 50% to blame but Biden took the full hit. Yes, I imagine just like the LA fires, there will be a woman and/or people of color who were employed by the FAA (if the FAA is even to blame). Trump has never manned up and is always pointing the finger. Over 60 people are now dead and too bad but it happened under Trump. As usual, Trump is inappropriate and has diverted the conversation when we all should be mourning.
Need more solar and DEI, not FAA upgrades. Chaning runways isn’t a problem if everyone is doing their job. Aircraft separation is always key (based on my 4,000 flight hours)
Aircraft separation is determined by technology, not people. Age, type and use of technology is by people. Garbage in, garbage out – no matter how much solar power is used.
Whomever closed Bagram Air Force base on July 2, 2021 should be arrested for dereliction of duty, treason and have his brain cells examined
How the hell is that Trump???
Karen, you lost me at Afghanistan. And the fires. And pretty much everything else you wrote. An angry stream of consciousness.
Womenfolk always get upset and can’t gather their scattered thoughts. She doesn’t even understand which way to point The Finger.
They don’t call it hysteria for nothing.
Prone to The Vapors
“As usual, Trump is inappropriate…”
You may have a career in irony.
we get it Trump your just itching for your The burning of the Reichstag building moment
So people had to die and you blame Trump – talk about a one trick pony…
Trump is my li’l ragepuppet… my Bad Cop. I’m Good Cop. Love me!
Trump certainly misses no occasion to advertise himself as an idiot (in the Greek sense of the word).
I agree console us reassure us and at this point but be quiet regarding all the noise
The “noise” will turn out to be facts. Sure, over 60 died, but on the plus side, the air traffic controller is a lesbian.
I love lesbian porn! (did I say that out loud? Damn ketamine…)
good video here watch it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBJpxq9WZ1E
If you want people to click on your links, it is best to describe what they will find at said link. This isn’t TikTok.
Hmmm….I’m a little puzzled by this post. We have few details on what happened and why. We know that a plane collided with a military helicopter, and thats about it.
Maybe some of the cause can be attributed to outdated systems, or maybe the outdated systems had no impact on the outcome. Perhaps someone or multiple people involved simply made terrible errors that no system could have prevented.
Let’s get all of the facts straight before blaming outdated systems, the ATCs, the pilots, DEI, etc.
This isn’t how modern life works. As usual after any disaster affecting Americans, ALL the news channels are running back to back, hour after hour “analysis” (actually just speculation) about the incident.
Mish had to jump in or people here would be jumping up and down, yelling and pointing “WHAT ABOUT…!
I don’t know. Seems the Russian angle needs looking at. Definitely the Ruskies. We ain’t seen the last of them.
My points:
I’ll end with:
NNNN
You missed the point – same issue as California and people had to die before common sense kicked in.
Probably vaxidents, no worries, they won’t look…
We don’t need to upgrade this, DEI is so far more important, along with blue frogs, alternative gender surgeries for inmates, expensive windmills and solar that only work with subsidies. We are being so selfish.
Tariffs coming Saturday. Deep breathing Mish. Stay with us
Flight Progress Strips (paper)…lots of hand input.
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html/chap2_section_3.html
Electronic Flight Strips and Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM) and implementation timeline.
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/tfdm/whatistfdm
I have a friend that had 30-year career as Navy air-traffic-controller. He had to retire and worked privately as a consultant to the FAA and Pentagon. He said that part of the reason for slow implementation of upgraded ATC systems was that they weren’t working properly and had to be debugged.
“and can be so riddled with irrelevant information that pilots overlook crucial alerts. “
That’s not a NOTAM problem… that’s a pilot problem.
Why should Trump care if a bunch of planes collide? He has no use for those people, planes, or airline companies.
TDS is sad
Exactly! Serfs shouldn’t be flying all over the damn place willy-nilly.
That’s why the air traffic control system was left to continue rotting during his last term. There hadn’t been any collisions in years… why fix what ain’t broke?
We finally decided to do something about it though:
Jan 20: Fired the director of the FAA
Jan 21: Froze air traffic controller hiring
Jan 22: dissolved Aviation Safety Advisory committe
Jan 28: Demanded existing employees retire or take buyouts
Jan 29: First American mid-air collision in 16 years
MAGA!
Trump has turned everything upside down and our country is becoming muddled just like his brain. Trumps sows chaos in every aspect of his life as it is where he is comfortable and it offsets others. Three wives, serial adulter and rapist, bankrupt companies, hates crypto, likes crypto, hates Tik Tok, likes Tik Tok, dabble here dabble there. He has everyone on edge. This one is on him!
Chaos will ultimately feed my crypto accounts… I’m so happy I bought him.
I bet you rejoiced when the aircraft went down. 64 dead and Trump to blame. Juicy headlines for the mouth breathers.
You left out XO stopping all spending. I wonder if the tower was operating under a reduced staff to comply with the order.
You don’t need more than one guy to run 2 towers! Vivek and I role played it before he quit.
What an assinine statement. You are so far gone , keep going
It’s always the gamers.
Google it. You can’t deny my accomplishments!
As you are not Elon Musk, i can’t find your accomplishments.
I am President Musk and you cannot deny me! LOVE ME!
Typical stupid llib comment. Such a sad and unneccesary day of loss. I hope everyone is as angry as Trump is about this terrible loss.
Angry and pointing that blame finger away from us… exceptional!
More die in car crashes EVERY day than lost their lives here. Where are your priorities?
Two thumbs up for the Battlezone screen. I spent hours playing that game in 81-82 time frame.
That said, I am not sure I want modern PCs online doing this stuff if they can be infected with virus’s and other issues (blue screens of death if they use windows). A lot of the reasons for older hardware and software is BECAUSE it’s essentially immune to those problems and has decades of ‘known faults’ so that nothing surprising happens. It would take a lot of years of trial in parallel to existing systems before they’d let anything modern take over because they’d need to confirm it doesn’t crash under pressure.
I could roll out an AI system to replace it all in a week. BTW, I’m the top ranked Battlezone player on the planet.
The Reagan Airport collision was caused by incompetence of Air Traffic Control and military Black Hawk pilots. Technology had nothing to do with it. Both institutions lowered their standards for Affirmative Action.
The media is clearly withholding the race of the pilot to keep us from discovering that DEI is to blame here! This is what happens when you hire non-whites.
They’re so dumb they left an obvious clue, however: “BLACKhawk”
The funny part is you think you’re making a joke.
Such are the perceptions of the North American Chucklehead. So detached from reality that we have to bring in foreigners to keep the country running. You people have no IDEA how lucky you are I showed up to save you from yourselves.
More nonsense
So, you’re saying minorities are incompetent, did I get that right? Which ones are the worst according to you?
I’ll give you two guesses and the first guess doesn’t count.
Ecuadorians are bad at basketball.
Japanese can’t say “L”
Totally agree. I saw a X post from a ATC and he blames it on the ATF not giving full critical detail to what to look for and the Helicopter literally ran right into this thing. This is incompetence on a horrific level starting with the ATC and the chopter pilot was not alert to his surroundings which was tragic combination. Literally flew right into the plane
Did you really just quote a post on X to give yourself credibility?
X is TRUTH.
Why the F does the military “need” to do training missions so close to Reagan National? I’ll bet the main reason is “we’ve always done it that way”.
I wondered the same thing.
That will be the last one.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of change in the Posse Comitatus rules to enable shooting down drones and such over places like that and more so Norfolk NB. Witness the Chinese national that was apprehended for his drone escapades, got off scot-free per PC.
They have a base right across the river. They are there for national security reasons so of course they have to fly missions.
You’re making my point.
I bet that after a proper investigation youll understand exactly why they were doing it. Of course if you cant help yourself and have to be in front of the cameras, youll come up with your own half-baked insulting explanation for the whole thing .. as what happened this morning. He just cant stop himself.
It works. Why bother finding out what actually happened? We got stuff to do.
He was talking about “dwarves”(?) when I switched off!
Standard Trump response is it was Biden’s fault. Or Obama’s. Or Lincoln’s. Or Washington’s. Or God’s.
It was DEI (Black people). Do keep up… I spend a lot of money on this information distribution system.
No black people were actually involved, but that’s not important now.
I don’t envy you, Mr. President. Herding cats is a difficult job but someone has to try. Keep up the good work.
“We’ve always done it that way”… is my least favorite argument!
And yet the most common
The corollary to that is that we keep doing it that way because it would cost money that we are already spending somewhere else to make the change necessary to do the job differently and more effectively!
WDC is basically a military zone after 9/11.Lots of restricted airspace nearby.
Thus, best off closing DCA to commercial flights.
Of course, allowed are VIPs/Elites on private planes/helos delivering
graftcampaign contributions and talking-points related to baby onesies.MCGA (Make the Capital Great Again)!
becayse they pickup “vips” from reagan in all kinds of weather and conditions
I believe that the military pilots were operating with night vision devices. Some of these devices have a limited field of view at about 40 degrees. This could have been a contributing factor in this tragic event. Peripheral awareness is very important in a region where air traffic is high.
That’s a possibility.
I also read that there was more than 1 plane landing at that time (there is after all more than one runway). The air traffic controller mentioned one plane and asked if the helicopter had a visual which they confirmed. But it’s very possible they were looking at the *other* plane and not the one the air traffic controller was asking about. In other words, human error for not telling the helicopter pilots that there was multiple planes in the area and that they needed to visually account for them all.
Why were they on a “training mission” so close to commercial aircraft?
Because reasons
But let’s give Ukraine more money. We are paying for the salaries of Ukraine government workers and their pensions. Few know this. Our Neocons are just so generous?