Lord Ratner

At American Airlines every time we hit the enunciator panel, we say "6 and 6" to indicate checking that all six Amber lights on each panel illuminated. I think this is the absolute dumbest thing imaginable, and has directly led to legitimate Master caution lights being punched out by accident due to the habit pattern of immediately pushing the master caution button after checking the panel. I've had to change my habit patterns because I do this too. I no longer check for six lights other than during the initial PreFlight when I am checking all the other lights. Now I tap the enunciator panel for half a second, and look at the master caution light itself to see if it remained illuminated. I've got training in May so I'm going to see if there's any appetite amongst the chick airmen for a change here, because it doesn't make sense to be checking all of your lights a bunch of times per flight, but AA is notoriously averse to change.

Funny how some of the coolest machines ever created by man are still somehow not quite cool enough for the egomaniacs. A few extra degrees of pitch or a few extra knots are indiscernible from the ground, yet have cost so many lives.

If it takes you two days to install a washer (instead of an hour) then you probably are an airline pilot 😂🤣. I'll take the two day trip *and* install the washer better than the minimum-wage delivery guy Lowe's sends.

Trust me, it's not his credibility that's in question.

You're flailing.

I wonder if he uses the same venmo that the rest of us use, where the first thing it asks you when you set up your account is to have access to your contacts to sync them. Sure would be some lazy journalism if they didn't check to make sure that's why his phone contacts all appeared in his venmo like the rest of us. Sure would be lazy of the commentariat to run with it without thinking...

This is one of the reasons why I balk at the idea of firing anybody who breaks the classification rules at the highest levels. Yeah, they would take a hammer to an E-3 or an O-4 who did this. But maybe the solution to that isn't to take a hammer to Hillary Clinton or Pete hegseth, maybe the solution is to stop hammering the junior violators in the idiotic hope that it will set the example for everyone else. The example always comes from the top. If we were in a no-shit war with serious consequences, I guarantee you people (not just Democrats) would be after Hegseth's head. We had a great example of this during the unrelated incident of covid. You can't make something more of a threat than it is. The way people respond to it will be a better gauge of how serious the matter is. People knew covid wasn't slaughtering millions of people in the street, and so they acted like a really bad cold was going around. The old and the fat were much more concerned about wearing a mask than the young and the healthy, because those groups experienced a different hazard level. And that's exactly what was happening. As long as the houthis or the Iranians didn't find out about these plans right before they happened, it really wasn't a very big deal to keep it a secret. And even if they had, it would have just fucked up a military operation with a near zero threat of loss to American Life. If this was operation overlord or the Manhattan project, you would see a level of seriousness that we are not going to see under the current conditions.

Does it work as well as signal? That's a real question, I have no idea and never used any of that stuff when I was in. If it does, then smack them on the dick and start enforcing this shit. Unfortunately we're at the point where it is culturally ingrained to use unmonitored communication networks and treat classified like a nothing burger. That's going to be very difficult to root out, especially when each team is only interested in punishing the other side.

You've obviously never been to a shopping mall in Minneapolis.

I guess we'll have to endure the trickle of "new" members who never had anything to say about military aviation on the military aviation forum suddenly finding their voice now that their political world is crumbling around them. That and the fake accounts doing a weak job of mimicking the General Chang troll-job from long ago. I say just ban them. Anyways, obviously the .gov needs to pull it's head out of the sand and develop a SIPR app for high ranking members. It's pretty easy for a captain or low level staffer to go home and simply wait until they are back at work to play around with classified information, but once you hit a certain level there is no "off-duty time." Rather than pretend like everything is going to be discussed in a secure environment, just make a signal app clone for the government and you won't have to worry about some journalist being added to the chat. Keep it at Secret and below, ideally, but either way stop pretending like politicians are going to follow rules set up for a world before wireless.

I answered your questions and addressed your points. Every single one. Any lack of substance is your inability to make a point to respond to 🤷🏻‍♂️. Anyways, this is boring now. Next crisis please.

Off topic? You don't really read much here do you? Is this just somewhere you feel less helpless, because you can say the things you wish you could shout at your coworkers? It's gonna be ok. Promise.

Bud, this isn't that complicated. And you can't just throw quid pro quo around like it's some sort of all-covering Boogeyman. If I pay you to build me a fence, that's a quid pro quo. If instead of giving you money I decide to offer you flying lessons, that's still a quid pro quo. You don't have to like it, but the government is well within its rights to include a certain amount of charity work in exchange for a contract. As long as the law firm has the option to say no, which all the articles you're citing have plenty of examples of law firms that are refusing, then it's not extortion. Where was all the righteous indignation from these law firms when the government was requiring vendors to have a certain number of women or minorities as founders or executives? Suspiciously silent. I have every confidence that a law firm as prestigious as Weiss can survive without federal cheese. And if they can't, like so many other vendors that are about to be DOGE'd, they will adapt or die. This firm chose, voluntarily, to accept the president's offer. His quid pro quo, if you will. 😂 Of course it's not good for the country, but it's just fun watching the progressives roll around on the ground like they're on fire now that their own tactics of the last couple decades are being used against them. They got so comfortable with this one-sided game that they forgot how to lose, and the meltdown has been spectacular.

"No thank you sir, we are not willing to work pro bono as part of a contract with the federal government." That's the Wonder of living in a free country, you can say no. All the other progressive law firms are furious that they didn't do exactly that to save their DEI agendas. Again, Twitter is not a good news source.

Extortion? That's a cute new analysis of the government's responsibility to give money to a company. They weren't threatening jail. They were threatening to cancel contracts. The dude was elected to annihilate dei, secure the border, and/government waste. And to end the conflicting Ukraine. Doesn't matter whether or not you or I agree with those goals, that's what the American people elected him for. But by all means, keep it up. Like I said this is just going to keep Trump's approval ratings higher for longer. Absolutely no Americans would have cared about this specific issue if the Democrats weren't pulling their air out trying to oppose every single thing he does. But think of the law firms!!

Fake news. Literally. There is: Hilarious. I'm sorry, does the federal government have an obligation to pay for the services of a law firm... just because? They were not "targeted" by the executive order, the executive decided to end a services agreement with them based on their actions. Then they changed their actions in order to satisfy their customer, the government, and now they have their customer back. It might be less stressful for you if you tried getting your news from somewhere other than Twitter.

Agreed, up to the point where we start talking about "even one mistake is too many." It's just not a realistic standard. Anybody who is on a tenuously secure legal status in this country should be making sure their legal documentation is in order. Again, I'd love for it to be a smoother, cleaner, more reliable process. But that's sort of wishful thinking is why nothing's been done. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

What a ridiculous legal argument. You have to wait until a full trial before the government is allowed to do anything to stop you from breaking the law? So if a cop pulls you over for speeding, 50 mph over the limit, he has to let you keep speeding until you've gone to trial? No. They seize your car for reckless endangerment. You get your car back after your day in court. If I decide to dig a 50-ft wide hole in the middle of the street, the cops can't fill it in until I've had my time in front of a judge? This falls apart immediately upon even the most simple-minded analysis. They may deserve their day in court, but we have no obligation to keep them in our country, which is an active and ongoing violation of the law, until they get their chance. I sincerely hope the Democrats keep hammering away on this issue. They are doing everything in their power to keep Americans on Trump's side.

35¢?! Look at Daddy Moneybags over here 🤩🤩 A steel cased Magtech will get the job done *and* save the taxpayers some money. DOGE approved!

Thank you, this is a fantastic and concise phrasing of what I was trying to convey.

No, that's very true. In the tanker it would take far more hours to be experienced. 8 hours where 75% of it is reading a magazine obviously doesn't compare to 1.5 hours in a Viper. But part of this is what we consider experienced. I don't think of a guy with one assignment on the line as experienced. There's "Mission Ready" and then there's "experienced." Another element is time. You can shove 10,000 hours into one year (if that was possible) and it wouldn't make you experienced necessarily. Some things just take time for the brain to process and for you personally go through enough scenarios and enough experiences to be, experienced. I've got about 2,500 hours in 7 years at the airlines and I think I'm realistically just now starting to be experienced. I don't fly much so it took me a bit longer than it might take someone else, but we have lots of captains now with 2 years at AA. They are qualified, but they are not experienced. Anyways, still agree with busdriver and others who blame DCA as the root cause:

I don't think it's a coincidence that a regional crew and a low-hours Army crew crashed. That doesn't mean it was the primary cause, but the Swiss cheese model for safety has always suggested that many failures line up to create a mishap. Lack of experience is one of them. No way I would have accepted that circling clearance. I've refused similar at other airports far less congested than DCA. And the guys a fly with are in the same boat. Experience isn't just about maintaining altitude. It's about knowing when to say "no." I believe you. That means you have a largely inexperienced corps of helicopter pilots. This isn't about dick waving or which service is better or really anything other than accepting the reality that normal ≠ experienced. You simple cannot be experienced with those hours. You can be hot shit, you can be talented and confident and all sorts of other things, but not experienced. Pretending otherwise is exactly what military leadership has been doing to justify reducing the training and currency of pilots. That doesn't mean you can't get the mission done. I certainly did. But there's no fucking way 500-hour-LordRatner made better decisions than 6,000-hour-LordRatner does. I'm honestly not sure how this is controversial. Would *you* have flown that close to a regional aircraft landing at DCA, at night, on nogs? Is this some sort of White Knight defense of the military pilot? I don't fault her for the DCA procedures, and I don't fault her for her own experience. The former is the fault of the FAA and the latter is the fault of the Army. Again, I do not agree with people picking apart her career and motivations with no knowledge of them. But we do have direct knowledge of her experience, and commenting on it is fair game. Her instructor pilot had what, 1,000 hours? If that's true then he was barely experienced, and certainly not an experienced instructor. Again, not his fault.

It is. But the implication I was disagreeing with (while agreeing with the rest of the post) was this: In media she's being described as experienced. She's not. That matters in a discussion about what went wrong and what to do to fix DC. 1,000% Way back in the beginning of the thread I said this was the fault of the FAA for allowing the dumpster fire of DC to persist. But a secondary causal factor is the military continually reducing the experience of its pilots. Partly because you're going to be off altitude more often when you are inexperienced, and partly because you're absolutely not going to know when to refuse a procedure that, even if permitted, is retarded.

Which is why I started my post with "Agreed"

Agreed, except for the hours part. Sorry, but we shouldn't pretend like just because the Army does something as a lazy habit, that it somehow imparts upon them a superhuman ability to attain proficiency faster than the rest of us mortals. 460 hours is dog shit. Doesn't matter if you're flying helicopters, Jets, or learning to crochet. That is a tiny number of hours for someone operating aircraft that requires high levels of proficiency and a safety emphasis. Obviously we are dealing with the same problem in the Air Force. When I got out we were sending guys to IP School after their first assignment and all they knew was flights out of the Died. But that's more of the same "normalization of deviance" that created the DC problem in the first place. I'm not going to comment on her as a person because I know nothing else about her. But as a pilot she was, by definition, inexperienced if all she had was ~469 hours. Doesn't matter if it's "normal." No one should be assuming her motives, because she's dead and it's a courtesy to the family, but we also shouldn't lie about her experience level in an attempt to lionize the fallen.