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The Reagan (DCA) Flight Load
The runways at DCA see 800 takeoffs and landings per day, or one every minute.
The target for Air Traffic Controllers at DCA is 30 controllers on duty and on the night of the latest collision, there were only 19 controllers to handle air traffic.
I’m not going to get into the political blame game. Although the investigation is not complete, it would seem to me that if you don’t want a repeat of this tragic incident that occurred the other day, the number of flights to and from DCA should be reduced until you have enough controllers to handle the air traffic.
Published in General
New York Post: Air traffic controller was doing the job of two people during DC plane crash due to tower being understaffed, FAA says
The investigation will cover the issue of the workload in the tower last night. But I’m getting a bad feeling about this.
The Cockpit Voice Recorders and the Flight Data Recorders are going to be important – the CVRs in particular.
Sounds to me like the pilots had no idea anything was wrong, until the collision. So how could the CVRs be useful in that situation?
This crash is giving me the vibes I got after Challenger crashed. That proved totally avoidable, yet inevitable. Avoidable because if NASA had followed its flight rules it would not have happened. Inevitable because NASA had been ignoring flight rules relating to safety for six months before Challenger – which meant an accident was waiting to happen.
From viewing the video of the crash, I get the feeling the helicopter crew saw a different airliner after being warned to avoid the airplane they hit, and moved to avoid the aircraft they saw rather than the one they were told to avoid. Neither aircraft saw the other one until they touched.
The reason I say this was avoidable yet inevitable was that the US government should not have been routing military aircraft in a path where they could potentially collide with an airliner on final to the runway. Especially when multiple government organizations are involved (DoD and FAA in this case). Doing that was a convenience rather than a necessity.
Even given very low odds of a collision, do it enough times and you are going to get bit. From my years in manned spaceflight, I have learned that the best way of avoiding disaster is avoiding actions that provide an opportunity for that disaster to happen unless that action is absolutely required. I don’t think routing a helicopter through a path that takes it through a final approach path to a busy civilian airport falls under the heading of absolutely required.
I am not pointing fingers at the helicopter crew. Spotting other objects in your airspace is incredibly difficult at night. Missing something, sometime is almost inevitable. You only have to be unlucky once.
So would you consider that a “human/pilot error” on the part of the helicopter, that may not have been avoided even if there had been the expected 30 flight controllers on the job?
Possibly, but not definitively. The shortage probably contributed something, if only because with a lighter workload a flight controller might have noticed the helicopter was on a collision course and ordered it to make a hard turn. Or maybe not. The investigation will reveal that.
My point is that if you provide an opportunity for catastrophe, no matter how small each individual opportunity is, if you do it enough times a catastrophe is inevitable. There should have been more though on making the opportunity for a mid-air collision zero – not miniscule.
Right, by just not having those military flights cross through.
Where will you find enough 0ne-legged black lesbians to fill all the empty controller slots?
Shouldn’t be an issue any more, with the departure of Mayor Pete.
To underscore the point I was making about not setting up for catastrophe, this article is a worthwhile read. Apparently there was a near miss between an Army helicopter and an airliner the night before. I think my quote of the day this Saturday will reference Feynman’s Appendix F of the Challenger report.
Specifically addressing your point: Yes, absolutely having more ATCs would’ve helped. An extra set of keen eyes in ATC possibly could’ve prevented this tragedy.
New York airspace recently has also been short handed. Staffing is and issue that got exacerbated by COVID rules too. Of all the branches of government to arguably not staff properly, the FAA is one that I’d like to see adequately and competently staffed. Candidates don’t make political hay boosting the NAS though.
The NTSB should have a thorough investigation. Though the current info seems to indicated the helicopter pilot requesting the “visual” and getting cleared for it is the root cause. ATC double checked with the helicopter pilot to verify “traffic in sight”. The helicopter pilot might have had the wrong aircraft in sight or was BS’ing to expedite the flight. When you accept visual separation as a pilot in VMC, then you are on the hook for separation.
It’s a bit tight for an 121 airliner to swing around to land 33 in DCA so I’m sure that the crew was focused on that landing. Plus it would’ve been difficult for them to see a lower heli from that position. Regarding the TCAS; those are inhibited below 1,000′ so the airline crew wouldn’t have gotten a RA regardless at the short final altitude.
Helicopter traffic is very common in that airspace. Plus there are more runway incursions and near misses than the public would be comfortable knowing about.
My wife and I took my parents to the Grand Rapids (Michigan) airport shortly after the Gerald Ford funeral, and their flight was held up while Betty Ford’s flight took off. I never saw so many helicopters at that airport, doing some sort of sweep of the runway and flight path before her plane took off. Maybe it wasn’t a lot of helicopters, because I don’t think I ever saw any helicopters there other than that time. I never thought about the extra work for the flight controllers in keeping helicopters separate from planes at a busy airport (which the Grand Rapids airport is not).
That essay on your coming quote of the day sounds promising.
My spouse tracks aircraft over our county on one of the sites that tells you the type of aircraft above you, its size, brand name, destination, altitude etc. Lately he has noticed that several times a month, different sized aircraft flown by the military are stacked up above one another. (A group of three.) Much more than 1500 feet in altitude between each aircraft, but it has left us wondering.
Ours is a huge, mostly untraveled county. Why would the military do this rather than having the flights spaced out horizontally?
What they were doing in addition to responding to the tower. Were they aware that they were a little too high?
The responsibility falls on management, for sure.
But on my scale of morality and responsibility, it also falls on the air traffic controllers who continued to keep the job which they knew they could not do. Their job was to guide the planes in safely. If they cannot do that, they should quit.
I think that’s the honorable thing to do in such circumstances.
I know everyone needs his or her job. And I am sympathetic to that. But at some point, individuals need to do the right thing.
At least that’s how it looks to me.
Generally, the ATC is more specific as to what aircraft they are drawing attention to. “PAT-25, do you have the CRJ in sight?” Which CRJ? Is that a CRJ? It’s in sight, so tell the ATC ‘yes.’ “Do you have a CRJ at 10 o’clock in sight?” or “Do you have a CRJ to your left in sight?” is a little more specific, and that might have been all the difference. Was the ATC overworked? If he was, that might have led to not being specific enough.
Doug, this makes no sense. The number of take offs has to equal the number of landings.
If the total events is 800, there must be about 17 take offs and 17 landings an hour, or one take off every 3.6 minutes, one landing every 3.6 minutes. This would be one event every 1.8 minutes. There actually would be more than 17 take offs and 17 landings hourly, and thus shorter intervals than 1.8 minutes between events, during business hours, as there are very few flights arriving or departing during the wee hours of the morning.
This must be a hell of an airport to serve as an air traffic controller.
One wonders if anyone will ever be held responsible for the tower being understaffed.
I’m hoping that, under President Trump, there will be some accountability throughout the government.
It would seem to be all on the flight controllers, either understaffed or DEI.
I’m not a flight controller, nor have I ever slept
atwith one, but don’t most nighttime flight operations depend more upon radar that eyesight? Just asking.If DEI is responsible, bring it to the public’s attention, and hammer it home. But…make damn sure that DEI is arguably responsible first, for this actual incident, or you’ll discredit an important point that works for the right.
Get it right, and we win. Get it wrong, or don’t care whether you get it right or not, and we lose. Right now, I see a suspicious amount of dodging around in the press on the sex of the controller and of the pilot who was flying. DEI? Maybe. Find out.
The concern is not the particular pilots and controllers involved in the accident. The concern is that the FAA’s DEI hiring requirements prevented them from filling many empty controller slots and turning away qualified white males.
Either way.
That’s important, but it’s not the same as saying “DEI killed these people”. This isn’t some mere technicality. If we want to succeed in reversing the culture, we have to have good aim. Otherwise many reasonable people who are sliding over to our side are going to look at this and say, “You made a false charge and couldn’t back it up.”
If the pilot flying was supposed to stay out of the flight path or stay under 200 feet, did they? If they didn’t, then no, it’s not all on the flight controllers.
Let’s suspend all flights into or out of DC.
Indefinitely.
For everyone’s safety.
This is Ricochet.
Embrace the power of “and.”
I also wonder if any previous controllers from that location, were booted because they wouldn’t risk the jab.
Was the tower fully staffed?
If the answer to the above is “no,” was inadequate staffing an anomaly, or common practice?
Note that DEI hasn’t necessarily had an impact so far, but if qualified applicants were being turned away and the rationale for doing so was that they were pale and male, that would be a problem.
If the tower was understaffed, that would be an indication that the workload could have been excessive and efficiency therefor impaired.
If the tower was frequently understaffed, that could mean that the personnel was fatigued which also negatively affects efficiency.