Another fatal air crash

 

Trump 2.0 - destroying air safety

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday that beginning this weekend, the San Carlos Airport, which lies along the final approach to San Francisco International Airport (SFO), will no longer have anyone manning its control tower. The resignations came after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reassigned controllers' contracts to a firm that pays less.

Airport manager Gretchen Kelly said "understandably, all current controllers have declined [the firm's new] offers."

[...]

San Carlos Flight Center owner Alessandro Franco said air traffic control at the airport is "hugely important" due to its proximity to SFO and its typically busy airspace. Aircraft approaching the San Carlos Airport alternates between communicating with air traffic controllers at San Carlos and those at SFO. Now, he's worried the resignation of controllers will mean there is "another layer of safety that’s not going to be present."

  MSN

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The air crash over the Potomac

Greg Sargent spoke to Juliette Kayyem, former DHS official who looks at conditions that might have led to the crash that had trump "[seething] with anger at reporters who dared to ask tough questions about his claims." (Greg Sargent)

Sargent: This jet had 64 people on board and crashed into the Potomac River after colliding with a military helicopter at around 9 p.m. on Wednesday night. The helicopter appeared to be on a training flight.

[...]

Kayyem: The why is still being reviewed; obviously it’s just been a few hours. On the basic facts, American Airlines regional plane collided with an Army helicopter. Conditions were clear, as we know. The passenger jet from Wichita, Kansas, was just about to arrive at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, one in a succession of airliners landing about two minutes apart, and that’s not abnormal for national airport. The Black Hawk was on a very typical training mission from Virginia’s Fort Belvoir. And we had been told, and I think the basic census, both of them were on standard flight patterns, well known for the D.C. area. [...] That’s why the investigation has to determine what, in fact, happened.

[...]

There’s only three places where the error could have occurred, especially since we know that the circumstances were pretty normal: the pilot of the airplane, the pilot of the helicopter where there’s a lot of focus on what was going on, or something happened in the air traffic control room.

We have audio of the air traffic control room. It does not appear that someone wasn’t.... The helicopter pilot was notified of a visual concern. In other words, he needed visual on an airplane. He says he has it. We don’t know if he’s looking at the right plane. So in terms of miscommunication, the air traffic controller could have been more specific about which plane, or the helicopter pilot misunderstood it. Now that has nothing to do with any of the hirings that the FAA was looking at because in particular, all three of those positions—only three people who were in charge of that time—have to go through a training and standards process that are not diversity based.

[...]

The unsophisticated nature of how [Trump] deals with complexity is while most of us in the field are looking at this saying, We have a normal thing. Lots of traffic, that’s normal. Weather was normal. No suspicion of anything weird. And then a tragedy. What’s the why?, Donald Trump thinks he can answer that with his right-wing infused media consumption. He tries to fill the airwaves at a press conference that, while nothing should shock me now, I think I had forgotten how bad he is in this particular role of crisis management. [...] If you just go back to the Covid press conferences, this felt very similar to that: just a bunch of BS and then anger when those lies are confronted.

Sargent: So Trump immediately goes out there at a time when we really just don’t know a whole lot and blames Democrats and DEI for the crash.

[...]

He lumps himself in with a superior species of some amorphous type that who the hell knows exactly what he means, but I do think that there’s a deep racial component to it on some level. He’s also asked at one point what evidence he has that DEI hires were to blame, and he said, “Just could have been.” Really sloppy shit.

[...]

What actually happened over the last few administrations with the FAA?

Continue reading.  Or listen to it on Sargent's Daily Blast podcast episode.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 08:32 am:

Hmmm.  Give me a second.

Trump is insane.  What else is new, Chris?   Also, surely  Biden and DEI are still somehow responsible for the helicopter flying too high.  

Yes.

UPDATE 08:48 pm:

UPDATE 02/09/2025:

[I]t turns out that the program to offer FAA careers to people with disabilities—the program Trump specifically decried yesterday—was a Trump administration initiative from 2019.

  Bulwark

Thoughts and prayers

No doubt it's a deep state plot to make Trump look bad.

In fact, on the other hand, who would put it past Trump or his lackies to stage a terrible incident to start another spiral of executive "emergency" power grab?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10:03 pm:

From BBC:

UPDATE 01/30/2025:

Brilliant.  Thanks for making that clear.  We weren't sure.

Of course they did.  Absolutely predictable.

Aso absolutely predictable.

Everybody knows the opportunity to polish off the target is when it's down on the ground and before it can get back up.

Also, look at the chyron.

Opinions trump facts every time.  Or should I say - Trump opinions beat facts every time.

LOL.  Where'd they find that?

God, that man is a dick.

Just plain pathetic.

The Trump library is going to be a house of horrors - but also a joke.

Yes.

I have a feeling we'll never again (at least while MAGA rules) get any investigation of any disaster or event that we can believe.*  (On the other hand, if he can just sign an order blaming Biden for anything, maybe we will.)

Also, yes.

UPDATE 07:19 pm:

UPDATE 01/31/2025:

Sargent: Well, you brought up the fact that the DEI programs persisted through the Trump administration. Trump read from an article basically saying that the FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe disabilities, including intellectual, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. That’s more or less what he said. What’s he referring to there?

Kayyem: He’s referring to unbelievably generic language that is used in efforts to hire. The FAA needs bodies. We know that in particular after Covid or during Covid it lost a lot of personnel. And once again, they’re hiring for lots of positions. And once again, some of those positions, when you think about say mental disability, might include military members with PTSD who have skills that the FAA may actually want. This is the idea he has: of some elite group of people, all white, all look like Secretary Duffy and Secretary Hegseth, of this toxic masculinity being the smart, brilliant, the best of the best. And that’s his idea of who should be in these types of roles.

  New Republic

That may be what he's "referring to," but I want to know just where he got that wording he uses. It looks like utter made-up bullshit, which is something he resorts to as often as he takes a breath.

*

And, can we all keep in mind that DEI does NOT mean hiring UNQUALIFIED people.  That's the purview of Trump 2.0.

UPDATE 02/09/2025:

[I]t turns out that the program to offer FAA careers to people with disabilities—the program Trump specifically decried yesterday—was a Trump administration initiative from 2019.

  Bulwark

Yet Another Blackhawk Down

A US army helicopter, with four people believed to be on board, has crashed on a night mission in southwestern Afghanistan, a US defence official says.

[...]

Two US defence officials told the Associated Press news agency that four US troops were aboard the helicopter, identified as an Army Black Hawk, and one official said initial word from the scene was that officials "don't expect" that any of the four survived.

[...]

While helicopter crashes occur with some regularity in Afghanistan, ISAF says they are rarely the result of Taliban fire.

  alJazeera

Of course not. Begging the question: what is causing “regular” helicopter crashes? If it's not Taliban fire, shouldn't we have fixed that problem?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.