2025/01/29/plane-helicopter collision

About

At 8:47 p.m., a commercial passenger plane from Wichita collided with a US Army helicopter. No survivors have been found. The collision took place a few hundred feet above the water.

• The passenger aircraft, American Eagle Flight 5342, was a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet operated by American Airlines subsidiary PSA Airlines.
  • The flight was set to land in Washington at 8:57 p.m.
  • There were 60 passengers and 4 crew.
• The helicopter was a UH-60 Black Hawk, flying down the Potomac on a training mission.
  • There were 3 soldiers on board.

News

• 2025/02/17 16:16 UTC [L..T] Hundreds of FAA employees are let go as Trump's mass layoffs continue «The Trump administration fired hundreds of employees with the Federal Aviation Administration over the weekend, just weeks after a fatal crash over Washington, D.C. exposed understaffing at the agency.» ... «"This decision did not consider the staffing needs of the FAA, which is already challenged by understaffing," David Spero, the national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, AFL-CIO, said in a statement. "Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency's mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month."»
• 2025/01/31 21:20 UTC [L..T] 'Flashing red warning light': Analyst lists many ways Trump could be blamed for D.C. crash «"If we’re recklessly assigning blame, we might just as easily point out that, before Trump took office, there hadn't been a major commercial plane crash in the United States in the previous 16 years; that, in the week before the crash, Trump sacked the head of the Transportation Security Administration, disbanded the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, failed to name an acting head of the FAA, and imposed a hiring freeze that apparently includes air traffic controllers; and that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) last year celebrated his 'landmark victory' in expanding the number of flights out of National," wrote Milbank.»
• 2025/01/31 13:56 UTC [L..T] What to know about the suit against FAA diversity policies critics blame for crash «Scrutiny on the Federal Aviation Administration after a deadly midair collision in Washington, D.C. has brought renewed attention to a class-action lawsuit alleging that the agency committed racial discrimination in hiring policies. / The lawsuit was originally filed on Dec. 30, 2015, in Washington, D.C., federal court during the Obama administration. The complaint argues the FAA denied jobs to upward of 1,000 qualified applicants to meet diversity hiring targets, a policy critics suggest played a role in the staffing crisis in air traffic control.»
• 2025/01/30 21:36 UTC [L..T] [US:EO] Immediate Assessment of Aviation Safety «This shocking event follows problematic and likely illegal decisions during the Obama and Biden Administrations that minimized merit and competence in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The Obama Administration implemented a biographical questionnaire at the FAA to shift the hiring focus away from objective aptitude. During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence. But the Biden Administration egregiously rejected merit-based hiring, requiring all executive departments and agencies to implement dangerous "diversity equity and inclusion tactics, and specifically recruiting individuals with "severe intellectual" disabilities in the FAA.» Parts of this are clearly lies, while others are just misleading. It would seem to be a follow-up to comments apparently made to reporters after the crash.
• 2025/01/30 21:03 UTC [L..T] Trump Acknowledges He Doesn't Have Evidence DEI Caused D.C. Plane Crash When pressed on the issue of whether there's any evidence for a connection between the crash and DEI, Trump throws out more attacks, distractions, and lies (but no evidence).
• 2025/01/30 [L..T] Trump baselessly criticizes DEI in D.C. plane crash; 67 feared dead «President Donald Trump suggested without evidence that the crash may be linked to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies at the Federal Aviation Administration. He accused Democratic former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama of lowering hiring standards at the agency. Trump also announced the appointment of acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau.» Later that day, Trump issued an Executive Order elaborating on these talking-points.
• 2024/04/26 01:51 UTC [L..T] FAA lawsuit claims agency discriminated against air traffic controller applicants on the basis of race «The FAA allegedly added a question rewarding applicants for doing poorly on test, to get more African American air traffic controller applicants» (Wow @ subhead author: tell me you're a racist without telling me.)