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Comment by Levitz | Hacker News Reader

Because air travel is ridiculously safe. The incident with the helicopter and the plane is making the rounds precisely because of how insanely improbable it is, and even then from what we know, chances are the error was in the helicopter, not the tower.

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A plane and helicopter over DC came within 500' of each other over DC barely 24 hours before the crash. They avoided collision because they were over 1000' and the TCAS was still active: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huVFZ__q2rI

During the day the only thing that was keeping those collisions from happening under 1000' was pilots seeing each other. At night the only thing keeping it from happening was luck.

The error is in allowing flightpaths to be so close to each other in distance and time.

> A plane and helicopter over DC came within 500' ... They avoided collision because they were over 1000' and the TCAS was still active

That's not an example of why air travel is dangerous, that's an example of why air travel is safe.

The Aviation safety industry considers near-misses as an indicator of danger, and worth reviewing. A near-miss followed by a crash is maximally damning of the system.

There is a single failsafe which barely worked when the event was above 1000'. Under 1000' TCAS is automatically shut off. The flightpaths in the area of the airport are all significantly below 1000'. There are zero protections there except for the awareness of the pilots.

TCAS RAs are disabled below 1000 feet, TAs are still enabled

> They avoided collision because they were over 1000' and the TCAS was still active

No. The RPA4514 had the helicopter insight. Pilots are required to follow TCAS RA regardless of ATC instructions or if insight.

What makes you think they would have collided if TCAS hadn't alerted?

Please stop with the unnecessary platitudes. The GP is specifically asking about future safety in light of what's being discussed in the article. Continually harping on the past safety record as if it is an accurate forecast is a disservice to the parent's question.

Granted, the question was hyperbolic, but you can address that hyperbole directly rather than just giving a canned generic response.

What is being discussed in the article has been happening for a decade. It's not something sudden or new, and as such, "harping" on the past safety record is an accurate forecast.

The people "optimizing" the industry by overworking air traffic controllers rely on this canned platitude being repeated ad nauseum. It makes people think that airplanes are magic and will continue to be safe even if ATCs never sleep and cheap contractors working for Boeing forget every screw on the airplane.

We need to look at data on near misses as well, to understand the trends better and prevent it from becoming potentially worse.

Another (small) plane crashed in Philadelphia today. That's two in a couple days.

Yes, non-commercial planes crash far, FAR more often than commercial flights, at the tune of about 200-300 fatalities a year, you can play with the data a bit here:

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

The fact that the incident you talk about was reported at all was exceptional.

It was reported because of the prior incident in DC. Also this crash was more newsworthy because it was damaging to ground structures and there were bystanders on the ground who were injured.

TIL, thank you.

IIRC from another HN conversation, non commercial-airline flights crash pretty regularly. Maybe something like 1 ever couple of days?

Commercial airlines have different, far more strict regulations.

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