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calling a request for more separation between aircraft due to safety concerns "too political" is pure insanity

It's crazy that politicians kept adding routes to DCA to gain support but when others complained and wanted to reduce traffic it was called "too political"

I’m gonna tell you guys a little more background since I flew that exact plane… I’ve flown that exact approach dozens of times. I knew Jonathan Campos, Samuel Lilley, Ian Epstein, and Danasia Elder.

They were all great people. Specifically three or four weeks prior I had flown with Sam. I was a check airman for Psa meaning that I helped train new captains and first officers, and help to enforce that all Faa regulations and standard operating procedures were complied with.

Up at cruise altitude, Sam told me he was getting ready for captain upgrade. Most of the time when I fly with pilots that are getting ready to upgrade they’d ask me “what are the tough areas I need to study?” Or “what are some ‘gotchas’ for Capt upgrade”? And while I don’t necessarily like those questions because they are basically asking for a shortcut…

Sam asked me “what makes a good captain?” And I told him that. That right there, that mentality of asking what makes a good captain versus looking for a shortcut is what makes a good captain.

I’m glad and honored they gave Sam his Captain wings posthumously.

Captain Campos: New Yorker through and through. Sharp, sarcastic, funny, great guy. I saw him in the jet Bridge many a time during plane swaps and he was always loved by his crews.

Ian- we flew together dozens of times. I’d be walking in the terminal talking to my first officer, and as I walked past Ian, he would raise his hand and I’d high five him without even breaking a stride or looking at eachother.

Danasia I had flown with a few months prior. Quiet, sweet, I had offered to buy the whole crew Starbucks and she politely declined… so I told her “take my phone and put your order in the app or I’m coming back with at least a cake pop for you” sooo she smiled, laughed, and thanked me.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget, watching these videos that these are real people. That have families waiting for them, nervous and anxious that they won’t come home one day.

And all of our careers one of two things is gonna happen. You’re gonna take your last flight knowing it’s your last flight, or are you gonna take your last flight not knowing it’s your last flight… and I pray for each and every one of us that it’s the former.

look out for eachother, love one another, and remember the goal for all of us is to go home at the end of the day.

I have never been as shocked by an accident as this one! I am a pilot and have flown into some busy west coast airports, but never flown on the east coast. When this accident happened, I did what I usually do and pulled up the charts for the airspace. I was completely dumbfounded when I saw the route 4 helicopter route that passed directly under airplanes on short final! I have never seen anything like that… it was hard to believe! Not only was this route somehow allowed, but the controllers routinely allowed helicopters to rely on visual separation… at NIGHT… truly shocking. The only truly blameless folks in this whole incident are those poor pilots and passengers on the RJ. Just a totally unacceptable and preventable tragedy.

"denied for political reasons" is CRAZY

I am so angry at all of this.  To hear that US politicians have so influence on airport operations so that they can be more comfortable is sickening. They should have their names dragged through the press like the poor souls of the aircraft crews, particularly the female pilot (sad I even have to mention it). Those poor CRJ pilots were just trying to be team players to make up for the those stupid political-induced pressures - now that’s truly heart breaking. I don’t see how ATC can be left with such big workloads either. Tragic.

Letting Congress make laws about areas outside their expertise is how people get killed.

I’m a Figure skater and coach, this crash absolutely devastated the community. My colleagues were close with the coaches we lost, and my friends lost their friends that evening. It’s so frustrating how avoidable it was.
I know Spencer Lane’s father Doug has been doing a hell of a lot of work advocating for safer skies (along with many other members of the skating community), and I hope that we never have to see anything like this again.
Sending love to all impacted by this accident.

All those documents saying that safety is "too political" couldn't describe my own government better.

For all those who are angry at how this could happen, should watch NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy’s Senate testimony at the DCA crash hearing. Visibly upset, she rips into the FAA for years of not acting on ADS-B in recommendations on 17 different occasions along with a whole litany of other failures to act.  She begins her testimony by apologizing to the families of the victims for what was an entirely preventable accident.  Truly a    professional leading a professional agency passionate about public safety.

The whole aviation industry has some serious normalization of deviance going on about radio voice quality and reliability. This story features important transmissions being lost due to bad sound quality and due to a half-duplex radio, and this being contributing factors. Those sorts of audio issues stopped being major problems outside the aviation world quite some time ago.

44:45 - When it comes to safety, "vibes are off" is a valid reason.

The elephant in the room in this whole discussion is the simple fact that Congress did not want to commute back and forth to either Dulles KIAD or Baltimore-Washington KBWI. That is the only reason DCA was built up so much over the decades following WWII. Laziness and entitlement by powerful politicians are at the root of this problem.  In a saner world, DCA would be a military only airfield. Tasked with protecting the city and evacuation of personnel during times of threats. In this instance the government is to blame.

While most channels talk about pilot error, the complexity of this accident just blew my mind. This is why your channel is the best! Now we have the full picture, not just a little part of it.

The ultimate irony is that politicians quickly pinned this on DEI hiring even though the first layers of safety were stripped away due to politics

I used to go into LAX on a 737–200 in the 90s.  The controllers assumed everybody was familiar with the airport.  And they would call consistently:  Do you have the airport in sight, Do you have the airport in sight?

I learned very early from very learned captains and experienced pilots, never to call the airport in sight.  That put all visual separation onto your shoulders and at a busy airport, there is no way you can see every single aircraft.

At night, dusk and low visual situations, airport lights, automotive lights, railway train lights, and any other lights you think of can be confused with traffic or even a runway side lighting.

Also to have people state, they have visual confirmation with traffic when they did not, just to allow for increased efficiency, in itself is criminal.

Captain Geoff Quickfall  ATPL, BSc,  MSc, PhD candidate.  28,000 hours.  B737, B757, B767, B777, B787, DC10, Floats C185, DHC2, B18.

You know, here's a wild idea - maybe if we stopped letting politicians completely detach themselves from what regular people have to deal with, they'd actually give a shit about what regular people have to deal with? The amount of preferential treatment given all around the world is inane, and most of the time if they're not abusing the privileges given to them, they try and get even more... no wonder they don't have any time to actually do their job as a civil SERVANT after all that.

Air traffic controllers made about 7.7 separate calls per minute. OMG. It was when Peter said that, that I understood how much work pressure air traffic controllers can have 😬

With the almost trillion dollars budget the us military has you would think they would create a fix for the altimeter not giving accurate altitude