this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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I’m sorry but this is almost certainly unrelated to the crash. High level firings aren’t going to suddenly make air traffic controllers bad at their jobs a week later.
In a year if there’s a major airline disaster you can start pointing the finger at Trump.
You can be as "sorry" as you please; hollowing out vital services (remember, there was only 1ATC on duty when there should've been 2) CULMINATES with a catastrophic systemic failure. Did the gutting of the air safety group cause this - yes. Was it was the straw that broke the camel's back - yes. Try to think less transactionally (like Herr Drumpf) and look at the problem as a whole, not a single incident.
PS, making a mid-air collision the fault of DEI policies is a narrow-minded and facile way to turn a tragedy into a political spectacle that can be monetized. Watch for over priced cheesy Trumpian baubles to "commemorate " this event. Coming soon to TSC.
He was president 4 of the last 8 years. His party has been attacking the job security of air traffic controllers for about 4 decades.
His party led by him even when he wasn't in charge repeatedly shut down the government making essential workers work for free and threatened to do so.
They have been saying that they would basically fire and replace everyone for the last year.
He is the single largest barrier to any effort to retain and hire talent by the federal government since 2016.
None of this speak conclusively to cause which will require investigation but unlike DEI its an actual objective factor its just not as neat a package as this sound byte
That's not what juxtaposition means. It doesn't mean thing A is caused by thing B, it just means that thing A and thing B appearing next to each other produce an interesting association.
@errer@lemmy.world this is an important distinction with this post. It's explicitly saying they are unrelated by saying it's a juxtaposition.
Yeah, there's almost certainly no immediate connection. It's possible that ATC people or the pilots were distracted by the Trump chaos, but he took office 10 days ago, 10 days isn't enough for a real cause-and-effect relationship here.
Having said that, this is definitely a warning of what his terrible decisions could do. Hopefully there's enough of a backlash that he'll reverse himself.
You might can point the finger sooner, just not for the reason OP hints at. The helicopter was military, and there a closer link to Trump and his administration given that. I wouldn't jump to conclusions, but he is already blaming DEI, because of course he is.
I mean it was a Black Hawk, that seems like a DEI hire. /s
Black Hawk Tuah is the cause of the crash!
(Also /s, of course)
Nice.
There are layers to this comment.
An ogre of a thread
Well, DEI makes the pilots gay and everybody knows what the gays do when there's a stiff stick in front of them. It's so simple.
They did say they wanted the military to be more lethal. Didn't think they'd start with such soft targets as domestic passenger airlines though.
My brother works for the FAA. It's been fucked for a while now and Trump isn't gonna make it better. They are dangerously understaffed.
That being said, yeah this wasn't Trump's or the FAA's fault. The helicopter pilot was told to maintain visual separation with the landing plane and then didn't do so.
I heard on NPR this morning that the ATC said “do you see the plane” without specifying which plane. There was another larger plane taking off at the same time. So could be partly ATC’s fault.
That being said nothing like this happens without multiple failures by multiple people.
Yeah I feel like it's not really fair on the victims or the victims families to blame any one person at all. It's a tragedy for sure but it's not like anybody fucked up on purpose. It doesn't really help to lay blame on an individual, just figure out where the mistakes happened and amend the procedures so it hopefully doesn't happen again.
The audio is out there, being pretty familiar with air accidents and radio call outs:
ATC wasn't clear, they just said "go behind that plane", yet if you listen to literally any of the other ATC callouts in the surrounding 10m they're all proper with heading and altitude like "AAL111 go to 3000' and hold heading 270", yet with the helo he just says "go behind them"
The helicopter doesn't change heading at all and just basically plows into the passenger jet (from what I can see on the ATC map anyway), so I think either they misjudged their speed vs the jet they hit or mistook it for another jet
Either way: ATC should have been more clear, heli pilot should have asked for clarification before proceeding without any change or even slowed when the uncertain command came through
Given the relative speeds, I think it's more likely the plane plowed into the helicopter than the other way around. The minimum speed of the jet (a CRJ 700) is about 145 knots indicated air speed, the max is about 470 knots. The Black Hawk has a minimum speed of zero, and a maximum of about 180 knots. The two might have been moving at a similar speed, but if one was moving faster and crashed into the slower-moving aircraft, it was almost certainly the jet that crashed into the helicopter.
Black Box Down is a good podcast to hear a bunch of incidents similar with communication being a huge issue in most of them
Do they have an episode on Flight 800? I'd be really interested to hear that.
Did they also receive the federal employee "buy out" email yesterday morning? I'd imagine that would induce a lot of unnecessary added stress.
Also to add, this is hardly the first airplane crash in a while. There was even a near miss in Arizona just over 2 weeks ago https://people.com/united-and-delta-flights-nearly-collide-while-heading-to-phoenix-airport-8774470
Don't be sorry. No one said that this was direct causation. It is merely irony.
It doesn't need to be sudden. It's a fucking problem.
Or it's enough of a distraction that some standard protocols failed due to a psychological shift of confidence in the employees.
This is the correct answer.