The Potomac River Midair Collision | Hacker News Reader

The Potomac River Midair Collision

admiralcloudberg.medium.com

103 pointsmplanchard39 comments

I’ve read NTSB reports before. Studied aviation accidents as a hobby to help me overcome a sudden and irrational fear of flying (thanks Final Destination!).

I’m on Chapter 4, and this is, by far the best report I’ve ever read. Each section addressed in depth, historical context included because it’s important rather than omitted as being technically irrelevant. Dirty laundry splayed out on a blank canvas for the viewer to observe, digest, and reflect upon.

Not since the DC-10 have I been so incensed at an institution for its pettiness, personal vanity, and bureaucracy as I am with Congress, the FAA, the NTSB, and the DoD right now.

> Not since the DC-10 have I been so incensed at an institution for its pettiness, personal vanity, and bureaucracy as I am with Congress, the FAA, the NTSB, and the DoD right now.

Hate to break it to you, but this is just the tip of that particular iceberg.

It's strangely meditative to read the prose of someone who was so willing to absorb every single fact about something and to have a considered opinion on each of them. It is a strange type of mind to interact with. I feel slightly cleansed somehow.

My nephew's wife died in that crash. Only 26, and already a widower.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/husband-pa...

Ouch. I knew three of the deceased. #RIP

I spent three and a half hours reading the report. It’s well worth a read. It’s scary; I was aware of the Swiss cheese analogy in aviation safety, so it was scary to read how so many people were raising red flags, but due to either ignorance or politics these red flags were ignored; like people were complaining about the size of holes in the Swiss cheese so much but no real action took place.

The chapter about the rot in the machine made me especially worried. I now have serious doubts about the readiness of our armed forces.

Any major commercial airport approach and landing is high stress work and it must never be handed to unqualified unexperienced people, especially with ADHD. "It's not the plane, it's the pilot". Always.

I’m not sure your comment makes sense. Are you implying the helicopter crew are unqualified inexperienced people? But these people weren’t trying to land at the commercial airport.

What the hell does ADHD have to do with this?

These mysteries and more are hidden in the article.

>Despite struggling with what she believed to be undiagnosed and unmedicated ADHD, which forced her to study harder and more methodically than other students,[40:41–43] she completed her UH-60 Blackhawk training at Fort Rucker, Alabama without major difficulties despite delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

So... she was never diagnosed, never medicated, completed her training without difficulties, and your conclusion is "people with ADHD shouldn't be allowed to fly?"

Seriously?

I have just finished chapter 2.

About congress overriding safety concerns for their personal convenience

Air traffic controllers' concerns were shutdown by the FAA because of "politics"

I am gobsmacked. Where was the air traffic controllers' union? They could have used industrial action to address the unsafe conditions

I am yet to finish the document. I am expecting to see the ATCs and the pilots blamed by the authorities, I hope not.

> Where was the air traffic controllers' union? They could have used industrial action to address the unsafe conditions

Effectively neutered 45 years ago after the strike in 1981.

And, fittingly enough, the airport where the accident happened is named after the guy who did that. Must feel like a daily middle finger to all the controllers who work there...

>I am gobsmacked. Where was the air traffic controllers' union? They could have used industrial action to address the unsafe conditions

Think about the incentives for a few nanoseconds.

If you think a union wouldn't wheel and deal and enter into some handshake agreement to "table this one concern to next year" indefinitely in exchange for something I've got a bridge to sell you.

Adding another entity isn't gonna change the fact that the local controllers will still be the only people who care (because it's likely their ass if something happens).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...

That's the last time there was an ATC strike, 90% were fired and they got none of their demands. Turns out, the people of the US don't care if their air traffic controllers are overworked, understaffed, and chronically exhausted. They just want to (maybe) get to their destinations.

Chapter 7 has the juicy details that nobody wants to discuss.

The problem here is not the ATC union failing to enforce safety measures, it's the federal agency whose job that is failing to do their job, and Congress for failing to oversee the organization effectively.

Pilot here (small / private airplanes, for about 15 years now, instrument rated but that's it).

1. "See and avoid" is BS, always has been, always will be. ADS-B was supposed to end the reliance on it, but the FAA almost immediately started poking holes in it once it was deemed successful by the companies in Alaska that tested it. Good controllers and TCAS stop this stuff from happening all the time despite the FAA's poor decisions.

2. The few near misses I've personally experienced have been due to inaction, as described in the article. In fairness there are a lot of buttons, knobs, dials, and screens to look after. A slowly developing unsafe situation isn't always at the front of one's mind. But if it doesn't feel right, you gotta say something. Especially if you are in a helicopter and you can just stop. There's no excuse for them continuing ahead without better awareness of their surroundings than they had, when they can just stop.

ex: a new'ish controller let me (in a low wing airplane, descending) get too close to another (high wing airplane, climbing) near Little Rock, AR some years ago. I was flying IFR so I was bound to follow their instructions, which were to fly direct to a waypoint and cross it at a lower altitude. The high wing airplane was not talking to the controller, they were flying visually (likely a student and instructor, they were climbing out of an airport with a lot of flight school activity).

The new guy controller gave me location and trajectory on the high wing airplane twice. After the second such call I told him that I cannot see this traffic below me through my wings, you need to give me a turn. The supervisor took over when I insisted, and gave me a turn and new heading. It didn't dawn on the new controller that the *types* of aircraft involved were what made it dangerous, neither of us can see through our wings so we weren't going to find each other visually. It did dawn on the supervisor when I spoke up to the new guy, who recognized the situation and handled it.

He apologized for the new guy and offered the phone number as he took my flight plan cancellation, I declined. "Not necessary, we're all okay, you handle it. I don't need to put any marks on anyone's chart." That's how it's all supposed to work. "Doing nothing" like the helicopter did in this crash did not allow for that possible safe outcome.

tl;dr: Someone has to take initiative. If the controller doesn't, the pilot should demand instructions from the controller. Flying dangerous machines isn't for tentative / indecisive people.

+1 on this.

So far we have IR pilot, known aviation journalist and yours truly saying same thing: "If the controller doesn't, the pilot should demand instructions from the controller." or / and "It's not the plane, it's the pilot." There are plenty of female aviators, most of them are brilliant (again ref. "Maverick" etc.) In this particular case the highest ranked pilot on board was unqualified and, most dangerous – not ready for the flight mentally. She happened to be a woman. Yes, she died. RIP. But she took a company with her. Hiding this simple fact is wrong. For whatever reason. "There are no female jobs in aviation".

To that point, I also co-founded an aviation charity org that does disaster relief. We randomly had a female volunteer show up and offer to assist us during the aftermath of hurricane Florence in NC in 2018. She had a couple of young guys who were flying small private airplanes for local biz owners, one of which is now an airline pilot years later.

She didn't advertise her credentials, she just said "I have experience, and some young guys with airplanes who want to help."

Vetting her on google said she was a full Col with about 3500 total hours of flight time in a Blackhawk, and the former vice commander at Andrews, recently retired.

https://www.jba.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2001689178/

https://www.counton2.com/news/local-news/mt-pleasant-regiona...

She helped us organize local helicopter pilots again in 2024 in western NC, after that hurricane.

Don't judge people in aircraft by their physical stature, lol. You don't have to be a big strong man to sit in a chair, turn knobs, push buttons, and talk on the radio. You do need to be mentally alert, and you need to be able to visualize your surroundings mentally even if you can't see them with your eyeballs. If something doesn't seem right, you need to speak up and figure out how to handle it. That's about it.

I also agree with the article that a controller working 12 aircraft is not necessarily dangerous. As the article says, it depends on who the 12 are. 8 airlines in sequence on the same approach procedure and 4 random IFR general aviation guys like me who all have GPS nav equipment? It's fine. 5 students, 4 helicopters, and 3 bizjets buzzing around to 3 different municipal airports near each other? That's a different story.

This seems like exactly the kind of attempt to blame a single person rather than the system that the article is arguing against. Yes, the helicopter pilot was a major part of the series of mistakes that led to the crash, but there were many other points where, if someone had done something differently, the crash may never have happened. This includes:

- the instructor who let the helicopter pilot keep flying through dangerous airspace despite her being clearly disoriented, and who ALSO failed to appropriately consider or respond to ATC’s request for visual separation

- the FAA employee who refused the helicopter chart updates to make dangerous areas clearer

- the ATC who failed to respond appropriately to the alarm by giving the helicopter a specific instruction - the supervisor who failed to separate the local and helicopter duties when the level of traffic was high

And that’s just specific individuals, to say nothing of the military bureaucracy that kept aging fleets with poor equipment operating in close proximity to heavy commercial traffic, or the idiocy of the FAA reclassifying reagan as an airport where controllers get paid less despite a heavy workload and thus increasing the incentive for controllers to leave as soon as they could, preventing any building of institutional knowledge.

Assigning all the blame to one individual, no matter how critical their role in the accident, robs us of opportunities to make the system safer. That is always the point of Admiral Cloudberg’s articles, but especially this one.

I would say all of those things are indicative of the mentality that we're criticizing here.

"If something isn't right, someone has to do something."

The joke in aviation is that "the first two strikes are free." In baseball terms, you get one free screwup per flight, and it'll probably be fine. The second strike... you are pushing your luck. On the third strike you're out.

In this case the pilot continuing to fly while not performing well, ranking officer or not, was strike one.

The more proficient pilot not taking the aircraft away from her was strike two.

The controller not offering more clear instructions and the helicopter crew not demanding more clear instructions despite noticing that the airport was very busy was strike three.

Just because the helicopter crew screwed up does not mean that all of those admin types on the ground didn't also make their own three strikes worth of mistakes.

Speaking of great female aviators. Find the video and story of the 20 something pilot that landed on the interstate in Pensacola, FL yesterday (Aug 3, 2026) after engine troubles. The point where she gets down and under an overhead road sign is incredible and something you only imagine ever happens in the movies. Let me see if I can find a link.

https://youtu.be/STFLtiGNqFY?is=yYje_Xj22n5TQcCH

+1 that emergency landing was pure badass.

6 submissions, 4 comments, and a combined 24 upvotes so far:

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=admiralcloudberg.medi...

Keep trying, folks. This one is worth it.

EDIT:

> Note that this is a long article (~3 hour read). If you just want the executive summary of what happened, I might suggest skipping forward to chapter 7 first and then if you want more, go back and read the in-depth analysis of earlier chapters. [HN user kraussvonespy 2 days ago]

- Which doesn't mention that the first 6 para's of Chapter 7 are an excellent tl;dr; of the previous 6 chapters. And definitely understates both the detail and quality of the balance of Chapter 7 (the minute-by-minute details leading up to the crash).

To be fair she's always worth reading it you have an interest in aviation. Always impeccably researched, fair and impartial.

True - though you may be misreading my "this one", said when there were no other comments or upvotes here, and the article was again fading into obscurity. Context of my "this one" was HN's /newest page.

Great news: Sixth time was the charm, and the article got real attention.

So-so news: My comment was Overcome By Events, making it useless noise.

Well worth reading and I appreciated the PDF to print out.

TL;DR: Because of her position and the difficulty of acquiring experience, Captain Lobach only had 454 total flying hours at the time of the accident, of which 326 were on the UH-60. She had flown only 56 hours in the past year,[1:12] below the already inadequate minimum of 60 for non-line pilots, due to a knee injury that kept her off the flight line for three months in 2024.[41] And in the two months before the accident flight, she had only flown for 4.4 hours,[1:12] in part because she forewent flying duties during the month of December in order to support her White House liaison role.[40:52–53] Taken in total, then, it cannot be said that Lobach was an experienced pilot; in fact, quite the opposite was true. With 454 hours, she would be ineligible to apply for a First Officer position at a commercial airline in the United States, and even in countries where airlines can hire First Officers right out of flight school with 250 hours, she would have been considered a rookie. [Note: To understand the scale: think of Captain Peter "Maverick" Mitchell in the movie.]

This is a very bad tl;dr and is definitely not the main takeaway of the article.

Edit: to add details, the article explains that the helicopter pilot was flying within the poorly defined helicopter route and within expected altitude on the altimeter. Her instructor was the one who made the critical mistake of saying he had visual on the airplane, when he in fact didn’t not.

... "While I was working on this article, a well-known aviation journalist said to me that blaming the Potomac River midair collision on an interaction between complex systems is a copout that allows those responsible for the accident to walk free and prevents corrective actions from being taken." (Also my post was direct quote from the article. I understand what you are trying to do. Because of that people already died and this will be repeated. I have zero tolerance for that BS. You should too.)

It’s a direct quote taken out of context.

The article explains that the helicopter pilot was flying within the poorly defined helicopter route and within expected altitude on the altimeter. Her instructor was the one who made the critical mistake of saying he had visual on the airplane, when he in fact didn’t not.

I don’t know how you could have read the article and come to the conclusion that that was the takeaway. My only guess is that you ctrl-F searched for something that confirmed your priors.

Can you please try this, as experiment? Feed this URI to Mythos and have a chat about it. You will be surprised to find many things you are ignoring, may be for virtue signalling, may be because you honestly believe so. (If you don't have Mythos – try Gemini 3.1 Pro via API. Other models will refuse to discuss it with you, I mean flat out refuse, especially Fable.)

You might want to read this, for a better sense of local attitudes toward AI:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151933

Did you miss the part immediately after this where the author then explains why that journalist’s take is incorrect?

An Army Captain and a Navy Captain are different things.

Army Captain is an O-3, same as a Navy Lt. Commander. You make O-3 at 5 years of service, or a little less. An O-3 is a jr. officer.

Navy Captain is an O-6, same as an Army Colonel. This takes about 20 years of experience, and is a high rank.

I tried to read it. Section list isn’t links. Tried to scroll, got a full screen dickbox. Gave up.

If you want to write for email, just write for email and don’t put it on the web. If you wanna put it on the web, use web features.

And either way, don’t put full screen stuff in my face when I’m trying to read.

I gave up. I’ll wait for a summary from another website that treats users better.

Download the ePub

Reply on news.ycombinator.com