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Comment by bryant | Hacker News Reader

Not that being near DC affords me any kind of right to an opinion, but:

Given the uptick in near miss incidents across the US the last few years, this is the kind of incident that should've been entirely avoidable through changes in policy from these past events but is also apparently the only kind that can spur along policy changes. I can see a world where the fault is on the VH-60, but absent more information, it would surprise me less to hear that it's the fault of the tower.

Knowing where AA5342 was in its approach, I see no possibility of the jet being at fault.

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL5342

I'm drawing a lot of early conclusions but it's mostly because I'm just not surprised. Angry as someone who flies a bunch, but not surprised.

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Regulations are written in blood, which is why it's such a disservice to indiscriminately tear it all down. We will re-learn the same lessons and people will pay for those lessons with their lives.

Some regulations are written and blood but some regulations are written to cover someone's ass and the two should not be treated equally. We shouldn't give equal respect to the Federal Aviation Regulations and to OPM's Qualification Standards for Federal Jobs; doing so deligitamizes the importance of the former.

That's entirely true. Thank you for the correction. I spoke overly broadly.

If everyone writing regulations were as rigorous as the FAA people wouldn’t be clamoring to reduce regulations.

You mean the same FAA people that allowed Boeing to self certify? The FAA is not spotless. I can only imagine how much worse air travel would be without them, but they are only run by humans trying to work in a political controlled environment.

Congress directed the FAA--by law--to delegate certain aspects of certification to non-FAA entities. This directive was issued by H.R. 302 - FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, 115th Congress.

Is that the 49 USC 44736 Organization designation authorizations part?[1]

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/302/...

Yes, the ODAs. I'm not making a value judgement that this is good, bad, or indifferent. I'm just trying to provide factual context to understand when and why the delegation of certain aspects of certification has occurred.

The FAA is pretty bonkers; Rayiner is right here. Besides, what other system beyond "humans trying to work in a political controlled environment" are you advocating here?

> You mean the same FAA people that allowed Boeing to self certify?

Reputation lags reality.

Boeing used to be a product-first organization, and the FAA relied on that. However Boeing changed and put other priorities first and started cutting corners but their reputation was still good. After all, why would Boeing (unlike, say, tobacco) sell products that would kill their customers: it would be against Boeing's own interests.

In the 1980s and 1990s Boeing could be trusted to have less oversight, but since the 2000s that was no longer true, but no one noticed that. Now everyone recognizes that Boeing needs a babysitter.

> sell products that would kill their customers

Because the company ended up being run by people who had no clue what it takes to not kill your customers.

The existence of all the "FAA: We are not happy until you are not happy" funny t-shirts seems to disagree with that observation.

Ehh...FAA is kind of crazy and subject to a certain conceit. That's not to say they're bad, or always wrong, but they are a little nuts. For instance there's a rule that says you can't fly under a bridge. A floatplane pilot was on the water, increased his speed so that his floats got on a plane, while still on the water. FAA decided this was flying, even though he was going below stall speed and was by definition not flying. Courts until recently deferred judgement to the agencies that made the rules, and the guy lost his case (and his pilot's license? Don't recall). Also see how shooting a drone flying over your property (even if they don't have a transponder and are literally watching your kids) gets treated as downing an aircraft. Also see the recent kerfuffle between FAA and FCC with 5G. That was just nuts.

FAA is however an agency that regularly tangles with SpaceX and could be seen as slowing them down. Seems like a conflict of interest for the guy tasked with government efficiency.

Why don’t you identify all these easily found regulations then?

There’s a whole YIMBY movement, for example, that has identified specific regulations that are no longer valid and have made tremendous strides in proving and changing these regulations for almost universally better outcomes.

So where are all these specific regulations that are so terrible and the evidence that they are indeed net negatives.

I absolutely believe such regulations exist. But that’s not what these people care about. They simply care about trashing the govt to make it easier to drown, otherwise they would actually act like the YIMBY movement and identify specific regulations and work on changing those.

There was an awful lot of complaining about rolling back regulations in the first Trump term, so maybe the administration does care about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-envir...

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-regulatory-chang...

^^ includes Trump's first term and Biden's term.

> Why don’t you identify all these easily found regulations then?

That was rude, and didn't at all speak to OP's point. They indicated that not all regulations are equal. Some are important and put into place because people died without them. Others are put into place for less important reasons. And the fact that _some_ regulations were removed doesn't mean that "ones written in blood" necessarily were.

There are definitely regulations out there written by people that have no idea what they are talking about, and that are a net negative on the area(s) they impact. Does that mean we should remove Chesterton's Fence? No. But it does mean that, if you see someone removing a fence, you shouldn't immediately accuse them of causing harm.

Not as rude as ignorant indiscriminate knee-jerk criticism of government work.

It’s not rude. Making some inane point contrasting FAA regulations to HR rules is a stupid comparison feeding the nihilist attitude that everything is broken, except for what I think.

Air regulations are “written in blood”. Nobody claimed that OPM rules about HR were.

I took it more as a don't throw the baby out with the bath water type comment. Regulations _do_ need to be looked at and decided if they should be kept. Not every regulation was written in blood, and not every regulation is going to get people killed if we get rid of it. Some of them are critical, no doubt. But there's also a lot of them written by people that don't know what they're doing, but feel the need to justify their job.

Okay, what blood was the NOAA regulations concerning earth-observing satellites written in? The national security justification is quite flimsy when you remember that China, Russia, etc are not bound to those regulations, only satellites from the US.

Ooh… which ones?

Classic Edgerton’s Fence: If you don’t know why someone put up a fence, don’t take it down.

Chesterton's Fence

Oof. Correct.

Typically, the ones that protect me are good, the ones that slow me down are bad. Easy!

The latter is how you get a workforce qualified to write the former, rather than a bunch of hacks who know nothing about aviation safety.

> Regulations are written in blood, which is why it's such a disservice to indiscriminately tear it all down. We will re-learn the same lessons and people will pay for those lessons with their lives.

And which regulation was eliminated that caused this?

This would, if the system is working, be the blood that future regulations are written in. That these kinds of things happen so rarely came to us at a cost of past lives.

OK then, what regulation do you think was missing that could have prevented this

I mean, that's pretty obvious right? It's absolutely insane to have VFR traffic passing through the final approach corridor, especially at night.

Apparently not obvious enough for anyone in the FAA ever, over numerous decades, to think it can’t be safely done.

I have a feeling from your comment that you know more about aviation than you are letting on, and the part about being in DC not giving you a right to an opinion seems pretty silly in that context.

blancolirio (active pilot who regularly makes videos about crahses with the aim of improving safety) just released a new video on this accident: https://youtu.be/_3gD_lnBNu0

Summary: The helicopter might have been a little bit too high. The night vision goggles might have negatively affected the vision. The two aircraft were probably on different frequencies so didn’t hear each other. And the helicopter might have focused on the wrong plane to avoid because they didn’t see the right one thanks to the city skyline. It looks like the classic swiss cheese where multiple problems stacked up to cause the collision. See the video for details.

Wouldn’t the aircraft see the helicopter?

Unlikely; the pilots are (correctly) following the approach controller's direction. It's approach's responsibility to keep them clear of other traffic. Also they just got handed a different runway to land on that's a lot shorter and in one of the more complex airspaces of the planet; they're busy.

Air traffic controllers are staffed at 65% across the US. Budget cuts and turnover are cited. Meanwhile the FAA is being rattled to its core by the Orange One.

This seems to be a resolved problem and one that we shouldn't have in this era. An unnecessary tragedy.

Reagan should have been shut down for commercial use many moons ago.

It will never be shut down because it's got all the exceptions so that Congresscritters don't have to be treated the same as us plebians.

>It will never be shut down because it's got all the exceptions so that Congresscritters don't have to be treated the same as us plebians.

DCA is open to the public.

DCA is open to the public. But it has lots of ways for Congressmen to avoid the inconveniences that you and I have to endure.

The other airports in the area do not have those.

Please expand.

I fly out of DCA and IAD frequently (and JFK and LGA). I’ve gone through the process next to politicians, though I’ve never recognized any highly ranked ones (e.g. Pelosi, McConnell, etc.).

What’s the difference they experience?

Not OP but the only thing I'm aware of is new Senator Jim Justice who seems to use a private plane to get to the airport which seems relatively rare.

https://punchbowl.news/article/senate/jim-justice-takes-priv...

I watched Warren and some of her staff cut the entire pre-check line at BOS. They still had to walk through the metal detectors but without any bags, they whisked through.

I got to cut the line at security once because I was on the job, I was completely embarrassed.

Isn’t that just what CLEAR is?

Kind of but even Clear still has a line. Warren had an airport escort walk her around the stanchions and directly to the metal detector.

> the inconveniences that you and I have to endure.

What are those? With pre check you just more or less walk through and use a metal detector.

A lot of people here like to go on about security. I agree there's a certain amount of theater, and I try to avoid really peak times, but with pre-check I do tend to arrive early because I don't want stress but, as you say, it's rarely more than a few minute wait and I pretty much toss my bag on the carousel and walk through the metal detector. It's really not a big deal if you're prepared.

Your airport sounds a lot better than the ones near me!

In my area they all want you to arrive 2-3 hours before your flight, without any water, then to shuffle through security without your belt and shoes.

I usually arrive about 2 hours before flight time. For one thing, my car company doesn't really want you to cut things close as they'll tend to catch the blame if you miss your flight for some unavoidable reason. But usually security is maybe 5-10 minutes. Don't remember the last time I needed anything like the margin that I give myself.

Probably doesn't hurt that I'm usually taking early morning flights.

2-3 hours means you get 1-2 hours spending airside.

What's pre-check?

TSA pre-check is a pre-screening program that air travelers can use to bypass the normal security line.

It's not a huge time-saver (any more, used to be more) but gets you out of a few annoyances like removing shoes, unpacking toiletries, and a few other things. And the lines are usually a bit shorter and the ratio of regular traveller to new traveller is a bit better (less likely to get caught behind somebody who doesn't know the process and wastes everybody's time).

And they don't put you through the nudie scanner (or whatever it's called) which is important to some people. I have pre-check automatically through global entry (that basically lets you bypass immigration coming back into the US).

Just got ETA for the UK and you also have e-entry (which usually works) from the US and a number of other countries as well.

Usually true, though I don't believe that's guaranteed.

And all the lines at IAD have the new, high-powered luggage scanners (for carry-on, so still less powerful than the ones used for checked bags). So for those of that fly with film camera gear, we need a hand check with or without pre-check.

Right--though pretty rare in my experience. Though you can always(?) ask for a hand check rather than going through the more invasive scanner.

Haven't used film for a while :-) Back in the film days, at least latterly I traveled with my film in a lead-lined bag.

Not disagreeing, but is there something particularly wrong with DCA?

It's in the middle of a city, with lots of restricted airspace just _seconds_ of flight time from it.

From what I've heard, it's a challenging airport to land at, particularly because one of the approaches has two sharp turns in it, and I think the main winds tend to be annoying crosswinds for the main runway. Also, the airport is surrounded by lots of restricted airspace because, you know, seat of federal government and all that.

Short runway too. 9/11 restrictions only made it that much worse.

It was discussed post 9/11 about closing National Airport, but congress wouldn't hear it. It was too convenient from DC. (At a time when IAD was way the hell out there, rather than being 1/2 the way out the sprawl.)

I won't fly through DCA in the winter, because when I was a kid there was the Air Florida crash. I'd much prefer IAD with it's 3 mile runways and straight approaches.

The Air Florida crash had very little to do with the airport and a lot to do with the pilots who took off with dangerous amounts of ice/snow on the wings. Fortunately, de-icing procedures have also improved since then - in the 80s, it was possible to have a long time between deicing and takeoff; today, deicing is done at the end of the runway, shortly before lining up for takeoff.

Full story: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-cold-laws-of-winter-...

I was in 6th grade. It was a shitty day all around -- there was a metrorail accident under the river. I was on a school bus for 4 hours while getting home in the snow. The plane hit a bridge and went into the river.

Think of what you know about DC traffic when there's a flake of snow in the air, and put an airliner crash and a metro accident on top of that.

Maybe it's not logical, but I'm still not a fan of flying through National in the winter.

DCA is great to fly in and out of (I live in DC proper), as it's close, isn't hard to get to, and has a Metro (our subway) station right in front of the terminal, and the airport is fairly easy to navigate once you're in. Dulles now has a Metro station, but it's still far away from the terminal and it's hard to navigate, with gates very far away from the terminal; other than the Saarinen architecture, everything else about Dulles is awful. BWI is even further from most parts of DC; there's an AmTrak station where you can catch a bus, but pretty much you're driving an hour+ and it's in the middle of exurban hell.

DCA is challenging for flights, though, as the approach from upriver over the Potomac requires a sudden bank to the right just before landing and the runway's a bit short (tonight's flight was coming in from the southern approach). The Potomac also has a lot of helicopter traffic, between the military (including POTUS/VPOTUS), US Park Police, DC Police, and civilian flights. DCA's natural advantages have put the screws to Dulles the last 20 years, and Dulles's inability to not suck hasn't helped. As a result, people (including Members of Congress) want more flights out of DCA, so flight traffic has steadily increased. There were two near-misses last spring: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/faa-investigating-colli....

Tonight's crash seems like a colossal screwup by the helicopter. DCA is too popular for flight traffic to cease, but I wouldn't be surprised by further restricting the flight corridors and helicopter traffic, more funding/staffing for ATC, and maybe a small reduction in flights.

> more funding/staffing for ATC

More funding? From an administration that is currently doing its best to get rid of as many federal employees as possible and has an extra "department" (led by you-know-who) dedicated to that? What they will probably do with ATC is privatize it (which is actually a reasonable thing to do - it's private in most of Europe, but if the intention behind it is to save money, it will probably not improve the system).

I would not be surprised if ATC _at DCA_ gets some more funding given the complicated air traffic environment and its unique position as Congress’s second-favorite airport.

What is Congress' favorite airport?

Presumably Dulles because international and probably long-haul generally flights. (Though I imagine more fly in and out of Reagan/National on a regular basis.)

Huh, yeah I think that's maybe the Virginia delegation's favorite airport but I'm highly skeptical it is for other members as it's pretty far and while it does have more flights, I don't think it's incredible. For international flights when traveling for work, many Congresspeople will use milair anyways. For reference, I worked as a staffer in Congress for a couple of years and just picked this up although I've never done any in-depth research

Congressmen from areas that can serve DCA tend to pick DCA due to proximity/convenience. Noted elsewhere, it's a bit easier to navigate internally (smaller, newer terminal building vs IAD), though I don't know how much that impacts Congressmen - I'm guessing they at minimum are using first class/preferred facilities and not queuing up with us plebes for security.

Periodically, Congress pushes to have DCA take more traffic total and from a larger portion of the US. Currently, DCA is limited to destinations 1250 miles away, though powerful Congressmen have obtained permanent waivers for this over the years for specific flights so they get an easy flight to their own home region.

What is the rationale for the mile limit (other than protectionism for Dulles, which is what I suspect the answer is)? DCA’s short runways and tight space mean larger aircraft can’t use so that’s already a natural limiter.

My bias is that I think Dulles needs to become a better airport rather than limiting competition with DCA.

The rule was put in place by Congress in 1966, when IAD opened. Notionally to manage congestion at DCA, but yes also to get residents to use IAD, which was intended to be DC’s major airport.

When I fly to Washington from Europe I try to go to Baltimore - the number of hours I’ve lost at Dulles immigration arrival is painful, Baltimore is 5-10 minutes.

Their respective home airports, of course. ;-)

Ha, should have guessed that!

There's a privately controlled tower at KSQL (San Carlos) and there have been numerous incidents of ATC losing their cool on pilots, sometimes brand new students. All the YT comments say it's because it's privately controlled and understaffed and many pilots vouch for similar drama happening to them. I can't prove it, just passing along a data point. Obviously this problem could be solved by paying better and having enough staff. But how likely is that?

KSQL's current controllers have announced that they are all quitting effective tomorrow.

The private corp running the tower lowered their pay by eliminating COL adjustments in the latest contract renewal (a big deal for an airport that is in Palo Alto).

This weekend, with no planning, there will be a completely untowered airport operating underneath the airspace of SFO.

The management is scrambling right now to prevent this, but the best case scenario is that controllers with no experience or local knowledge in training will be thrown into a tower on the busiest day of the week with no colleagues that have done the job before.

good for them (I'm not advocating for a more dangerous, uncontrolled airport, I think pilots should not fly there). Any private ATC should be required to put 50-100M in escrow (at a minimum) and/or insurance to cover mass casualty events caused by their failure.

Thank's for the detailed explanation! I have a warm spot in my heart for Dulles, because it's my first memory of American (we flew into Dulles from Bangladesh in 1989). It's really convenient if you live in Great Falls or Reston. And I loved what was then the semi-rural Virginia around the airport. But agreed, it's a huge pain in the butt to navigate.

For all the hate EWR (Newark) gets, I much prefer to connect through from there to Europe from Boston than Dulles. My biggest objection to EWR is that it's a PITA to get into Manhattan from but, then, that's pretty much true of all the NYC airports. I'm rarely doing that though as I'm almost always taking the train into the city.

> the airport is fairly easy to navigate once you're in.

I see you skipped talking about how terrible it is navigating the road traffic to arrivals/departures

You mean if you’re driving? Sometimes there’s bad traffic around the ring and sometimes there’s not, a lot of airports are like that.

Specifically the terrible signage and navigation to the right dropoffs

DCA is just across the Potomac River from DC and thus large amounts of restricted air space. This makes take offs and landings at DCA challenging since all this restricted air space has to be avoided. DCA also has not space to expand to try to mitigate the risks. Congress has interfered over the years by attaching riders to legislation requiring the number of flights allowed in and out of DCA to be increased over the objection of the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority (MWAA) who runs both DCA and IAD (Dulles). This despite decades of warnings that the number of flights posses a significant safety risk.

Regional airport authorities which run multiple airports such as MWAA generally spread the cost of improvements out across the multiple airports by increasing gate fees at all the airports they control to cover the cost of improvements at any one airport. Congress has forbidden MWAA to do so which has limited their ability to expand and improve IAD to lure airlines to shift domestic flights from DCA to IAD. IAD remains primarily an international airport with domestic flights in and out supporting that role. This is largely due to the higher gate fees at IAD.

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