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So far, this is about the only criticism of the RJ crew that I can think of: accepting a change to the approach and runway that close in. In a fighter in VMC? Absolutely, no problem. But the latest that I've accepted a change to a landing runway in an airliner has been outside 10 miles and even that was pushing it. You can hardly call that causal, but it is something to think about and learn from as an airline pilot. Don't let ATC fly your plane. Had a captain tell ATC no to keeping us high and fast on an approach (my airplane does not like to slow down in any decent). He told them 'we can be high or fast, but not both'. ATC tried to shame us by then slowing us to approach speed and vectoring another flight in front of us and even made a comment to the other airplane about them being able to do it. Capt basically shrugged said 'whatever'.

https://nypost.com/2025/02/06/us-news/illegal-border-crossings-down-90-under-trump-border-patrol/ so, looks like that border bill the dems tried to ram thru wasn't necessary. more gaslighting. crossings down 90% with enforcing EXISTING border policy. imagine that.

Why wait? The only people complaining about it are the people who don't like him. The same people who complained about everything he did the first time and are complaining about everything he does this time. Some of us are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. I really hope my government is capable of that as well. This memo came out within the last couple days, which means it was set into motion one or two weeks ago. Probably before the crash when every department was told to reverse and scrub anything that had a whiff of DEI. I do not expect all government work to come to a screeching halt because of a plane crash. It sucks, it's a tragedy, and we should absolutely fix the problem. But extending your logic out means that all government work must stop if it is not considered to be the highest priority action at that moment. And as I just pointed out, that means nothing gets done. You think it looks bad because you want it to look bad. That's all.

So nsplayer’s political moratorium ended with the Biden administration? Guess I can’t blame the guy. I think we’re all trying to pretend it was just a bad dream.

Hah, ironic avatar

Then why was the previous administration so focused on changing it?

You would certainly hope not…but there was clearly a breakdown in visual scan for both mishap aircraft. What caused that remains to be seen.

“No bureaucracy” in the Army?? Lolol, that’s actually very funny. I for one can’t wait for Blues Monday, quarterly open ranks inspections, and all the associated navel gazing. It makes me much more lethal downrange! Thanks CSAF 23 and SD 29, I’ll have another! BOHICA. If we actually reform acquisitions and improve readiness, I am all for it. Best of luck, seriously, happy to be wrong but everything I’ve seen so far is admin BS.

The most horrifying thing you learn about ethnic cleansing / forced population transfer is that, well, it works. The Greco-Turkish population transfers of the 20s caused a lot of human misery, but in the end, two populations that hadn't been able to get along for a millennium didn't live in the same neighborhood anymore. They might not be friends today by any means, but you rarely have Greek death squads going door to door looking for Turks in the last hundred years (Cyprus excluded, maybe). Ditto for India and Pakistan, to a degree, Germany/Russia/Poland after WWII, Jews being kicked out of 40+ Muslim countries. The sad fact is that most of the world isn't enlightened enough to live like New Yorkers, in peace with neighbors their parents would have despised and their grandparents actively tried to kill. I do wonder how much lingering savagery we've perpetuated by demanding that other peoples pretend to all get along together, rather than achieve lasting separation (see: every post-colonial African state where we assume different groups can all get along inside a single set of lines we drew).

Pretty sure IPT replaces IFT in all cases, since you get several ratings from it including a PPL.

I'm on a meme run...

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4062245/secretary-of-defense-pete-hegseth-renames-fort-liberty-to-fort-roland-l-bragg/ The funniest one yet…Ft. Bragg is back… but it’s a different Bragg!! TBH Ft. Liberty was the worst rename by far. They seriously couldn’t find a valorous soldier from North Carolina to name it after when given the chance?? This is fine by me. I will be mad if any bases get re-Confederatized. Fuck the Confederacy, if they wanted bases named after their generals they shouldn’t have sucked at war so much. We are the Union Army by god and we stopped their seditious asses into the ground. I’d rather have Ft. RipIt than some dickhead loser Rebel general 🇺🇸

NOTAMs are back to "Notices to Airmen".

I want to know when we’re going to see arrests of all the leftist outwardly hindering ICE. I’ve quickly lost count of how many govs, mayors, city board members, not to mention the countless random idiots, are happily breaking laws and think they’re untouchable. Frankly I’m disappointed in Trump’s admin that this has happened yet.

I don't think anyone knows, unless it's in the comm. More than likely it's just an accidental altitude deviation. Keep in mind, they're flying over a river at night (extremely limited visual reference for height), trying to shack an altitude with very little margin for error. And then being asked to look for traffic and visually separate from it. These procedures are no-step stupid.

Didn’t get much better as a Wing Commander. Herk bros under him just about almost blanket partied him.

general chang provides excellent insight at the flag level. like him or not he is well connected and has the pulse of leadership.

Caveat up front: there are good/bad/disciplined/undisciplined pilots in every community and this is not geared toward any individual. But I'm gonna be the asshole here. In my experience, the army rotary wing community ranges anywhere from lackadaisical to outright dangerous WRT instrument procedures, airspace and traffic awareness, and flight discipline. I've witnessed a 5-ship Army Apache mission brief take place in the lobby of the San Angelo FBO that was basically: "Alright dudes, we're gonna take off, head east, 200A, everybody fall in. Questions?" "Sick. Step complete." I've been in control of a T-6 pattern full of solo students and had to send them all breakpoint straight through (half of them didn't even know what to do) because we had a 4 ship of army black hawks blast perpendicular through our pattern while talking to precisely no one on the radio. The second I saw the news out of DCA my first reaction was "goddammit some army rw clowns got everyone killed." Then I felt bad for jumping to conclusions and not waiting for the report. But after a few weeks, each new piece of data points right back to them and I'm back to being pissed. Why were they off altitude? Why are they dicking around at night in the approach corridor of a major airport? Why are they not on VHF? Why was this even an approved routing for them in the first place? Why were 28 different agencies permitted to fly helos in close proximity to DCA? These were not one-off, swiss-cheese-holes-aligning, mistakes. This was business as usual, proven by the fact there had been multiple near misses at DCA in the recent past including a helo-caused airliner go-around the day before. Obviously an airspace/procedure re-design is warranted, but I think we need to take a look at community-wide culture that was comfortable operating like this in the first place. @busdriver said it best that these procedures are "no-step stupid." The problem with that is if you've been raised in a community of hot dogging and "we'll do it live" you're probably not equipped to make a good risk assessment.

Way above my pay grade, but I honestly don't think the reduction in turbine time in a traditional military environment is a great idea. Flying a cessna is a great way to become familiar with the concepts of aviation, but significantly reducing T6 flight time seems like a bad idea.

One of my buddies I commissioned with is the T flight commander at Columbus. He passed me all the info about the locations. I was at Laughlin this weekend talking to a couple guys at the 47th WG, they told me the plan for Laughlin to be the last to start this spring. They confirmed all students will be required to go. It’s to compensate for the shortened T-6 syllabus.

You could have your ATP and would still be required to attend. They are sending everyone no matter what you have. I’m going to enjoy the free money TDY learning things I’ve already done.

Nah, I’m just a degenerate 😅 Recovering postaholic, but I still have a nice cold take every once in a while with friends 🍺 And yea, William Wallace is very appropriate…fighting the good fight but sometimes you get beheaded in the process haha. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

If anybody has questions about UCT just hit me up, I got picked up on last years board and am in the pipeline right now! Can give you a solid lowdown of the different airframes and opportunities, there’s some really cool stuff you can do.

This decision has sparked mass protests* from military families. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/hegseth-protest-dei-transgender-germany-military-rcna191636 * “about 2 dozen people”

Of all the things to be worked up about and speaking about TRUST...As a service member I would have thought you'd be more worked up about the previous guy who had checked out, had surgery and stayed at home for a week without telling POTUS or anyone in the National Command Authority.

OK, I lied...

They sucked at war. Fucking lost, bad. Seditious traitors and they got what they deserved. And I don’t need a civil war history lesson, I went to Virginia public schools 😊 How about this: can name my taint after a confederate general so when BQZip’s mom licks it she can fondly remember the Confederates. She’s been sucking dez nuts longer than the Confederacy lasted. But you damn sure better not name a UNION army base after one. If you ain’t first, you’re last!

To be fair, they didn't suck at war. They were far better at it man for man than the north was. If the Confederate Army had the same population, economy, and industrialization to draw from that the Union Army had, the world would be a very different place now. I'm a solid northerner, but to say the Confederates sucked at war because they lost is like saying Sparta sucked at war because they were conquered by Rome. And to the FAA thing, HeloDude is spot on. The only reason to change it in the first place was politics, so to call out someone for lack of focus for changing it back is a bit ironic.

Damn...I'd rather have that too.

I would imagine something is cooking. Can't go off half cocked. Not Trumps style....

I like that haha. Someone give Pete and Handball Dave jerseys with their names and numbers on them. Maybe Boeing, Lockheed et al can have sponsorship patches and everything. Too bad Panetta wasn’t named something more like Matthew Johnson, he could have signed as “MJ 23” 🏀

Agreed with all points except this one. If the helo crew had been spot on their altitude, that would have not been anything close to comfortable separation. Would their altitude error have garnered more than a downgrade on a checkride? Unfortunate that these deaths are what it took to highlight that unsafe margin. …but I guess that’s the nature of unsafe margins; it’s all well and good until it isn’t.

If Trump fires B3 I’m starting a petition for his face on Rushmore.

There should not be circling at night at this point (for airlines). An rnav rnp approach can be built to any runway from any spot with all sorts of crazy turns. Both DC and LGA have them. But then you wouldn't be able to treat it like a visual maneuver and let helicopters fly right under the final approach course. This was about packing as much traffic into a shitty airport that should have been closed or fixed decades ago. That's it. Everybody already knows all of the things that shouldn't have happened because they knew about them while they were happening. Yes, ultimately the helicopter crew is at fault in this specific case. But a whole lot of people higher ranking and with way more experience than them tolerated the absolute dumpster fire of DCA because it was easier than taking a stand. Just more "good dudes" who aren't willing to tell their bosses no. Maybe this changes with Trump. He's certainly putting people in power who didn't spend the first 40 years of their adult lives being Yes men and yes women. But at this point we probably need to immolate 75-90% of the managerial class in both corporate America and the government. Somehow while we were all fat dumb and happy the sociopaths took everything over. On the corporate side that's going to happen with a revival of labor unions. On the government side it'll be with elections obviously. But I'm not sure individual events like this are going to be enough to turn the tide. Probably going to take something bigger to really flip the table.

I agree that they (CRJ) should have cleared final prior to landing but I wouldn't label this as causal. There's a certain amount of trust I'd have on the tower not clearing me to land with potential conflict on final. They weren't landing to an uncontrolled airfield.

Actually, he doesn’t think we need pilots because everything can be done with autonomous drones and therefore pilot production can be zero by cancelling the program altogether, so you don’t even need the /s there. Boom, money saved.

How about everyone starts in an A-10? Slow, multi engine and can probably do enough clover leaves and aileron rolls for the new guys to get a quarter chub. The transition to heavies or fighters after flying an A-10 should be a little easier than not flying at all.

Didn't get enough of a response to your other account?

What lack of SA is the CRJ guilty of? The RW was on a different frequency, invisible via cockpit tools and they weren’t alerted to their presence. I’m seeing RW causal and ATC contributing but pretty tough to fault the dudes kept in the dark about conflicts while flying a night circle to short runway.

this

I stole this from the interwebs.

The problem has never been adhering to the grooming standards. The problem was the standards themselves. Beards can have standards. Mustaches too, without looking like a butthole brush. There are more ways to look professional than a high and tight. Set the rules to a reasonable level, then enforce.

Does it matter? They are a dependant state of the US. They want to act like otherwise, then a few weeks of 25% tariffs will remind them. Germany tried hitching their wagon to Russia, how'd that work out? The populations of the world need a come-to-Jesus moment. This appears to be it. Also, what help do we need from Canada?

The standards I worked on. I was in Stan/Eval so standards were in there somewhere. If dude on the ground wanted a round of 105 he better get it. Right where and when he wanted it. And another If the gunners mustache was too long, I didn't give a shit. If the nav had the wrong color purse, I didn't give a shit. If the eng had his hat on backwards, I didn't give a shit. If the pilot had the wrong socks, I didn't give a shit.

BUT BUT BUT ITS GOING TO US DEFENSE COMPANIES!!!!!!! /s