Terrible crash in Washington D.C just now

[Golfingboy]

Bombardier CRJ versus a Sikorsky Black Hawk…..some survivors but most are dead….freezing water, night time just awful 

Edited January 30, 2025 by Golfingboy

[Freee!!]

I would recommend watching it on YT itself for the info and comments there.

[Horizondave]

Really sad news. Haven't seen any info about survivors, the news outlets this side of the pond are saying it appears to have moved from search and rescue to a recovery operation.

I really do hope there are survivors but not looking that way.

[Stillearly]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/jan/30/evgenia-shishkova-vadim-naumov-american-airlines-plane-crash-washington-figure-skaters
 

World champion Russian figure skaters confirmed as being on board crashed US plane

Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were on American Airlines plane that crashed near Washington DC as US Figure Skating say athletes and coaches were among passengers

[Stillearly]

 

[Horizondave]

4 hours ago, Stillearly said:

 

As much as the guy has offered an opinion, it would be absolutely shocking if the helicopter had gone dark. That would be madness at low altitude around an active traffic area.

I did think that the helicopter pilot could have been flying blind i.e. the pilot was flying with vision of the instruments only, he could have been training with no visible reference to the outside. Of course that would require the instructor to be aware of the outside by visible means. Again, that would be difficult to see being done near or within an active traffic area.

The whole thing is something which does not happen in the UK.

There are traffic areas that are used for commercial traffic and beyond that there are separate areas for private traffic. You would need permission to fly into another area and be constantly advised by ATC where/what to do. 

When I was flying privately in Fort Worth, Texas, I once went to meet a girlfriend in Dallas. I took a Cessna 172 and flew from Meacham, Fort Worth, to Dallas Lovefield. I was allowed to land among other aircraft, this airport was not off limits and I was allowed to enter into the traffic pattern. The next morning, I got back in the Cessna 172 and taxied to the main runway of the airport. At the holding point, I was joined by a Southwest Airlines 737.  I was shocked to be given clearance ahead of the 737. I stared up at the cockpit and got a friendly wave from the co pilot. I took off and took an immediate turn to the right to clear the airport.

Now as much as that was a wonderful experience, it just wouldn't happen in the UK.

  

[Golfingboy]

Just woke up to CNN analyzing the incident …..ATC asks the helicopter if he has a visual on the CRJ, he replies “yes, request visual separation”…..13 seconds later, another ATC lady in the background is heard crying as she realized what she just witnessed 

WTF happened up there ? I believe he was a trainee on a practice flight, but you reply you see the danger, and crash into it seconds later? SMH, RIP to all

[Golfingboy]

Wow, the Donald is already blaming diversity, equity, inclusion hiring of ATC personnel, under the Biden presidency. Outlandish, but if he’s correct, and someone who was only given the job because of their handicap, caused this crash…..f**k me, he’s got a point

Edited January 30, 2025 by Golfingboy

[galenkia]

17 minutes ago, Golfingboy said:

Wow, the Donald is already blaming diversity, equity, inclusion hiring of ATC personnel, under the Biden presidency. Outlandish, but if he’s correct, and someone who was only given the job because of their handicap, caused this crash…..f**k me, he’s got a point

How can the prick blame that without knowing what happened?.

[Golfingboy]

37 minutes ago, galenkia said:

How can the prick blame that without knowing what happened?.

I’m thinking he had some knowledge of who was on duty, otherwise like I said , very outlandish claim, even for him

Edited January 30, 2025 by Golfingboy

[Freee!!]

1 hour ago, Horizondave said:

[...]

At the holding point, I was joined by a Southwest Airlines 737.  I was shocked to be given clearance ahead of the 737. I stared up at the cockpit and got a friendly wave from the co pilot. I took off and took an immediate turn to the right to clear the airport.

Now as much as that was a wonderful experience, it just wouldn't happen in the UK.  

It might happen at Schiphol in the Netherlands as it is the quickest (and therefor most efficient) way to get both planes up in the air and away from the runway/airport. The minimum safety separation for wake turbulence of that 737 after your Cessna is a lot less than the other way around.

[Horizondave]

1 hour ago, Freee!! said:

It might happen at Schiphol in the Netherlands as it is the quickest (and therefor most efficient) way to get both planes up in the air and away from the runway/airport. The minimum safety separation for wake turbulence of that 737 after your Cessna is a lot less than the other way around.

I realised why I was getting the go first clearance, but it was just funny lined up right next to that large plane and looking at the pilot who smiled at me and gave a wave. Even a 737 looks like Goliath compared to a Cessna.

I was nervous to get out of there, but it was a great experience. It was also a nice journey back to Meacham and then headed for Bennigans for a good feed.

[fygjam]

9 hours ago, Horizondave said:

As much as the guy has offered an opinion, it would be absolutely shocking if the helicopter had gone dark. That would be madness at low altitude around an active traffic area.

I did think that the helicopter pilot could have been flying blind i.e. the pilot was flying with vision of the instruments only, he could have been training with no visible reference to the outside. Of course that would require the instructor to be aware of the outside by visible means. Again, that would be difficult to see being done near or within an active traffic area.

The whole thing is something which does not happen in the UK.

There are traffic areas that are used for commercial traffic and beyond that there are separate areas for private traffic. You would need permission to fly into another area and be constantly advised by ATC where/what to do. 

The Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet near Washington on Wednesday was training near a busy airport, and in a complicated airway, because Army helicopters frequently ferry cabinet officials, lawmakers and other V.I.P.s across the area, Army officials said on Thursday.

The Black Hawk crew was among the Army’s most experienced, consisting of command pilots belonging to the 12th Aviation Battalion out of Fort Belvoir, Va. Those pilots routinely conduct both daytime and nighttime training runs in an air corridor next to Reagan National Airport.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/29/us/plane-crash-washington-dc#air-traffic-control-staffing-plane-crash

[fygjam]

 

[Horizondave]

7 hours ago, fygjam said:

The Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet near Washington on Wednesday was training near a busy airport, and in a complicated airway, because Army helicopters frequently ferry cabinet officials, lawmakers and other V.I.P.s across the area, Army officials said on Thursday.

The Black Hawk crew was among the Army’s most experienced, consisting of command pilots belonging to the 12th Aviation Battalion out of Fort Belvoir, Va. Those pilots routinely conduct both daytime and nighttime training runs in an air corridor next to Reagan National Airport.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/29/us/plane-crash-washington-dc#air-traffic-control-staffing-plane-crash

Something is very odd then if these were the most experienced crew. It doesn't appear they were carrying a VIP and they seemed to be flying straight at the plane without deviating. (from the videos released so far)

They are now saying only 1 ATC worker was coordinating all the air traffic, the plot thickens.

Very sad indeed.

[coxyhog]

16 hours ago, Golfingboy said:

Wow, the Donald is already blaming diversity, equity, inclusion hiring of ATC personnel, under the Biden presidency. Outlandish, but if he’s correct, and someone who was only given the job because of their handicap, caused this crash…..f**k me, he’s got a point

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had been actively recruiting staff with “severe intellectual” disabilities and psychiatric problems as part of a diversity and inclusion drive, according to now-deleted guidelines from the agency’s website.

“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website read.

“They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

The guidelines on diversity and hiring were last updated in March 2022, during the Biden administration, according to reports.

From today's Telegraph,

[forcebwithu]

5 minutes ago, coxyhog said:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had been actively recruiting staff with “severe intellectual” disabilities and psychiatric problems as part of a diversity and inclusion drive, according to now-deleted guidelines from the agency’s website.

“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website read.

“They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

The guidelines on diversity and hiring were last updated in March 2022, during the Biden administration, according to reports.

From today's Telegraph,

Best to always fact check whatever comes out of the convicted felon's pie hole.

Fact check: Trump’s FAA used the same language about hiring people with disabilities he’s now blasting

...

At one point, Trump read from a 2024 New York Post article that said the FAA was “actively recruiting workers who suffer ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.” And after reading out part of a 2024 Fox News article on the same subject, Trump said, “This was (on) January 14, so that was a week before I entered office; they put a big push to put diversity into the FAA’s program.”

Here are four important facts related to Trump’s claim.

Trump falsely claimed the Fox News article was from a week before he entered office: The “January 14” Fox News article Trump cited was, like the New York Post article, actually published on January 14 of last year – not, as Trump claimed, a week before he returned to the presidency in January of this year. In other words, the articles are not evidence that the Biden administration made a frantic last-minute FAA diversity push right before Trump took office again.

The Trump-era FAA had the same language on its website: The FAA’s language encouraging the hiring of people with disabilities, including intellectual and psychiatric disabilities, was featured on the agency’s website throughout Trump’s first presidency and at least as far back as 2013, as the fact-check website Snopes has previously reported. You can click here for the version of the web page captured by the Internet Archive in December 2020, the last full month of Trump’s first term.

The Trump-era FAA also pushed to hire people with disabilities: The federal government passed a law in 1973 that aimed to increase federal hiring of qualified people with disabilities. Like other government agencies, the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, had pushed since at least the George W. Bush administration to increase its hiring of people with certain “targeted disabilities” that create extra barriers to employment. Those include not only intellectual and psychiatric disabilities, but also deafness, blindness, paralysis and missing extremities.
...
Also during Trump’s first term, in 2019, the FAA announced “a pilot program to help prepare people with disabilities for careers in air traffic operations,” saying that “a key focus for the FAA’s Office of Civil Rights is to identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.” The FAA continued to promote the pilot program in the latter half of 2020, near the end of Trump’s first term.
...
The hiring of people with targeted disabilities is a small fraction of overall FAA hiring: The agency’s annual goal for hiring people with targeted disabilities has generally been in the vicinity of 2%. In the 2016 fiscal year under then-President Barack Obama, for example, the FAA said it had exceeded a 2.33% goal by hiring 89 people with targeted disabilities out of 3,373 total hires, a rate of about 2.64%.

[Glasseye]

4 minutes ago, coxyhog said:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had been actively recruiting staff with “severe intellectual” disabilities and psychiatric problems as part of a diversity and inclusion drive, according to now-deleted guidelines from the agency’s website.

“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website read.

“They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”

The guidelines on diversity and hiring were last updated in March 2022, during the Biden administration, according to reports.

From today's Telegraph,

 

Did the reporter who did the story happen to research the job classifications those with disabilities would be targeted ? Did they allow blind, hearing impaired dwarfs with Tourette syndrom to be flight controllers ?

I see the U.S. government has gotten pretty good at allowing convicted sex felons and hard core alcoholics into positions pretty high up. What the heck ?

[coxyhog]

4 minutes ago, forcebwithu said:

Best to always fact check whatever comes out of the convicted felon's pie hole.

What I posted didn't come from Trump,it came from a very respected UK newspaper.

[coxyhog]

Also from the Telegraph

An aspiring air traffic controller who claims he was denied a job because of diversity targets said the aviation agency’s obsession with inclusion made an accident likely to happen.

Andrew Brigida, 35, scored 100 per cent in his training exam but claims he was denied a position in an air traffic control tower because the recruitment process of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) favoured diverse candidates.

He is part of a class action lawsuit filed against the federal agency.

Speaking after the disaster that killed 67 people, Mr Brigida claimed that years of diversity hiring meant it was only a matter of time before an accident happened.

“You want to hire the best and the brightest for this kind of job because it is a very stressful job and it can take a toll on you, age you prematurely,” he told The Telegraph.

“You want to make sure that the people that are doing it are the best.”

The wreckage of the accident in Washington Credit: Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles/US Coast Guard Handout/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Mr Brigida graduated from Arizona State University’s collegiate training initiative in 2013 – a partnership program with the FAA that was previously used to train and select the most qualified applicants.

After scoring top marks in his air traffic control selection and training examination, he was placed on a preferred candidate list, until the FAA changed the rules.

Under the Obama administration, the regulator replaced a skills-based test with a biographical questionnaire to attract more diverse applicants.

When Mr Brigida tried again to become an air traffic controller under the new tests, he said he failed the biographical questionnaire because he “didn’t fit the preferred ethnic profile”.

Donald Trump blamed the fatal crash between a Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines flight 5342 in Washington on the FAA’s recruitment policies.

Mr Trump said he candidates with “severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities” had been hired as air traffic controllers.

Mr Brigida said previous administrations were to blame for the air traffic control staffing crisis because they “got too comfortable because there has not been an incident in a long time”.

He said: “There have been plenty of stories of near miss events that have been the cause of staffing issues, it’s surprising that it’s gone on this long without being properly recognised by the government.”

The moment of the fatal crash between a Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines flight 5342 in Washington

In November 2019, attorneys for Mountain States Legal Foundation sought class action status in a lawsuit for more than 2,500 aspiring air traffic controllers who they say were harmed by the FAA’s racially discriminatory hiring policies.

They argue that the Obama administration endangered public safety by prioritising racial politics and owes compensation for the “grave injustice”.

The FAA and the US transport department are contesting the lawsuit.

Mr Brigida said he failed a biographical questionnaire because he ‘didn’t fit the preferred ethnic profile’

With the case expected to go to court early next year with 900 claimants, Will Trachman, the lead counsel, said Joe Biden tried to sweep the diversity scandal “under the rug”.

“This started under Obama but it’s the Biden administration that tried to sweep it under the rug and assert attorney-client privilege over 14,000 documents and has been trying to oppose and dismiss this case,” Mr Trachman said.

“It’s one thing to do it but the Biden administration refused to recognise the error of the FAA’s ways and so they dug in and, in fact, tried to go bigger on diversity measures.”

American Airlines flight 5342 was descending towards the runway at Ronald Reagan airport in Washington on Wednesday evening when it collided with a US army helicopter and plunged into the Potomac.

All of those onboard both aircraft, including the three service members, were killed in the process.

The US president told a White House press conference that the military helicopter did “the opposite of what it was told” before crashing into the American Airlines flight with 64 people on board.

The president, who has recently signed executive orders dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the federal government, blamed his predecessor for lowering standards and endangering lives.

“My administration will set the highest possible bar for aviation safety,” Mr Trump told reporters, saying you needed a “very special genius” to coordinate air traffic.

Quoting DEI policy, he said that the FAA was “actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions”.

Donald Trump has recently signed executive orders dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the federal government Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Asked if years of diversity hiring meant an accident was waiting to happen, Mr Brigida, who now works in the FAA as a programme manager said: “Yes, that’s kind of accurate.”

Mr Brigida said he hoped Mr Trump would now work “immediately” to fix the staffing crisis.

[coxyhog]

Just now, coxyhog said:

Under the Obama administration, the regulator replaced a skills-based test with a biographical questionnaire to attract more diverse applicants.

If that is true it sucks!

[Nightcrawler]

Let's stick to facts and follow the investigation as the details of the crash unfold without jumping into Political discussion and speculation  

This is a General Topic thread  about a tragedy in which many have lost their lives

There is a Politics Club section of the Forum.

Further such posts will be moved to the appropriately section. 

Thankyou 

[Golfingboy]

JFC…..Just learned on FB it wasn’t  just the Russian couple …..Something like 16 figure skaters lost their lives

[Freee!!]

3 hours ago, Golfingboy said:

JFC…..Just learned on FB it wasn’t  just the Russian couple …..Something like 16 figure skaters lost their lives

And not a single MAGA Congress Critter.

There Ain't No Justice!

[Stillearly]

Trump now tweeting that the Helicopter was flying too high ....

"The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???"

 surely he should just wait until the investigation is complete ... 🤷‍♂️