In 1990, James Reason wrote a book called Human Error, which would be the thickest book on the bookshelf, to repurpose an old joke. In that book, he described the Swiss Cheese Model, which likens an accident to a sliced loaf of Swiss cheese. The holes in each slice of cheese are potential points of failure. When the holes line up, a failure occurs. The diagram above illustrates the concept pretty well.
Last night the holes lined up in the first mass casualty airplane accident since 2009. A CRJ700 regional jet and an Army Blackhawk helicopter on a training flight collided near Reagan National Airport with the loss of all 64 on board the jet and 3 on the helicopter. When I heard the news my first thought was, well, that finally happened. As someone who reads a lot of accident reports and follows a number of aviation safety YouTubers, it was pretty clear that it was only a matter of time that some sort of serious accident involving two planes colliding would happen, but my guess was that it would be a runway incursion rather than a mid-air collision.
If you’re interested in following updates on this, Juan Browne, a commercial pilot who runs the Blancolirio YouTube channel, already has a good explainer up. As Juan explains, the Traffic Collision Advisory System, TCAS, a safety system that’s prevented untold numbers of midair collisions, would not have provided a “resolution” (i.e., tell one pilot to climb and the other to descend) because the CRJ was at 400 feet, under the 1000 ft minimum for that system to provide a resolution. It might have given a “traffic” alert. Another good channel for just the Air Traffic Control (ATC) traffic is VASAviation and Victor has a video with the radar picture plus the ATC controller / pilot radio traffic, and in the background you can hear the tower controllers reacting to the crash in the National tower as it happened. James Fallows, who is a general aviation pilot as well as a journalist, has his initial reaction here.
National is incredibly busy airspace, and the Blackhawk, which is believed to be a “gold top” VIP transport helicopter, would have been cleared to “zip across the Potomac” in Juan’s words, crossing just behind the regional jet under visual flight “see and avoid” rules at night in a brightly lit cityscape. If this sounds dangerous, well, it is. One regional jet pilot on the flying subreddit said that “this would be the very FIRST place that I would expect this to happen.” Congress flies out of this airport, and they like direct flights, so they keep allowing more landings at National, even though all of the VA and MD delegation opposed them as being unsafe.
Anyway, this is a political blog, not an aviation blog, and I think the politics here are crystal clear. Trump is the guy poking holes in the Swiss cheese. He instituted a hiring freeze on Air Traffic Controllers, yet ATC is terribly understaffed:
From 2011 to 2022, the number of fully certified controllers declined more than 9 percent, even though traffic increased. Based on targets set by the FAA and the union representing the air traffic controllers, 99 percent of the nation’s air traffic control sites are understaffed.
President Musk told the FAA Administrator to resign on the day Trump took office, because he’s upset that the FAA is trying to exercise any oversight over SpaceX, which issued a number of restrictions on his Boca Chica launch facility, and is investigating recent rocket breakup that caused air traffic chaos over the Carribean.
Trump also eliminated the Aviation Security Advisory Committee and fired the chief of the TSA. Trump is part of a robust Republican effort to make us all less safe that started with Reagan busting the ATC union.
More important than that, Trump’s assault on career civil servants not only threatens the FAA, but also the National Transportation Safety Board, which will be investigating the crash. The NTSB is the epitome of everything Trump hates: thorough, impartial, analytical and scientific.
Trump is already blabbering about the accident on Truth Social, and he knows goddam well that people are going to connect the last few days of Trump-inflicted chaos with the possibility that an airplane they’re flying on will be blindsided by another one and they’ll fall to a horrific death. Trump, Musk and the right wing media, who would have fallen all over themselves to blame this on Biden, will certainly tell us not to “politicize” the tragedy out of respect for the victims and their families.
That’s nonsense. The only real way to honor the people who died is to make sure what killed them never happens again. The rest is useless hot air, thoughts and prayers. Safety regulations are written in the blood of those who were killed before the regulation was put in place. Because Trump has politicized everything, this will necessarily involve politics. It is good politics and good policy to point out that the way Trump and Musk operate will inevitably lead to more death.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
It’s National Airport.
The only people that add that other part are rwnjs or corporate media hacks.
DC Native here still pissed off about the name change.
We now return to our regularly scheduled commentary.
Steve in the ATL
Also known as…balloon juice!
(In case you didn’t know the origin of the blog name)
Almost Retired
What possible justification could there be for dismantling the aviation safety committee? Pig-ignorant ideology, I suppose, but even then I don’t get it. The next four years (and their aftermath) are going to be much worse than I feared. My mother lives in Wichita and my sister and her husband live in Washington; ergo they’v taken this regional flight many, many times, which personalizes this tragedy for me.
Barbara
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I refer to it as DCA, which is its airport code.
Wag
@Almost Retired: That committee was completely unnecessary. We hadn’t had an airplane crash since 2009, and certainly were never going to have another one. Its job was done, and it was time to retire the committee. Besides, we all know that our fascist overlords don’t like the little people looking over their shoulder
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Wag: I was talking with John the other day and I said that I was actually surprised that these people wouldn’t want to disband or at least grossly underfund airport firefighting and rescue. I mean, they hardly crash, right?
Leto
@Wag: “We are in a post
racialaviation accident society.” – John Robertslowtechcyclist
FTFY.
Melancholy Jaques
We are reminded that Trump 1 disbanded the the global health security advisory committee and ended USAID’s PREDICT program just in time for the COVID pandemic.
Old School
They are still blaming it on Biden.
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara:
I continue to call it National, as it was called when I first flew out of it in December 1958, and for most of the time since then.
WTFGhost
I admit, my first thought was “this *is* a little early for Trump to be causing *this* much damage,” but obviously, I wasn’t using my imagination.
WTF is it with Republicans thinking the solution to being told “no” is to fire everyone who says “no”? Have they never heard of the concept of “engineering”? Fire the FAA because your rockets are too dangerous? Geezum, if co-President Trump had done that, we’d call him the most corrupt idiot ever to exist on this planet, except, President Musk overshot him.
Anyone, who ever thinks Musk is smarter than a musk ox, need extraordinary evidence to overcome such an extraordinary claim.
catclub
Mentour Pilot on youtube is always fascinating to me.
Barbara
@lowtechcyclist: I once got an upgrade to first class when I was changing my flight at the counter because I referred to it as National. Using the airport codes is just easier — DCA, IAD, BWI.
HinTN
@Barbara: I always call it National. Full stop. Yes, this needs to get hung around Trump’s neck.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Old School: Unsurprising. Don’t forget DEI – some asshole Rep from Tennessee was the first to blame DEI, but he won’t be the last.
WTFGhost
@Melancholy Jaques: Screw that, they tried to throw 20 million off health insurance, pre-Covid. All of them would be low wage service workers, most likely, meaning they might have made Trump directly responsible for a few million deaths, and not just the 400k they can tag directly to his disinformation and sabotage of the pandemic.
Don’t forget to hit them for everything. Make ’em tired of having to say “yabbut”.
Steve in the ATL
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Opus Dei is to blame? I can totally see that. They are freaks.
Juju
@Almost Retired: My heart aches for all of those families of the people who died in the accident. It is so painful to have one of those days where everything is fine and then suddenly it isn’t.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@catclub:
Yep, he’s great. Curious Pilot, Disaster Breakdown and Green Dot Aviation are some smaller channels I follow. Disaster Breakdown is incredibly thorough.
Chris Johnson
@Almost Retired: What possible justification could there be for him to KNOW even about the existence of that particular committee?
All these actions have me as suspicious as ever. Please explain how this troupe of assholes and fools would know the least thing about any of this, rather than pinpointing and disbanding specific committees right before unpredecented disaster. Never mind about the Army VH-60 normally used to transport VIPs like the President and flying Saudis from the backyard of a house currently owned by the Saudi Embassy, or turning on its ADS-B as it passes over this house for some reason while coming from somewhere else.
WHY does Trump choose to disband specific oversight committees he can’t possibly know anything about? Who told him to do that? Is it simply people in Project 2025 we know nothing about who somehow mean all this to cement lasting dominance over America?
Or is it just straight up his owners in Moscow coaching him to play along with some hare-brained scheme that is 100% designed to get everybody conspiracy braining like madmen because invoking that is THEIR domain, and said scheme will most certainly be about destroying America, not ‘making it great’ or helping their puppets win?
What the fuck, y’all. This actively sucks. Could they at least fake their disasters with AI and try and run their bullshit on the back of made-up stuff, not fuel it with real and innocent lives.
WHY did Trump disband oversight committees. Start there and ignore everything else as hard as that is. Who told him to do that? I want to know who told him to do that. He is an incurious fool and doesn’t care about any of that stuff. Someone told him, and it matters.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Chris Johnson:
Because as I posted a few days ago, they have their shit together this time. They know everything they want to break. They’re still going to fuck everything up, of course, but more of it and faster.
HinTN
Why the hell would the UH-60 be crossing the river right in the approach pattern? That sounds like an Army training problem to me. Or simple hubris, “I’ve got this!”
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara:
Since I’m over here in southern MD, I don’t even think about Dulles; l haven’t flown into or out of there since a trip to Europe in 2002. BWI is easier than any other way of referring to BWI, though.
Our most frequent air destination is Tampa, and just calling it Tampa airport means I don’t goof up and call it TIA (which would be the acronym for Tampa International Airport) rather than TPA, its airport code.
Chief Oshkosh
And many in the know consider that we’ve never gotten over the PATCO firings, even as long ago as they happened.
Chris Johnson
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Yeah, but ‘they’ who? It matters, and we don’t have proof it’s all running out of Russia acting as a state adversary at war with us, just LOADS of circumstantial evidence.
If it’s Project 2025, who’s running operations and feeding Trump the list of stuff to do? If it’s Russia, how are they getting their instructions to Trump? The one thing that’s completely certain is he’s not thinking it all up on his own. He is rancid soup in a suit.
If it’s Project 2025 do they have coherent plans to turn all this to functional fascism? If it’s Russia the point is that there will be no such plans and we’re meant to fall apart in big chunks and give way to panic.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@HinTN:
Apparently it’s an approved procedure.
VASAviation has an updated video with the communication with the helicopter posted (apparently it was a different frequency) and the helicopter acknowledges the traffic twice, while asking for approval for visual separation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90Xw3tQC0I
A few months ago, a sightseeing helicopter in Houston crashed into a radio tower. The lights of the city obscured the tower. It’s hard to see (relatively) small objects against the backdrop of a brightly lit city.
lowtechcyclist
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
But which ‘they’? Chris Johnson is asking whether it’s just the usual anti-government zealots, or whether ‘they’ is Moscow in this particular instance.
Given that rich people fly a lot more than the rest of us, one would think that they’d be all about air safety, even as they break most everything else. So I join him in wanting to know which individual got this specific committee on Trump’s radar.
ETA: Chris J. got there first, of course.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Chris Johnson: @lowtechcyclist: I don’t think it’s completely clear who the “they” are at this point. It’s a combination of Project 2025 zealots, random Elon fanboys, and who knows who else.
I’m sure Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker will let us know in their book, appearing in 2029.
(As to who put this committee on Trump’s radar, also a mystery right now. BTW that committee covers TSA mostly, and rich people on private planes don’t go through security. It would be a target because TSA is a big federal workforce, probably.)
Steve in the ATL
@Chris Johnson: are you assuming that Russia and Project 2025 are not connected at the hip?
lowtechcyclist
@Steve in the ATL:
I’m not Chris Johnson, but it would be worth investigating whether there are connections between the two. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone with any authority to conduct such an investigation is under GOP control, so it won’t happen before 2027 if that soon.
Leto
@HinTN: one of things the military is good at is getting to the root cause problem with their aviation accidents. We have to because we need to know how this happened: systemic training issues? Issues with culture? Command level problems? We need to fix this before it becomes a worse issue, costing more lives.
But, as this post talks about, conservatives are fucking with all the processes. So, we’ll need to see how this plays out. In the meantime, keep hanging this around theirs necks like the albatross it is.
Doug R
@HinTN: Yeah, how is it ok to have military helicopters on another frequency CROSSING an active approach at 400 feet?
Surprised something like this didn’t happen sooner-even if they don’t actually collide, helicopters and larger jets have HUGE turbulence behind them.
Doug R
Distinction without a difference.
JerseyBeard
This is Trump’s Crash. 100%.
Or it’s Democratic malpractice.
It’s binary. Can only be one, and has to be one.
Leto
@lowtechcyclist: I’ll say this, as more and more connections come to light as to the interconnection of the right and Russia (see all the people who’ve been convicted for helping to launder money into the Republican Party via Russia), I’ll say those two groups are pretty much the same. I view them as the same entity. They’re not indistinguishable from each other. They both represent the same threat.
Elizabelle
Aircraft crashes are spectacular failures, to be sure.
But the swiss cheese method Team Felon and Heritage Society (and affiliated enemies within and from outside) are foisting upon us can also take down drug and food safety, consumer protections, workplace protections. They hope to hollow them out. All kinds of things Americans take for granted.
Surprise!
Librettist
Commercial pilots complain about the “cowboy traffic” (milsec) around DCA.
It has been obsoleted by the short runways, small footprint and surrounding airspace use, but congress is never going to give up the perk.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Back in the 90s, my wife was an engineer at the Army Night Vision Lab so did a *lot* of helicopter, obstacle avoidance work.
Her comments this morning have been along the lines of “yeah, while helicopters are maneuverable, they’re still hard to fly and you don’t see shit and instruments only go so far. There’s a lot of reasons why there are a lot of helicopter accidents to this day.”
As you and others have said, it was just a matter of time before this happened in National airspace.
Elizabelle
@Leto: Agreed.
Also, I have a friend who works with DOD Schools in Europe. Will be listening for any complaints.
suzanne
I use the Swiss cheese metaphor a lot. It’s very helpful in visualizing the concept that every layer of effort is imperfect-but-helpful.
catclub
@@mistermix.bsky.social: I was thinking the safety group grounded his personal plane – not maintained up to standards by cheapskate.
Jager
My Executive wife graduated from college at 20 and spent 22 years as an FA, Senior FA, and International FA, and several years teaching at the training department. After 911, she volunteered to go back to work immediately.
I had just set a steak dinner on the table when news of last night’s tragedy broke. She covered her eyes and began to cry. She said, “When you’ve got jet fuel in your blood, we’re all family.”
When we travel, the flight crew always recognizes one of their own, I asked the Senior FA on our Hawaii trip last year how she knew J was a retiree, and she said “By way she moves on the plane, how she takes everything in”.
BTW, we got enough free drinks on the way to Hawaii, we were able to get the young lady in the window seat, drunk.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@HinTN:
This morning while listening to Totebagger Radio’s coverage, my wife chuckled as the reporter started by saying “At National Air….Reagan National Airport…” meaning their editorial standard is to use that name for it. It was nice to hear basically the equivalent of their beat reporter attempt to use the proper name.
I’m sure that slip up will be brought up during their mid-year performance review.
catclub
I think this is an understatement. The first person to take to the air in one? very crazy.
Doug R
@suzanne: Works with disease prevention too. Saw it used to explain barriers to catching COVID.
Ohio Mom
@Chris Johnson: That’s what I keep saying. Many of their targets are so arcane.
Oh sure, turn off the Medicaid spigot, that’s a big target. But the existence of the air safety committe wasn’t exactly general knowledge.
Another one I read about was some military surgeons’ website, where surgeons from all branches of the military compared notes and I don’t know, talked about what surgeons talk about. That site went dark; maybe it went back up? Couldn’t have been a big expense and no doubt saved money, limbs and lives.
There are definitely a good number of moles who mapped out these attacks.
Feathers
Compounding the tragedy is that most of the young, promising figure skaters from the east coast were on that flight. The US national championships were last weekend in Wichita last weekend, with a training camp for juvenile, novice, intermediate developmental program skaters afterwards. There’s one non stop flight a day to the east coast out of Wichita, so all these kids (9-14) were on it, along with their families and coaches. Skating Club of Boston lost a lot of people, and they are hosting the World Championships in March. US Figure skating still has trauma over losing the entire national team, along with coaches and officials in a plane crash in 1961. There are strict rules about the national team not being on the same flight, but when you are flying out of a regional airport with one non-stop a day, what are you going to do? Swiss Cheese Model all around. Horrific.
NotMax
Not so just looking at the U.S..
Globally, decidedly not so much, also too.
cmorenc
My nephew is a veteran Apache helicopter pilot in the Army reserve who is now a Southwest Airlines pilot flying 737s. I will be very interested in his take on the crash.
Soprano2
Everytime there’s a crash like this I cringe a little bit. I’m so sad for all of those families who are getting visits like I did. So many people will be affected by this tragedy.
Soprano2
Might have been Musk, since he seems to have a lot of quarrels with this part of the government.
NotMax
@Soprano2
Can’t tell the fascists without a pogrom.
//
Professor Bigfoot
The conservative war on expertise and professionalism continues apace.
Once again Trump is simply the end result of a few decades of conservative choices.
Bulgakov
I hope someone reviews the original orders for the helicopter crew to see if they were truly dispatched for a nighttime training mission near that airport or if they were on their way to pick up some Trump lackey. Some pieces of the puzzle don’t quite fit together.
Craig
@Doug R: because you don’t want that much chatter on the comms freqs. The controller monitors and controls both, the military and civilians shouldn’t all be on the same freq because there is such a volume of traffic and chatter. This is not the problem.
Quinerly
This live statement of Trump has to be seen to be believed.
He is blaming DEI on the crash.
And speculating on what happened. “I have helicopters.” Talking about lot about “height.”
Get ready….the pilot of the helicopter or someone connected with this who is not the American pilot is going to be a DEI hire….I will make book on that.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@NotMax: Right, first US mass casualty airline accident involving a major commercial carrier since 2009. Should have qualified that.
The other incidents/accidents in the US have not involved major carriers or were the loss of a couple of lives, not a mass casualty event.
This is a pretty standard way that the aviation community looks at it. Fallows starts his piece that way, FWIW.
Quinerly
New Dept of Transportation Secretart starts out that basically only the bestshould be hired for these positions.
Hegseth now speaking. He actually doesn’t look hung over. He does look like a White Supremacist. Back to the “best of best.” The “era of DEI” is over.
VP JD Vance up. Now talking about not having the best standards in hiring previously. He seems to be throwing DEI hires in traffic controllers under the bus.
Trump very hung up on psychological tests that Biden did away with.
John S.
@Quinerly:
Of course he is! He can pass any of those tests easily. Person, woman, airplane…
Betty
Seeing this reminds me why I am so happy my niece’s daughter decided to give up her career goal of flying Blackhawks. She was well on her way to getting there when she had her second child and decided better of it. Helicopters are dangerous.
Trivia Man
@Old School: Walking past a TV in the gym just now, orange face talking (mute on, praise FSM) and the chryon said “crash due to DEI”.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Chris Johnson: Musk would know about from his numerous Space-X misadventures.
Not everything is Russians.
Elizabelle
@Trivia Man: Great.
We have Opus Dei and DopeUS Dei.
Being concerned about DEI is a marker for “you might be in a cult!”
Can’t believe The Felon is able to create such chaos and trauma. Oh well.
Quinerly
The guy who is under FBI investigation and wants Trump to be able to run for a third term weighs in on Fox this AM
“But, you know, to your point, I think you have to look at this with eyes wide open,” Rep Ogles continued. “See what happened. You know, human error? Was it some sort of equipment failure? Did DEI play a role in this type of thing?”
The Hill reporting
BellaPea
I watched for about 5 seconds as that massive orange-faced fool Dump tried to blame this crash on DEI. Disgusting. And Dems are just letting all of this go right by. I guess I don’t know what they can do to fight back but…this is bad.
Chris Johnson
@Steve in the ATL: I can’t begin to prove Project 2025 and Russia are joined at the hip, and rather than assume a giant effective conspiracy for evil, I’m exploring the idea that much like co-opting the Bernie Sanders campaign and all manner of other groups across the political spectrum, Russia was eager to help the Project 2025 people attack their enemies as long as those enemies were other Americans.
That doesn’t mean the Project 2025 people go along with Russia’s aims to destabilize and ruin America. I think some of those people earnestly believe they’re going to run a fascist state and dominate everybody else forever. The catch is, Russia also helps leftists and would be eager to bring down that state in turn.
So on those grounds I’d almost guess that the Project 2025 people are themselves patsies, being coaxed to get way out over their skis explicitly so they can fail… much like Trump’s being guided into failure.
dc
@Leto: They’ve been prioritizing taking down Gen. Milley’s photos, tossing out trans people, impeding qualified women fighter pilots from moving up, and being total fucking assholes. They don’t have time to investigate.
Quinerly
@BellaPea:
See Buttigieg’s statement.
Chris Johnson
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: That’s true. Musk would have an interest in doing away with aviation oversight committees that don’t do what he wants.
Upthread someone mentioned the US figure skating team losing people in the accident.
If it IS Russians, it’s very important that Russian national heroes, champion figure skaters now coaching other skaters, were also on the flight. I think it’s worth keeping an eye on who Russia blames for this, because it conveniently gives them something to rally their populace over, at what is potentially a dangerous time for them. It’s a patriotic distraction to be enraged at the US over this. So much so that I count it as another factor making it more likely that there’s a Russian contribution to whatever the hell it was: the plane could have been targeted for that reason. If Russia is completely conciliatory in the face of losing national heroes it’ll suggest I’m super wrong about that, as it’d be such a slamdunk.
dww44
@BellaPea: Since Trump has directly attacked Buttegieg in his press conference, then Pete needs to ask/demand for air time to defend himself and the Biden administration. This is no time for “norms”. Seriously get out there in front of the cameras NOW!
And someone needs to tell Dana Bash that she’s carrying water for her bosses and not defending journalism when she tells the CNN on air expert (who was furious at Trump’s blaming anyone this early in the game) to just “report” because the President presumably knows more than we all do. God, she’s a tool.
Elizabelle
@dww44: I despise Dana Bash. She is one of them.
Believe we have Ted Koppel to thank for her. Think she might have been a teenage neighbor of his? Anyway, she is a pestilence.
Melancholy Jaques
@WTFGhost:
Of all the crimes of the political media, giving Trump a pass on his completely incompetent response to the COVID pandemic is probably the second most egregious.
RSA
The Department of Transportation has a press release from December that outlines the steps the Biden administration have been taking to keep us safe:
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/december-holiday-fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-efforts-ensure-air-travel
From the bottom of the page, for what it’s worth (sorry about the formatting):
It’s hard to know the exact causes of any crash, especially before investigation. What I appreciate about this is that it’s clear that these people were competent and doing their jobs. I wish a reporter would say to Trump, “This is what Biden was doing for air safety. If you think he’s at fault, what would you have done differently? Why didn’t you even have an acting FAA administrator? Do you have any idea what the responsibilities of the federal government are?”
Miss Bianca
@Chris Johnson: Well, if “Trump’s owners in Moscow” told him to do this, the joke’s on them: there were Russians on that plane.
azlib
@catclub:
Mentour pilot is really good and very technical. I am not a pilot, but I play around with the X-Plane flight simulator with my VR system.
Aviation safety in the US is remarkably robust, but there is always room for improvement.
Quaker in a Basement
@Old School: Tubby hisself has joined the party.
“I put safety first,” Trump told reporters. “Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen, because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible and their politics was even worse, so, as you know, last week, long before the crash, I signed an executive order restoring our highest standards for air traffic controllers and other important jobs throughout the country.”
brantl
@Chris Johnson: A whole bunch of this is from millionaires who are getting told by their lackies “Such and such agency is telling us we can’t spew garbage fumes at our neighborhood!” They then write them all down on their dream lists, to be defunded.
Now, there’s our rallying cry. “Remember how upset you were about defund the police? Well Stumpy intends to defend major portions of the federal government, and this includes: …..” And in place of the ellipsis, we include all the stuff they’re trying to defund, and all the people who need that stuff. Like the FAA, to keep jets from falling on our heads, FDA to keep from poisoning us, you know, the useless shit that liberals want.