Small plane crashes in Northeast Philadelphia | Hacker News Reader

Small plane crashes in Northeast Philadelphia

6abc.com

Whatever the cause truly is, any and all aviation disasters in the US will further increase scrutiny of Musk gutting the FAA.

Yeah, but that's one tiny area where Musk and Trump have caused recent chaos.

Just today, social security servers, websites, etc. Treasury department systems.

Why and how are these things related? I acknowledge you’re making an observation and not an argument.

The FAA administrator left his post after Musk asked him to, on January 20. The FAA had no administrator until Trump appointed one, only after the plane and helicopter crashed into the Potomac. The lack of leadership at the FAA could not have helped the situation, even if it was not a direct cause of it.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-emails-air-traffic...

> Air traffic controllers were emailed by the Trump administration urging them to quit their jobs and take mass “buyouts” just 24 hours after the D.C. plane crash. They were among hundreds of thousands of federal workers sent the email at 8.30 p.m. Thursday to push the extraordinary offer by Trump’s aides to get civil servants to quit en masse. The email dropped almost exactly 24 hours after an Army helicopter crashed into an American Airlines jet as it came into land at Reagan National Airport, killing 67 people. Just one air traffic controller was doing the work of two controllers at the time, early reports have suggested.

FAA Faces Controller Staffing Challenges as Air Traffic Operations Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels at Critical Facilities [OIG Report AV2023035] - https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/FAA%20Controller... - June 21, 2023

Airline Close Calls Happen Far More Often Than Previously Known - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airl... | https://archive.today/5qabt - August 21, 2023

Drunk and Asleep on the Job: Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/business/air-traffic-cont... | https://archive.today/h4gjo - December 2, 2023

The ATC labor force was already stretched thin before this. Tired, overworked humans make mistakes. There is no slack in the system, and it's being pushed further towards failure. Safe travels.

Is this all real? We are headed into blatant corporate fascism. This is very scary stuff.

Looking this stuff up, apparently it's now being reported that Musk has taken over the Office of Personnel Management and General Services Administration.

All federal workers were sent this email: https://www.opm.gov/fork

From the FAQ:

> > Why am I being offered deferred resignation?

> The federal workforce is expected to undergo significant near-term changes. As a result of these changes (or for other reasons), you may wish to depart the federal government on terms that provide you with sufficient time and economic security to plan for your future — and have a nice vacation.

Keep in mind that even getting an email like this is quite implicitly distressing.

This being sent out to all ATC controllers means that you added an extra, unnecessary amount of uncertainty into their lives and that will directly translate to their work.

Sutely, when there is a head of the FAA, that person occasionally takes a vacation or other time off. These plane crashes are totally unrelated to politics or staffing.

> Sutely, when there is a head of the FAA, that person occasionally takes a vacation or other time off.

What does that have to do with anything? My boss takes vacations too, but if my team didn’t have a manager we would surely be worse off.

> These plane crashes are totally unrelated to politics or staffing.

Please provide a citation for this claim.

If the CEO of a corporation is absent does all the mid and bottom level stuff just stop working? FAA may have been headless but the head never really had anything to do with the people getting stuff done.

If everyone in the company gets a “consider resigning” email, though? Probably some mayhem.

https://www.opm.gov/fork

> Below is the email that was sent to federal employees on January 28, 2025 presenting a deferred resignation offer. If you did not respond to that email and wish to accept the deferred resignation offer, you may do so by following these steps.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-administration-offeri...

> The White House expects up to 10% of federal employees to quit in September in a program meant to end work-from-home practices, senior administration officials told CBS News.

Yes, I understand that. ATC was woefully understaffed and overworked long before Trump was in office. It would be really hard to definitively tie Trump actions to a particular incident.

Yes, that’s tough, like tracking deaths back to coal plants. We know it happens, we just can’t really say which specific ones, so it’s “cost of doing business” instead of murder.

At the very least, extending resignation offers to 2M federal employees, including at the FAA, seems likely to exacerbate the problem going forwards.

You are trying to rhetorically connect these issues when they are unrelated. You can be appalled by the state of US ATC and appalled by the new administration without looking for a non existent reason to connect the two.

“We have a huge staffing problem. We are hoping 5-10% of our staff quit, it will save billions!”

They seem a tiny bit connected.

> If the CEO of a corporation is absent does all the mid and bottom level stuff just stop working?

If they leave abruptly without planning for their absence? Yes, quite possibly.

I'd agree, if there was no head of the agency for many months, confusion and lack of direction would drift down and be disruptive. But 8 days after he left? That's equivalent to a vacation, and, as you noted, people manage just fine.

I'll revise my earlier statement. It has nothing to do with the staffing of the agency's head. Yes, if there were not enough traffic controllers, that's indeed a staffing problem. But if the former head of the agency let that go on, putting air safety at risk, then he deserved to be fired.

The problem with ATC is that they changed from a skills based assessment to a biographical one. This is no joke. They had an explicit goal of increasing ATC diversity so they passed over hundreds of people who took the previously traditional route and graduated from FAA Air Traffic University Programs.

Those candidates still had to pass the training but they have had a much higher attrition rate. So despite increased hiring ATC continues to be understaffed.

https://viewfromthewing.com/diversity-in-the-skies-faas-cont...

And that policy directly led to the deaths earlier this week. The ATC was clearly not a White male from the audio.

> I'll revise my earlier statement. It has nothing to do with the staffing of the agency's head.

Please provide a citation for this claim.

Me. I'm the citation. It is not the FAA chief's fault - nor is it because there was no FAA chief for 8 days - that a rogue military helicopter was flying above its well-defined airspace ceiling.

https://youtu.be/uFc6JFb2MqY

Then your claim lacks any supporting evidence, and that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

I can think of about 10 different ways that the information in your YouTube video could be 100% true and correct, and the FAA could still be at fault. You do not have enough evidence to claim what you're saying.

The burden of proof is on you, making the claim that the FAA chief and the crash are connected. What's your evidence? I'm advancing the null hypothesis, that they have nothing to do with each other. I also don't believe the Eagles winning the NFC Championship 2 days earlier has anything do with the crash -- are you expecting me to provide evidence for that as well?

> The burden of proof is on you, making the claim that the FAA chief and the crash are connected. What's your evidence?

I did not make this claim. I’ll restate my position so we’re clear: I have no idea whether they’re connected.

> I'm advancing the null hypothesis, that they have nothing to do with each other.

This is still a claim which requires evidence.

> I also don't believe the Eagles winning the NFC Championship 2 days earlier has anything do with the crash -- are you expecting me to provide evidence for that as well?

In general, evidence is required for any claim, yes. But in this case, something like “The Philadelphia Eagles are a football team, without any responsibility over airline safety” is probably enough evidence.

How can you know it's totally unrelated any more than somebody can know it's definitely related?

By real knowledge of the problem domain. I know that sort of argumentation is unpopular, but it’s genuinely correct in this case.

If anything, this incident has been predicted and warned for years and years and years, and is an indictment of FAA and ATC policy over the last couple decades, accelerating over the last 2-8 years or so.

The reason we can assume there’s no connection between the new administration and this incident is… because there’s no reason to make that assumption, based on the reality of ATC policy, (lack of) changes in the problem domain, and longstanding known risks in the status quo.

That this has been a known problem for a while (which I agree with) does not necessarily mean that recent actions haven’t made the problem worse. The parent asked how you can know it’s “definitely unrelated,” which seems like a pretty high bar that you haven’t come close to meeting.

“These plane crashes are totally unrelated to politics or staffing.”

The FAA seems to disagree.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/air-traffic-cont...

> Staffing Was ‘Not Normal’ at Reagan Airport Tower, According to F.A.A. Report

> The report, reviewed by The New York Times, said that one controller was communicating with both helicopters and planes. Those jobs are typically assigned to two people, not one.

So are you saying is the FAA didn't have enough controllers to keep the skies safe, ultimately leading to this week's collision? That sounds like a very strong reason to fire whoever is the head of that agency.

The likely culprit for the understaffing is Congress.

The pandemic also messed with training new ones for a while.

How about the guy who was in the White House for the last 4 years? The guy who passed a so-called infrastructure bill? No responsibility for ensuring air safety in there?

The guy they ramped up hiring under post-pandemic? https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-hits-air-traffic-controller...

> Today the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it exceeded its goal of hiring 1,800 air traffic controllers in 2024, with a final total of 1,811 for Fiscal Year 2024. As the largest number of hires in nearly a decade, this marks important progress in the FAA’s work to reverse the decades-long air traffic controller staffing level decline.

Training controllers takes 2-4 years.

Are we just gonna go from one debunkable claim to another all evening?

If we’re doling out responsibility, hoping 10% of them resign probably won’t help. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-offers-incentiv...

> If we’re doling out responsibility

No, we're not. A plane went down, it's an absolutely tragic event, doesnt matter what you believe politically. I specifically avoided pointing fingers by stating this event wasn't a political issue. Does it expose the fact that our air traffic control system needs more attention and funding? Yes - and hopefully that will become a priority of the current leadership. But did this event occur because one FAA head was recently fired, or because a new president just took office? No. It's actually quite offensive that people feel it is necessary to blame these deaths on a political enemy just to make some point.

Again, you said:

> These plane crashes are totally unrelated to politics or staffing.

Which the FAA preliminary report says is untrue. The resignations thing will only make the understaffing worse.

Subsequently, you pointed fingers at the outgoing FAA head and the outgoing President.

There are few scenarios where throwing a 2M person organization into chaos doesn't have some impact on the employees. It is too early to assign conclusive blame; it is also too early to be conclusively absolving anyone.

In this case you are trying to make a connection where it doesn’t exist. This isn’t a courthouse, and we can reasonably assume that there weren’t any changes to ATC protocol in the minuscule amount of time between the new administration assuming their positions and this incident.

Put another way, it seems like you are assuming that drawing a connection between politics and reality is an obvious first step, when it’s not, at least in this case.

And congress added ten new slots to DCA in last year's FAA re-authorization act.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3935...

SEC. 502.

Introduced by Rep. Graves, Sam [R-MO-6], passed with veto-proof bipartisan support.

Dollars to donuts congresscritters wanted the ability to fly to/fro DCA vs Dulles to save themselves time.

Alternatively you could say this is furter proof the agency needs a thorough shakeup as things cleary went down the gutter.

Maybe collaborating on a solution to get it out of this mess is better than playing politics no matter what?

It’s been like this long before the current guy took control last week.

Here’s a write up from 2023 for example, they’re all over the internet from the last decade:

https://www.kreindler.com/articles/understaffed-and-undertra...

One article cited it’s been a concern since Bush was in office.

Vacations are often planned with responsibilities delegated.

If the head of a company gets pushed out because the richest man in the world has a vendetta against that company (in this case the FAA was trying to fine SpaceX and upset Musk) that can cause strife within in the company, especially when that same person writes an email (fork in the road is language Musk used in very similar emails he's sent in the past) telling you that you should quit.

You are saying essentially that the authority in question was incredibly mismanaged and incapable if its staff would perform worse in their critical functions just because of some personnel changes at the top a few days prior.

So not only does this happen in any organization (instability leads to a decrease in over-all performance), but you're being REALLY dishonest by acting like this was the only thing the Trump admin did. Trump not only shut down multiple parts of the federal government but is actively trying to get people to quit. See: https://www.opm.gov/fork.

Just go ahead and tell us how you think that affects people's cognitive load, especially in a job that already is stressful and overworked? See: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/business/air-traffic-cont...

> In April 2023, Whitaker grounded SpaceX for months after Starship’s maiden launch and only allowed a second attempt after an extensive investigation lasting until September of that year yielded 63 corrective actions to be taken.

> “He needs to resign,” Musk wrote late last year, in response to one of his fans criticizing what he believed to be the FAA’s unwarranted meddling in the entrepreneur’s affairs.

https://fortune.com/2025/01/31/faa-chris-rocheleau-elon-musk...

I can't see how Musk could possibly improve the FAA. He'll gut it and deflect blame.

The FAA dared try and fine SpaceX. Musk has had an agenda against the FAA since before Trump took office.

It’s the big thing in common between Musk and Trump, their love for retribution.

Nobody is going to be left to scrutinize anything much less have any power to do anything about it. If anyone is still doubting that we're under a full scale takeover of our country, get your head out of your ass.

It is just sad that American voters have given Musk, who is running a ponzi scheme based on "FSD" that regularly kills people, the license to gut FAA. And immediately we have the first on air collision in 16 years.

Is there something especially significant about this crash? Or is this only because there was a large crash recently?

Edit: Incorrect.

Original comment: Any plane crash in the US is unusual and significant.

No it's not, small planes crash frequently.

How frequently?

Somebody could probably answer that using data from FAA, NTSB, NHTSA or whatever, but it's probably all offline right now. :-(

EDIT:

FWIW, the NTSB incident search site still seems to be up.

https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryv2.aspx

According to NTSB 210 in 2021. So a few times a week.

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/data/Pages/GeneralAviationDashbo...

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/data/Pages/monthly-dashboard.asp... has a dashboard with the NTSB's aviation data. It lists 8 fatal accidents so far this year.

Multiple accidents per day. A fatal one every ~2 days

https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institut...

Several per day, not all of them fatal https://asn.flightsafety.org/asndb/year/2025/1/N

I'd argue that the fact that it isn't frequent makes it insignificant. 40k people die every year on the roads and, to our detriment, we don't treat that as significant. I wish we would focus on things actually impacting people and not scare people with things that will never happen to them.

Anybody got statistics on air crashes in the US so we can see if the anomaly is only in the attention the crashes receive and not the frequency at which they are happening?

Small planes crash all the time:

https://asn.flightsafety.org/asndb/year/2025/1

Even if you only consider fatal crashes in the US, the last one before the DC incident was just this past Saturday.

https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/473308

I know small planes crash a lot, but I feel like small jets crashing is a bit more notable? Maybe just because there arent that many comparatively.

I think the most recent small jet crash in the US was November 5:

https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/458776

Twenty-odd years ago there was a rash of US politicians killed in aircraft accidents. This seems like a good source — look at the cluster in late 90s, early 00s - https://politicalgraveyard.com/death/aircraft.html

Very few since then, so it’s much more of an outlier now.

Photographer on the spot: https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/live/plane-crash-...

Higher resolution version:

https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/v2/6OXRZY6NOJD3VBA7FMNIIKCI...

Why did it look like it was going Mach 1 into the ground?

Where did you see this footage?

in the article embed, around 52 seconds in has some video, it does appear to come in very fast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouh1yg7Rmr4

Exactly at 18 to 19 seconds in

Should be merged with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42895466

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