Post Millennial- Black Hawk pilot Rachel Lobach ignored instructions before mid-air collision over Potomac River
Air traffic controllers had warned the helicopter crew about a nearby passenger airliner, and both Lobach and Eaves acknowledged the warning, opting to proceed under “visual separation.” This is a method where pilots are allowed to continue flying in the area by using their own observations rather than adhering to instructions from air traffic control.
The report said the Black Hawk was only 15 seconds from crossing paths with the passenger jet when Eaves informed Lobach that he believed air traffic control wanted them to turn left toward the east river bank.
Diversity is our strength.
“DEI the friendly skies”
So, I guess the so-called “instruction” was really only an “advisory”.
Air traffic controllers had warned
_________________________
Mansplaining
NTSB.
uhuh. *just wait* until THEY are infested with DEI personnel.
Even putting all the warnings aside … EVERY hc pilot navigating the crossing of a commercial airport runway SHOULD have every one of their spider senses on RED ALERT! She should have responded IMMEDIATELY to ATC directions. And ATC should be MANDATED to direct the traffic … no hc pilot should be allowed to go rogue. Period.
Hmmm … “period” … perhaps that was the problem that clouded her judgement.
DEI = Doubt Entrapment Indecision.. Think about it..
No military plane should fly off the ends of runways unless fully under air traffic control and subject to discipline at least equal to FAA for effing up. Mind you, death is good discipline. The risk of mishap is simply too great.
100%
According to a pilot who reviewed the transcript of the pilot and control tower, the aircraft controller handed off responsibility to the heli-pilot who accepted it, shortly before the crash. That night there was only a single controller whereas normally there is a controller each for fixed-wing and helicopter. Where was the second controller that night? Because controllers keep pilots from making mistakes in areas with heavy traffic.
While it is most likely that she was simply incompetent there is also the possibility that she was on some sort of ‘medication’. She was an aide to Biden so…..
She was a two-bar captain with only 500 hours? Smells fishy. I wonder if she had night vision issues, or just thought she was queen sh1t.
Aircraft should not be allowed to do free flight ops within 10 miles of an airport. Military airspace is under military control where that radius overlaps, but still under ground control.
You’d think a two-bar captain could hold her liquor…
Work for Biden administration – get cushy job flying VIPs around town in your army helicopter…
She knew how to work some system, not aviation systems apparently, Washington systems…
DEI is like drunk driving.. It doesn’t investigate well.. That’s why we have banned it outright.. Its impossible to determine how much or little the alcohol had to do with the crash.. But we know its bad, so we don’t do it..
Enter the railroad.. I imagine a good % of drunk drivers or DEI recipients get involved in accidents that were not their fault.. Look at all the sober people / non DEI people crashing into things.. But if we hear Drunk or DEI we close the book GUILTY.. Really its the illegality of both that turns the guilty key.. Think about it..
This situation has nothing to do with race or gender.. Its common law..
The “swiss cheese” theory of aircraft collisions works again.
Busy airports these days are understaffed and have tired controllers with too much overload to manage well. Hand overs on breaks and shift changes are not handled well. How many air traffic control hours did the controller have? Was she reluctant to ask for help when overwhelmed?
WTF: did the training military pilot not see anything dangerous?
DEI may have a role, as training (mostly male) pilots may go a bit soft on supervision, as harassment charges sometimes succeed.
Why is a training pilot with very few flying hours allowed to fly into this busy airspace at all? The military is too soft. They could have assigned the trainee to a different base.
Systemically, the military and commercial aircraft have silos that do not connect much. How does this affect both flights?
I am sure that there are many more questions for the US NTSB to investigate.
It could have been a “you can do it” scenario.
If you think that’s bad, wait until United brings on half of their upcoming 8000 pilot vacancies to full DEI hires. How’s that for terrifying.
Body counts mean nothing to these left-wing cultists. People must be sacrificed on the altar of leftism.
No amount of scorn or loathing is too much to heap upon them. They are a plague.
mhb23re
The ‘DEI caused this tragedy’ hypothesis assumes that if the helicopter pilot had simply had more experience, then this would have never happened. I submit that if we have devised a system that depends so much on the experience of pilots to navigate the mine field of air traffic as the only way we keep our aircraft from crashing into each other, then it is a wonder that these tragedies do not happen more often. Conversely, the fact that these tragedies do not happen more often is not evidence that the system as it operated that night was safe. The best way to analyze this tragedy is to first determine the way the process would have had to work to be done ‘correctly’ and then determine all the little ways it varied to result in this bad outcome.
I think the simplest answer is that a system that has helicopters and jumbo jets flying in different directions, at very similar altitudes, in the dark and depending on pilots’ vision and experience the avoid collisions, is a very bad system, and you don’t need to be an aviation expert to figure that out. You have complex systems that are allowed to slowly change over time and bureaucracies that assume that the absence of accidents so far is evidence that the systems are not dangerous. The examples of such poor conclusions are there in the past for all to see: Tenerife, Challenger, Columbia, Deep Water Horizon, Piper Alpha, Chernobyl.
What happens when you try to tell an under-qualified woman what to do …
She probably thought he was “mansplaining” to her.