Altitude adjustment: the aviation thread

they don’t think like that man, their pilots would never crash a plane

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They say it was a medical flight returning a pediatric patient back to Mexico.

The tv experts all seem to think there was a major malfunction on take-off. Less likely it has anything to do atc than something mechanical. Some conjecture about O2 tanks.

Just awful.

The company said there were four crew members and two passengers – a pediatric patient and an escort – on the plane at the time.

well that is some medical treatment I was completely unaware you could get. Is the escort covered by insurance or medicare/medicaid? are there limits to what the escort is allowed to do?

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Wait, was it a pediatric escort? Didn’t take long for Epstein to get replaced.

Of course.

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My understanding is that is a charity service. Fundraising and service donations. “Angel flight”

look, when potus promised things would come down he never specified what that would be

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They do not.

This is a good video. Mostly all accurate. My only minor corrections/comments:

4:40ish talking about NVG’s: both pilots would be on NVG’s because it makes things easier to see, not just “in the goo” (idk what the goo is) but at night generally, and not in case one needs to take over. Both pilots are looking outside and both want to see better. The limitations are also accurate though. Field of view is incredibly narrow and lights are difficult to distinguish. You have to move your head around a lot to see everything and looking sideways outside of the goggle tubes can be useful for distinguishing colors of lights. I don’t know about the depth perception comment. Compared to daylight, yes depth perception is reduced. Compared to night flying without NVG’s, I don’t think so. These are known issues with workarounds though. There’s a learning curve to get proficient using them but both military and civilian operators use NVG’s at night because on net they’re a massive improvement. So this is useful info if you’re wondering why NVG’s weren’t a cheat code in spotting an airplane coming towards you but I don’t see how they’ll be cited as a contributing factor in the accident investigation.

6:15: re: separate frequencies, he is correct that the helicopter can’t hear the RJ. Unless the helicopter also tuned up the airplane frequency. They have two radios. I did that sometimes for extra situational awareness. But I don’t know anyone else who did, and I only rarely did it myself.

6:42: “the controller is going to rely on the altitude difference of a couple hundred feet” no, as I mentioned in an earlier post, they’re expecting lateral separation. If you pass a couple hundred feet below a landing airplane you have fucked up massively and if you do it intentionally the FAA (or DOD for military pilots) will never let you fly again.

I can’t find it now cause reddit search sucks and as you can imagine the atc subreddit has had a lot of posts lately, but a controller over there confirmed that DCA gets conflict alerts all the time, the resolution on their scope when aircraft pass close to each other can show them overlapping, and they’re not going to tell a helicopter to make a turn if they say they have the conflicting aircraft in sight.

I think it’s higher for the TCAS in the jet, but it probably depends on the system. I’ve heard 900 and 1000 ft but who knows if that’s from someone who knows what they’re talking about. I just looked up the limits on my own system (helicopter) and it’s inhibited if I’m below 400’ or if the traffic it sees is below 200’. Black Hawks have no warnings at all.

There’s a new temporary flight restriction (which I assume may become permanent) that essentially ends helicopter traffic on the Potomac between Wilson bridge and Memorial bridge.

https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_5_9030.html

“At least” is likely doing a lot of work. I’m sure there are reports that CNN didn’t find and incidents that were never reported. Probably two near misses per day.

I don’t blame the helicopter pilots in any kind of negative sense. It’s congested airspace with procedures that only exist because of the high number of military and government helicopters that need to get around. Nobody ever thought we should put a helicopter route next to the airport because it would be safer. And they’re not the first crew to misidentify a traffic callout. And yes, it’s very sad that they’re not equipped with radar (I’ll call it ADS-B In from now on to be precise). I think that would have saved them. There’s also a viral post in the helicopters subreddit blaming Army leadership for not prioritizing pilot proficiency. Someone has similar thoughts after every Army Aviation accident and they’re not wrong. Lots of systemic blame to go around.

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Waiting for the first Democrat in Congress to respond to the Philly crash with more than just condolences for the victims and maybe something positive about first responders.

EO banning such flights incoming.

all mexican nationals on the philly crash

things nobody would’ve blinked an eye at just a month ago I’m sure nobody will say anything about that now either. (sigh)

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Not sure if this was posted but this guy makes a very good case for what happened. He believes the helicopter pilot was watching the plane behind the one he hit.

The movie Airplane! is on IFC right now. :man_facepalming:

Surely you can’t be serious?

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@d10

How much of a constraint is noise abatement in determining flight paths around DCA?

Ghislaine Maxwell

Surprisingly very little. I don’t know of any specific areas that I’ve ever been asked to avoid for noise abatement. The prohibited areas around the mall and vp’s residence are the only off limits areas but those are security concerns. Cutting between those areas through Georgetown and Kalorama is a common route and that’s where all the rich people live, so if you can fly there you can fly anywhere. I think I remember someone in Congress complaining about the helicopter noise over his house maybe like 10 years ago, it was in the news, but nothing came out of it.

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Commissioned as an officer in 2019.

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sounds like a trump administration DEI hire

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