thomas

I ran a search for airborne conflicts and near mid-air collisions at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) for the last five years in NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), and found six of them (~1.5 per year if we exclude the 2020–2021 period of virtually no traffic due to COVID–19). 🧵

There’s one person who isn’t being included in the outpour of “thoughts and prayers” on social media, and that’s the air traffic controller whose voice can be heard discussing visual separation with the helicopter crew on the frequency.

Yet, I hope this person is getting the support they need — it must be unbearably hard on one’s conscience (regardless of whether they are at fault), and it’s not helping that POTUS himself is implying that they were an incompetent and inferior DEI hire.

As far as I’m concerned this person is a survivor of the accident (and the only one, unfortunately) and needs to be supported as such

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Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas