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When the refs don't help you win....AND the crowd booed Taylor Swift.

Lets hope he kicks Cat 5 to the curb as well.

Easiest fix (besides meeting altitude requirements while flying in B): Tower shouldn't let helos maintain visual separation with an aircraft circling to land 33 at night. Also tower, should have pinged Pat about their altitude. You can easily see with your eyeballs that Pat was too high. That was the first thing I noticed watching the video of the collision. Edit: I used to teach dudes to hover or do 180 when traffic was landing to 33. It happened enough that I made it a point to tell the new guys I flew with about it, as my instructors did for me. It's generally a bad idea to fly under landing traffic on short final.

Agreed with all points except this one. If the helo crew had been spot on their altitude, that would have not been anything close to comfortable separation. Would their altitude error have garnered more than a downgrade on a checkride? Unfortunate that these deaths are what it took to highlight that unsafe margin. …but I guess that’s the nature of unsafe margins; it’s all well and good until it isn’t.

That could very well be the best description ever of the Max.

There should not be circling at night at this point (for airlines). An rnav rnp approach can be built to any runway from any spot with all sorts of crazy turns. Both DC and LGA have them. But then you wouldn't be able to treat it like a visual maneuver and let helicopters fly right under the final approach course. This was about packing as much traffic into a shitty airport that should have been closed or fixed decades ago. That's it. Everybody already knows all of the things that shouldn't have happened because they knew about them while they were happening. Yes, ultimately the helicopter crew is at fault in this specific case. But a whole lot of people higher ranking and with way more experience than them tolerated the absolute dumpster fire of DCA because it was easier than taking a stand. Just more "good dudes" who aren't willing to tell their bosses no. Maybe this changes with Trump. He's certainly putting people in power who didn't spend the first 40 years of their adult lives being Yes men and yes women. But at this point we probably need to immolate 75-90% of the managerial class in both corporate America and the government. Somehow while we were all fat dumb and happy the sociopaths took everything over. On the corporate side that's going to happen with a revival of labor unions. On the government side it'll be with elections obviously. But I'm not sure individual events like this are going to be enough to turn the tide. Probably going to take something bigger to really flip the table.

I can think of a place they might start. 28 agencies were authorized to fly helicopters near Reagan Airport before deadly crash

I'm just impressed you haven't slipped up over the years. Impressive.

Not even remotely the same. Ukraine didn't send a bunch of thugs into Russia to rape women, randomly kill people, and literally throw babies into bonfires. If Ukraine had done that to Russia and Russia invaded Ukraine as a response, I don't think you would see anyone here advocating helping Ukraine. Keep in mind that Hamas was elected by the people. They knew the type of people they were putting in power. The Palestinians celebrated Oct 7th as a victory. Women and children beat hostages and cheered as they dragged the bodies naked dead women down the street. What's a reasonable long term solution? Clearly the status quo isn't working and is only going to lead to more death and suffering. Palestine was offered statehood in Gaza and they rejected it. There will be no long-term peace. This is one sad situation where there doesn't seem to be any middle ground and so it looks like it is going to be a winner-take-all solution. If that's the case, I support the side that doesn't celebrate throwing babies into fires. As far as the region, the leaders of other countries in the area only pay lip service to supporting Palestine. They don't like or want the Palestinians and I would bet that if they could get a good excuse to look the other way while Israel takes over Gaza, they would do so happily. Only reason they pretend to support the Palestinians is because it would look bad to their people to favor Israel.

I don't think anyone knows, unless it's in the comm. More than likely it's just an accidental altitude deviation. Keep in mind, they're flying over a river at night (extremely limited visual reference for height), trying to shack an altitude with very little margin for error. And then being asked to look for traffic and visually separate from it. These procedures are no-step stupid.

IDK, it seems we have a fair amount of GOs that were educated in the old system we pine and argue for but undercut the requirement of pilot training and effort it takes to train a mil pilot by pushing this Next UPT or UPT 2.0 that minimizes actual training and frankly denigrates the heavy / crew side of the LAF… going to fly heavies? Well, it’s not really that big of a deal so let’s just min run your training and call it good… some of these guys, a lot of them flew heavies and from my point of view they’re cuckholes watching our career path get banged away while in the corner whimpering it’s ok because…. grow some balls and just say no to being made a second class pilot track in fact and in the eyes of your peers This is incredible tech and it will supplant some of the human in the loop but not all, I mean the people who make the technology and sell the technology are also the people saying we need to run head long into it seems conflicted but as with BVR missiles, the first generation of that tech was way overhyped and not ready to fully commit to, we learned that in Vietnam the hard way, I argue for us to be not skeptical but require several steps of empirical proof and experience before we go that route even half way, the best hedge is to improve our processes and current tech while prudently investing in the new… My hope is that someone at the level that could stop this direct flight to shittsville training would put their reputation on the line and say the emperor actually has no clothes on Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The idea is logical. Has been for years. The technology is what's ascendant. The writing has been on the wall since the DARPA Grand Challenge over 20 years ago. The United States should be running head first into autonomous war machines with the explicit goal of putting human pilots out of the job. In the meantime, until that technology is matured, we should be training the world's most competent and lethal military pilots. It seems like on one side we have pilot-leaders who will throw a wrench in anything that threatens their identity as a pilot, and on the other hand we have technologist-visionaries who are willing to diminish the capabilities of human pilots in an attempt to justify their robot weapons before they are up to snuff. Both are pretty gross, and both will get people killed unnecessarily.

I agree that they (CRJ) should have cleared final prior to landing but I wouldn't label this as causal. There's a certain amount of trust I'd have on the tower not clearing me to land with potential conflict on final. They weren't landing to an uncontrolled airfield.

Maybe. But the regional pilots likely heard one side of the radio traffic that would have lead them to believe that the military traffic had them in sight and was deconflicting from them. Before this accident, I'm betting the vast majority (like 95% or more) of pilots would hear that and move on to focusing 100% on flying the non-standard night visual approach they likely hadn't expected or briefed. Also, if the FO was flying, that would only make it less likely that he would time share looking for the helo while on short final. And that's if they even had an idea of where to look for it.

It’s so easy guys: Why don’t we just give UPT over to DOGE? Surely Elon can right this ship. /s

I think that's my third post recently where my sarcasm didn't come though.

If only… The problem is the Bobs, limited money and using one airplane to do to missions A T-X / A-X would not have the larger costs, DMS problems and likely skepticism of Congress methinks Is it 1500 pilots a year we need, 1100 fighter pilots we need or both? Then get to it, use the infrastructure and people you have but shift their missions to meet the need you have Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nothing. I made too general of a statement by typing the words "everyone involved". I agree.

general chang provides excellent insight at the flag level. like him or not he is well connected and has the pulse of leadership.

Unbelievably sad. We had the greatest flight school the world has ever seen…. “Let’s fuck it all up!!!”

I stole this from the interwebs.

This. On one checkride, I observed a Pilot blow through the ILS on base to final. He had no idea how this could have happened. So I intervened, to let him know that he forgot to check that he had the right course dialed in and that this was a direct result of the the Pilot neglecting to check his gig on the downwind. This created an electric phenomenon, causing the aircraft's ILS to malfunction. It was a shame, the dude was a good Pilot, but I had to teach him a lesson. Unfortunately for him, he did this during a checkride so my hands were tied. The only man I ever saw cry during a debrief. The last that I heard, he transitioned to be a woman Pilot flying rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong.

You'll get a sq full of flawless gig lines! Nothing makes an airman fly better than perfect uniforms backed up by endless quarterly meat gazzing parties. As a former Evaluator, I used to line up the crew (crews for formation) outside of the briefing room to take a good look at their crotches. Some of the best aviators I knew had perfect gig lines. Perfectly lined up shirts, belts and pants equaled an instant EQ! No need to fly. I knew they were good. Edit: The one piece flight suit made gig lines pretty easy to evaluate. I hooked a guy once because he had a mangina zipper. The two piece flight suit was more fun, you could really get into the nooks and crannies. I only allowed them to put on their body armor once the lines were properly gigged. The gig line check should be incorporated into the before landing checklist AF wide. The last step. Gig Line.................."Checked" Before landing checklist...... "Completed" Even you fighter guys need to be checking your gigs before landing. Flight leads are responsible for the lines for the formation. Also, we will add the gig check as a step into your ingress and egress checklists. This should stop the accidents and increase lethality.

Having done GO/VIP support for more years than I care to remember while I was on AD I learned GO's can individualize their uniforms in ways no one else can. Super annoying when having to explain that shit to Amn. BREAK BREAK Got this from one of my Capt's who did some amazing stuff on the cyber side. Good to know the fuck-you games haven't changed. "My assignment dropped last Monday, and it was to a CyberOps Sq that I didn't bid on, nor did they bid on me. I had matches on all my bids (pretty high ones as well) but AFPC was not helpful. So last week I talked to just about everyone I could (Major Gen name, Group CC, new CC, old CC, AFPC, people in, people out) to see if I could get at least my 2nd bid which was the 90th. AFPC said there were slots open there, but didn't want to fill them because they can't give every CC everything they want (even though we matched). So very frustrating to say the least. My supervisor was really helpful and was really seeking justification, and they kept flip-flopping on "well we have plenty of people with his skills", which my supe said no you don't, and "well we really need him". Wife and I decided we are going to 7-day opt..." So, now I'm helping my boy prep his resume and job hunt for a first gig in the low $100K's. He'll def be making more than me within 5 years, probably 2 if he tries even a little. Good job AF!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Just letting everyone know that the new VA entitlement cap is out for 2025 going up to 806,500 from 766,550 for most of the county with higher limits in more expensive parts of the country. This means that all veterans have more entitlement available to get a second VA loan while keeping a previous home that's still on a VA. If you don't have enough entitlement to go zero down you can still get a second VA loan but there is a formula for determining the required down payment. This also means that if we do a no cost streamline refi for you and your loan amount is below 806,500 you'll get regular VA rates vs VA high balance rates which are a little higher. Don't worry, if you don't have a current VA loan outstanding then you can still go zero down without a limit as long as you qualify debt to income ratio wise. Happy to chat through any scenarios anytime! Enjoy the holidays! Jon