Aviation Crashes and other FAA News

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Calheel said:
The plane is starting from a much higher height than the bridge jumper. I think the plane altitude was 400 feet or so at the point of impact. The Golden Gate Bridge is 220 feet. You do get some of the parachute not opening cases where the person survives, but I would think the extra 180 feet is significant (even if the forward momentum is canceled out)

More to the point, I am not aware of anyone ever surviving a plane crash when the plane has fallen straight down. When the plane crashes at an angle to the ground it can absorb some of the impact. Are you aware of any plane crashes where anyone survived impact from a straight vertical fall of 400 feet?
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1. I don't know. I don't follow plane crashes. I do vaguely recall instances where a handful of people survived crashes that killed everyone else, but I couldn't tell you anything about them.

2. Yes, the additional altitude would likely be significant, though not necessarily. It would depend on the terminal velocity. I don't know the terminal velocity of a human body in the air. For a plane, it would depend greatly on the shape of the fusilage after explosion.

3. This plane almost certainly did not fall straight down. There would be no force strong enough to change its horizontal velocity to zero. I doubt it has any significance, though. In fact, my instinct would be that you'd have a better chance of surviving a crash at a vertical velocity X if the plane landed nose-first and fully vertical, than one where the plane is more horizontal. There would be more crumpling along the axis of the body, I would think.

You might be confusing two different concepts. Maybe not. When a plane comes in at an angle, less of its velocity will be in the vertical plane. So if you have a plane going 150 mph and impacting at a 30 degree angle, only 75 mph of that speed is going to be vertical. Assuming it's not running into the ground and a mountain at the same time, we can safely disregard (or at least de-emphasize) the horizontal velocity. And so it's a comparison of 75 mph versus 150 mph if the plane's velocity is fully vertical.

Now, if we assume that there are no wings, then the vertical velocity will primarily be a function of the height of falling. If a plane at 0 mph falls from 400 feet, its vertical velocity would be the same as one that is moving 200 mph horizontally, at least to a first approximation. But air resistance could play a role. Air resistance is usually modeled as a force proportional to the speed of an object (not the velocity). So a plane with horizontal velocity could reach its terminal velocity more quickly than one with no horizontal velocity. And if so, it could mean that the terminal velocity will be smaller in the vertical plane than the plane falling straight down. But there are a lot of factors that would influence that, and it's beyond my ability to evaluate them.
 
Huh? said:
The investigation will need to determine whether the alleged understaffing was unique in this instance to the normal course of operations of the DCA tower.

This is the first commercial air crash in 16 years. Given that record, I'm having difficulty believing the air system is chronically understaffed.
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No, the air system is chronically understaffed. That's not in doubt. Buttigieg said the country is 3000 controllers short of full. The impact of that understaffing can vary, though. Think about it like a basketball team. If there are only 8 scholarship players, the team is going to lack depth, and all things equal, that's bad. But the team can still win plenty of games despite the understaffing if it gets enough production from those it has.

Where I live, everyone is fucking sick right now. I've been sick; my cleaning crew has skipped a couple of times because they were sick. Teachers have been out. Etc. I have no idea if that's the case in DC, but it's not hard to imagine a controller coming into work, being unable to fully concentrate, and having to go home early.
 
whatntarnation said:
ATC did everything right. Helicopter pilot is much more likely to be culpable.
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If I had to guess, this is just something that is inevitable given the congestion in that area. If I am correct, rather than placing blame on one side or the other, the blame should go to those who have allowed that particular airspace to become so congested.

Even if someone theoretically should have been able to do something differently, humans are not computers and expecting them to be flawless in high stress situations isn't an acceptable solution.

It seems very likely that even if there was negligence it was nowhere near the negligence of the other Potomac plane crash where the pilots did not activate the anti-ice system (and probably should have gone back for deicing after waiting in line for a long time to take off.)
 
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ChapelHillSooner said:
If I had to guess, this is just something that is inevitable given the congestion in that area. If I am correct, rather than placing blame on one side or the other, the blame should go to those who have allowed that particular airspace to become so congested.

Even if someone theoretically should have been able to do something differently, humans are not computers and expecting them to be flawless in high stress situations isn't an acceptable solution.
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Right. Not too long ago, six sigma manufacturing was all the rage. Maybe it still is. Six sigma roughly translates to one error in a million. So even in a controlled environment with specialized equipment, automation and the like, error rates are still 1 in a million.

Google says there are about 400 flights in and out of Reagan per day. That's not counting copters or anything else, but let's go with just that. That's 146K flights per year. That's a million and a half per decade, so one crash in that time frame is better than six sigma. Errors are going to happen. They are impossible to avoid.

Now, there probably have been way more errors than just this one. My guess is that every near-miss is also an error, and for all we know, there could be other errors that get caught by the onboard computers, and the like. So it's probably wrong to say that the FAA is doing better than 1 in a million, but it's still really good.

The fact is that the best way to prevent crashes is to avoid situations in which crashes are possible. Hence your point about congestion.
 
One reason for congestion at Reagan is the number of Congressional delegations requiring that flights be available from DCA back to their home district.

Dulles is struggling financially. There is capacity in the DC area, we just choose not to deploy it.
 
nrsair said:
That’s interesting. On NPR earlier they had a former commercial pilot and instructor who emphasized that the ATC did a great job throughout the encounter. I wonder what could have gone differently with another ATC there since apparently the helicopter pilot answered in the affirmative when asked if he was monitoring the plane.
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I heard that NPR interview as well - I didn't hear the beginning so I don't know if he had listened to a recording or had a transcript, but he was referencing what the tower person said and what the helicopter and airline pilots said. He definitely concluded that this was not an error from the tower, but likely an error from the helicopter pilot, for what it's worth.
 
Look at this fucking bullshit executive order from Trump:

www.whitehouse.gov

Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION SUBJECT:
www.whitehouse.gov

I would invite anyone to defend this. An executive order just to hurl unfounded blame at his predecessor and smear all FAA employees as potentially having intellectual disabilities. When he don’t yet know if any FAS employee did a single thing wrong.

Someone, please, tell me one advantage of having someone so thin skinned and cowardly running our country.
 
There is a subreddit called r/aircrashinvestigation and the mother of one of the pilots on the American Airlines flight found out that her son was on the fateful flight when someone posted the crew list for that particular AA flight from Wichita. Cannot even begin to fathom.
 
rodoheel said:
Look at this fucking bullshit executive order from Trump:

www.whitehouse.gov

Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION SUBJECT:
www.whitehouse.gov

I would invite anyone to defend this. An executive order just to hurl unfounded blame at his predecessor and smear all FAA employees as potentially having intellectual disabilities. When he don’t yet know if any FAS employee did a single thing wrong.

Someone, please, tell me one advantage of having someone so thin skinned and cowardly running our country.
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Completely agree with you, but the folks on this board whom we are asking to defend this shit are thin skinned cowards themselves and probably find that trait of Trump‘s to be endearing.

Prove me wrong, Trumpers. Try to defend this shit!
 
rodoheel said:
Look at this fucking bullshit executive order from Trump:

www.whitehouse.gov

Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION SUBJECT:
www.whitehouse.gov

I would invite anyone to defend this. An executive order just to hurl unfounded blame at his predecessor and smear all FAA employees as potentially having intellectual disabilities. When he don’t yet know if any FAS employee did a single thing wrong.

Someone, please, tell me one advantage of having someone so thin skinned and cowardly running our country.
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Our board Trump defenders have all magically managed to take a group vacation together over the last few days. Not surprising, given the absolute catastrophe that the first ten days of Trump 2.0 has become for the country.

Told You So Comedy GIF by NETFLIX
 
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