https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mIruQl3WQg
Who's to blame?
This question is being kicked around like a football. There may be a lot of blame to go around.
First of all, should military helicopters fly on flightpaths of commercial airliners taking off and landing at a major airport? It sounds like a scary idea. These helicopters don't just decide to fly there. They are ordered to fly there. Are they endangering the public? Oh no!! Surely not. Yet this collision was the culmination of numerous reports of near misses. Maybe that's not where military helicopters should fly, dare I say. But don't forget, these aircraft are used to transport VIPs...generals! Not sure that a general should feel that his rank gives him the authority to command planeloads of people to be killed. So that would be question one in answer to "Who's to blame." There's a general behind this idea somewhere.
Assuming that military helicopters on the flightpaths of commercials flights is a great idea, let's move on the the specific incident at Reagan National Airport - the first mid air collision in thirty eight years. Nothing whatsoever to do with flying military helicopters on the flightpaths of commercial air traffic. I would say there could be three areas where the blame could land. And I don't know where it belongs but I have a good idea where is will wind up.
Behind Door Number One is the air traffic controllers. There were two of them on duty. A third had left early. This is an incredibly busy airport, and four air traffic controllers were assigned to handle the chaotic situation. They claim that two was plenty. OK. That may be. And there is said to be a shortage of air traffic controllers nationwide. However, don't let that deter you from flying. Also, don't let this one incident scare you. The military helicopter was advised that there was a CRJ (?) coming in. The helicopter pilot responded that they saw it. It being an American Airlines plane with 64 people aboard. The helicopter's response was that they wanted to handle this visually. The air traffic controller ceded responsibility to the helicopter to handle themselves. The helicopter then made a beeline straight into the airliner. I would say in a perfect world the helicopter would have been told to hover in place until the airliner had passed, but that isn't based on knowledge of handling traffic at airports. Do I blame the air traffic controller? I just don't know. I suppose there is the possibility that heads will roll in that department, but that may be because the air traffic controller is the only one that still has a head of everyone that was involved.
Behind Door Number Two is the American Airlines airliner. Is there any blame there? The pilots were asked to use runway 33 instead of the usual runway. They pilots complied. Nothing wrong with that. The landing was done in perfect accordance with landing procedures. The pilots were completely unaware of the helicopter on the flightpath, since they were not on the military radio frequency and they were not told by the air traffic controllers. I don't find any blame for the American Airlines pilots.
Behind Door Number Three is the helicopter pilot. I have an idea this will ultimately be the door at which the blame is laid. Why? Several reasons. The first reaction I heard to the crash was from President Trump. He spoke of the evils of "DEI." My impression was that somehow he felt that that was at the core of the problem. DEI? DEI means diversity equity inclusion. Probably not only are people that aren't white males excluded from the role of helicopter pilot or air traffic controller, but possibly non white males are preferred. This could result in less qualified people filling these roles, since the white males would be eliminated from consideration. I puzzled over this. The American Airlines pilots were white males, so they wouldn't be the DEI target. The air traffic controller was male, so he might not have been DEI. But then only today I found out that the helicopter pilot was female. I suppose that's where the DEI criticism was aimed.
So what about this female pilot? Was she a credible person to qualify as deserving blame for the accident? I don't know. I have a hunch that is the direction the blame will go. She had 450 hours of experience flying the Blackhawk helicopter. That actually is not considered to be a massive amount of experience. So she's behind a cloud because of being female, hence a possible DEI benefactor. One could go so far as to say she lacked adequate experience. Two strikes. And who flew the helicopter into the airliner? Three strikes. The helicopter was not supposed to fly above 200 feet in altitude, but it was at 350 feet. Whose fault was that? What altitude was the airliner at? 350 feet. The 200 feet in altitude was supposed to keep helicopters from being directly in the flightpath of airliners. I have no explanation for why the helicopter was at this altitude. I would have to say flying at the incorrect altitude would be strike four. Four?? Yikes.
What does it matter who's to blame? It matters because it explains what went wrong. Knowing what went wrong may prevent a repeat of the same mistake.
My personal belief is that the Reagan National Airport is a bad place to have military helicopters using as their own personal heliport. That would be the basic problem. Having been placed in a dangerous position, it has been handled by the people put in the situation - airline pilots, military helicopter pilots and air traffic controllers, in a confused way. This was bound to result in a major problem. Whose fault is it that they handled a dangerous situation with predictable mistakes? I would say primarily whoever instituted the policy of routinely flying military helicopters around the flightpaths of airliners at Reagan International Airport.
UPDATE
Was this all about generals having elite means of transportation? No, the fact is that it wasn't so much about generals as it was about having a means of whisking Congress away to safety in the event of disaster so they could continue to govern th country.
A CALL OUT OF THE BLUE
This afternoon, Feb. 6th, I received a call from my sister. She said that my brother is in the process of attempting to get power of attorney over my mother, who lives with me, in order to force her into a nursing home. This would have to pretty much be done over my dead body, so he is plotting a second plan for eliminating me. My brother claims that I am obviously mentally defective. Yes, he's been keeping a file on me, documenting my insanity. There are many, many examples.
There is my preposterous claim that my nephew has been over here at night banging on the walls of my house around my bedroom. First, I should point out, my nephew is a night person. Maybe I think this because he has been seen and heard doing this by my mother, who said that he was outside of the window by her bed for around 20 minutes at around 1:00 am, just staring at her. She thought that was spooky and scary. And the noises, that sound like someone beating the walls with a sledgehammer first started happening to her. Then to me a few days later. I heard tapping on my bedroom window on Christmas Eve, around midnight. My nephew's birthday is on Christmas, so strangely enough, he came to mind. I called the sheriff, and a deputy came out and walked around the house, but didn't find anyone. So therefore that was due to my paranoia and filed in my brother's Helene file. The beating on the walls happened again about a month ago. It started at about 3:00 am on one side of the bedroom, waking me up. However, I ignored it and fell back asleep. This went on every ten minutes or so for about an hour. The beating on the walls sounded like a bat or a sledgehammer slamming into the wall, each time four beats. I kept falling back asleep, since this actually is becoming commonplace around here. Finally at 4:30 am someone began slamming the wall directly behind where my head was with all their might. It woke me up to the point that I couldn't go back to sleep. Crazy, insane, paranoid me. I thought it was my nephew. It is someone who knows exactly where I sleep at night and is not dealing with a full deck. This narrows down the number of people I would suspect.
So the silly incident of me reporting the tapping on the window to the sheriff is in my official file that my brother is keeping, and my bizarre complaints about my nephew beating the walls at night is in "my file." What else? So, there's so much. One day I came down with COVID. I had a high fever, 105º, and my blood pressure dropped to 60/40. I tried to get in bed but fell on the floor and couldn't stand up. Crazy me, fool that I am, I called the sheriff. Two deputies helped me off the floor and into bed. So this incident also went into my file, which just goes to show you what a no good I am.
Then I heard that my brother intends to drag me into court and make me his guardian, and put me away somewhere, probably a mental institution. He said that he would call my step brother as a witness against me in court. ??
I called my step brother and told him that my brother is planning to take me to court to take over my life by making himself my guardian, and plans to call my step brother to testify against me. My step brother said the only possible way he would testify against me is in the event that he had a brain aneurysm and had lost his mind.
I knew that my brother had a strange attitude toward me. He came to visit on my birthday. During the visit he made a beeline for mother, and chatted with her for about 45 minutes. I was not spoken to at all during the whole visit. He had brought some canned goods as a birthday gift. So they went into my little food stockpile. I had been unnerved when I saw him, thinking that he didn't look well. So maybe he had a stroke. He's gone completely luny. If you're reading this, dearest brother, I'm talking about you.
