Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
[ Thanks [b]WR-6-3 for the legal perspective , Extremely enlightening for a non-law savvy person like me .I like the " hot dog-warm puppy" analogy between a trial and the truth . Looking forward to the actual trial and your comments on it when the day will come .
@ IgnorantAndroid :
I am aware of that as this is what the controllers hang on to since the beginning , since they were trained like that and thought they were just following the rules . . However we are a safety business ,. It is not because it is legal than it is safe ]
Which safety assessment was made and validated ( and by who) which allowed visual separation for an helicopter at 200ft to pass below the approach path of an aircrfat at 3 or 400 feet ?, resulting in a 100-200ft separation ?
That is the question I would be asking first.
How about which actions were taken after the previous incidents , and possibly acting on the normalization of deviance , would be the next .
I entirely agree that getting the facts, at the granular level (that is, with as much completeness and detail as the facts themselves warrant), about how the airspace got configured and how its operation was established as those facts existed on the night of January 29 should be a strong focus - I would say exteme focus - of a real effort to understand how this accident could have happened. Including the names, and roles and responsibilities, of all significant decision-makers and others with non-trivial input into any decisions. As prior posts have made clear, the way in which the helicopter routes were used during particular approach and departure usage of DCA runways did not just spring into existence deus ex machina.
It is tempting to say that a proper discovery plan in the federal district court litigation - which let's recall has only just started - would indeed drill down into those granular facts. The case might actually see that sort of intense and relentless discovery. In the current era of electronic discovery and perhaps utilizing AI tools to continue to refine content of interrogatories and requests to produce documents (and, down the road a bit, requests to admit specifically articulated facts), more massively intrusive discovery efforts would seem possible. And I say "intrusive" because good and effective discovery really is like taking a sewing needle to one's finger to extract a wood splinter which has embedded itself deeply even if also visibly. You've got to keep digging at it.
If such discovery actually eventuates in the litigation, it could produce results approaching revelation of "the truth" about what happened. Still, seeking compensation for the families of the accident victims, and I'm not unaware for the attorneys for their work (if not also for validation and fulfillment in the type of legal careers they've chosen) will be the main lodestar for all that happenes, imo. (Whether this case ultimately turns out to be an example of the need for "civil justice reform" in the United States .... I can't predict. That would be like saying Congress should enact special legislation to compensate the families of the crash victims, after a proper investigation beyond what the NTSB will provide .... yeah, when Hades sets new wind-chill records.)
Same comments about the myriad previous incidents and follow-up or absence of follow-up. It could be the focus of highly intrusive discovery, which to be effective would need to be conducted in waves, taking information extracted first and then using it to dig out more. I should add, probably need to add, that whether the case management plan which ultimately will be approved by the federal district court judge will or will not contemplate such wide-ranging, time-consuming, expensive, and - to the defendants, "objectionable as unduly burdensome" - discovery is yet to be seen. Of course, the attorneys and law firms already in action (per the Complaint filed recently) aren't rookies, far from it.
One other comment which current Congressional action seems to make relevant. Already 12.5 billion bucks have been appropriated with another 18 billion supposedly somewhere in the Congressional authorizations-appropriations process. No one in the aviation community needs reminding of the litany of emerging and/or intensifying issues confronting the NAS. I happen to hold the view that the European and global ATM communities have advanced very significantly on defining these issues and working - albeit incrementally, and even though not without political issues - on solutions. New entrants, not least UAM. The introduction of AI into ATC functions. Cybersecurity (remote towers being a valid example of the locus of the issue). Of course the drive toward reduced emissions, whether called net-zero or anything else. Include calls for equity and inclusion. HAO; Class E airspace. Service Delivery Model of the ATM Master Plan (Service-Oriented Architecture). My point, which is only partially a rhetorical question, is: how could it be even remotely possible for the United States to design and implement a new ATC system worth 30 billion dollars - and which accounts for the issues I've noted to the extent they apply here as well as in Europe and globally - if the actual hard and distressing facts about the causes of the January 29 2025 DCA midair collision are not uneartherd and properly taken into account?