Note to self...avoid flights in the area of a SpaceX launch...the Starship Skedaddle as they're calling the event.
https://www.flightradar24.com/2025-0...19.83,-72.12/7
Note to self...avoid flights in the area of a SpaceX launch...the Starship Skedaddle as they're calling the event.
https://www.flightradar24.com/2025-0...19.83,-72.12/7
rw saunders
hey, how lucky can one man get.
My son completed his ground school for the T-45 and will start his three months of simulator before he gets in the aircraft. He'll likely spend October in El Centro, CA, dropping bombs and simulated strafing runs. He'll spend December in Key West (again) learning aerial combat and get his wings around February 2026, and head to a replacement squadron to fly the F-35 B/C.
Retired Sailor, Marine dad, semi-professional cyclist, fly fisherman, and Indian School STEM teacher.
Assistant Operating Officer at Farm Soap homemade soaps. www.farmsoap.com
I once flew a DOD charter into El Centro. They started doing training circuits about an hour before sunset. One touch and go was lifting off just as the next one was in the flare. Must have been at least a half dozen in the pattern. We spent 75 minutes watching this dance until we told the controller we were near our legal limits and had to either cancel or get going in 10-15 minutes. They made it happen. Barely. We were a civilian carrier in their world. Different worlds and different goals.
If he wants a civilian career later he should get some experience in that world as well.
La Cheeserie!
He's going to be obligated until 2034 when he's 35. Unless he does an instructor tour, he won't get his hours in an F-35. The Marines have helicopters, C-130s, and F-35s. They currently have AV-8s (Harriers) and legacy Hornets but they're being phased out and aren't an option for my son. He made the grades and flight evals for jets. Some of the candidates for C-130s are people with good grades but may not have the best flying grades, so they're going to an airframe where there will always be another pilot in the cockpit. El Centro is only four hours away from our current house, but we'll be 17 hours away after we move next month. Maybe we'll escape the cold with a trip to Key West in December.
Retired Sailor, Marine dad, semi-professional cyclist, fly fisherman, and Indian School STEM teacher.
Assistant Operating Officer at Farm Soap homemade soaps. www.farmsoap.com
I actually enjoy and appreciate the science of flying, but when I finally “hang up the boots”, I will stop heading to client sites on early Sunday mornings.
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rw saunders
hey, how lucky can one man get.
Tell him to remember to be nice to the guys who do the maintenance - especially on the seat...
https://redirect.viglink.com/?format...eature%3Dshare
Retired Sailor, Marine dad, semi-professional cyclist, fly fisherman, and Indian School STEM teacher.
Assistant Operating Officer at Farm Soap homemade soaps. www.farmsoap.com
We had 20-40mph winds yesterday. When I went outside around 10PM to get something out of the garage, the wind noise was pretty intense. Then I realized the noise was coming from planes. We rarely get fly overs from Albany bound planes (about an hour drive to our NW,) so I was wondering what was happening. When I looked at my phone, I saw news of the crash in DC. I'm guessing that the increase in overhead traffic was not necessarily planes going in to Albany but planes in holding patterns due to traffic management on the east coast after DC closed.
Last edited by j44ke; 2 Weeks Ago at 10:25 AM.
I have flown that exact approach probably a couple hundred times to RWY 33 at DCA. Kind of alarming, to say the least.
La Cheeserie!
There is a webcam video that is somewhat indistinct but appears to show the helicopter flying into the side of the plane as the plane approaches the runway. DoD says the helicopter was on a training mission. Not sure why you'd do a training mission in the middle of one of the more crowded (air and land) airport locations in the country. National is packed into its space like sardine and surrounded by buildings, major roads and water.
They have prescribed routes and should have been tracking along that. Probably training on those routes for nighttime flying, which is quite different from daytime flying.
The investigation will reveal all. The civilian airplane appeared to be in exactly the right place on about a 1-mile final for RWY 33.
La Cheeserie!
The list of skater kids who were on the plane is starting to come out. Teenagers, two of them sisters, plus coaches, family members, and of course all of the people not with the skating community who also died.
I’ve not yet flown into that airport. At least one story says military traffic and civilian traffic routinely operate next to each other.
It is tragic without doubt.
Yes, military helicopters are frequently in flight there. There’s a US Navy station on the east side of the river and the Pentagon is on the west side, in Arlington. I don’t know their prescribed routes, but they’re usually quite low and along the shore line. The “circling” approach to RWY 33 takes the civilian airports over the shoreline for a couple miles. It is rare for larger airplanes like a 737 or Airbus 3-series to land on 33 but fairly common for the less heavy ‘regional’ jets to use it. It is a short runway.
It is common to fly in and have ATC issue the statement, “Helicopter traffic at your 1-2 o’clock, has you in sight and will remain clear”. Last night they did not remain clear. I’d bet the audio transcript will reveal a statement along those lines 30 seconds or so prior to the collision. This hits close enough to home that I kind of don’t want to read them yet.
DCA is a crazy airport and I’m sure the military and Secret Service would like to shut it down. It’s so close to so much federal government activity that it is a possible security risk. If there’s a silver lining here it’s that this wasn’t a security related accident and it happened over water and not over a populated area, which are right nearby.
La Cheeserie!
I flew into DCA dozens of times when I was in the Navy. I had business at the Navy Yard and using DCA meant I didn't need a car. I had one SWA flight when there were thunderstorms in the area. We taxied twice to opposite ends of the airport as the wind shifted. Not reassuring. When my son was at Annapolis and I flew out for a visit, we liked to stay at the Southwest Waterfront and the constant cycle of aircraft was fun to watch from the hotel. DCA has probably lived out its usefulness, maybe turn it into a park and name it after Reagan.
For what Saab said, there are things I don't like to think about including plane crashes as my son moves through his flight training. Fear doesn't help, but sometimes it bounces around in my head. At least he isn't flying Ospreys.
Retired Sailor, Marine dad, semi-professional cyclist, fly fisherman, and Indian School STEM teacher.
Assistant Operating Officer at Farm Soap homemade soaps. www.farmsoap.com
Gingrich loved flying out of National to go visit his girlfriend while he was married. I think he was the person who said Congress doesn't fly out of Dulles when there was a movement to close National sometime after the 14th St bridge crash. I saw him several times in that airport and somehow managed to restrain myself from pushing him down the escalator. He has the largest head on a small sized human I have ever seen. It would have been easy to tip him over.
I'm getting on a plane to Paris tomorrow. These events always remind me how trivialized flying has become, but really, you are flying in the air in a big heavy thing with all sorts of things competing for space and in a couple seconds .... Trust is a palpable substance when you consider all that is required to get this done.
Last edited by j44ke; 2 Weeks Ago at 01:08 PM.
So many excellent insights here^^. I first sat on the flight deck for a DCA arrival when I was 14 years old. My dad was flying his Beech Baron with me in the right seat. Dad had ~15K hours as a professional pilot by then, but still spent considerable time studying the approach plate (the old LDA approach to RW19, notoriously complicated). I later went on to fly into DCA throughout my career in everything from light twins to large business jets (similar in size to regional airline jets). DCA has always been a challenging airport, requiring your "A game." I'll add a few more thoughts on DCA and this tragedy:
- Most older, busy US airports are over-scheduled. Think LGA, EWR, BOS, DCA, etc. They have crossing runways and were never designed for today's ATC environment and volume of traffic. The amount of traffic scheduled in/out of the airports is based on optimum conditions. DCA uses the Circle To Land (CTL) procedure from runway 1 to runway 33 to fit more operations into a small amount of real estate. That puts arriving aircraft directly over helicopter flight corridors. The helicopter in this collision was supposed to see and avoid the airliner. Clearly that didn't work well.
- I did listen to the ATC recordings from last night's crash. The airline crew was not specifically told about the helicopter. The helicopter crew was notified about the airliner and acknowledged having it in sight. The helicopter was then instructed to pass behind the airliner. The radio interchange was compromised because only the controller could hear both aircrafts' transmissions. The helicopter was on a UHF frequency while the airliner was on VHF. A certain recipe for poor communication and ultimately disaster.
My $0.02: this tragedy was decades in the making. A combination of poor communications, congested airspace, an over-scheduled airport, poor procedures (both accident aircraft on different radio frequencies), limitations on see-and-avoid, and limitations on current anti-collision technologies. The holes in the Swiss cheese lined up, killing dozens. RIP to the victims.
Greg
Last edited by gregl; 2 Weeks Ago at 01:41 PM. Reason: fixed typo
Old age and treachery beat youth and enthusiasm every time…
I flew into DCA a couple weeks ago. It is alarmingly close to a lot of important buildings, but if you have business in DC it's far more convenient than Dulles.
If ATC staff received the same unsettling emails the rest of the civil service received over the past two days, I have to wonder how focused on their work they could've been. "Traumatizing" the workforce was a clearly stated goal.
The silver line from Dulles to DC is pretty recent. Back when I was frequenting the Navy Yard to deliver briefs, my flights would originate in Rome and I'd land at some international hub like Philly, JFK, or Cincinnati, followed by a connection to DCA. The silver line would have allowed me to use Dulles and metro to LeEnfant to catch the green line to Navy Yard. Perhaps Dulles could have an express train to DC like the Leonardo Express between the Leonardo da Vinci Airport and Termini in Rome, a non-stop 45 minute train. That would largely eliminate the need for DCA.
Retired Sailor, Marine dad, semi-professional cyclist, fly fisherman, and Indian School STEM teacher.
Assistant Operating Officer at Farm Soap homemade soaps. www.farmsoap.com
This is an awful tragedy. Many lives lost.
Having read many NTSB crash investigations as a young engineer, and even seen some of the engine hardware involved, I know that it is an arduous task to figure out what has happened and—most importantly—learn the lessons.
That’s not the only reason I am disgusted by the rush to judgment and to blame the current boogeyman—diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is some sick, sick shit. Fuck that so-called Presidential Memorandum and “Immediate Assessment.” It’s asinine, dangerous, and disrespectful.
There’s a process.
Trod Harland, Pickle Expediter
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James Baldwin
And whaddya think the chances are that they already know the genders and ethnicities of the pilots and people in the tower, and are deliberately coloring the investigation (or at least how it is received) before it starts?
So many people he can’t resist kicking. At least we know it wasn’t a windmill.
Last edited by thollandpe; 2 Weeks Ago at 08:14 PM.
Trod Harland, Pickle Expediter
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James Baldwin
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