DCA near miss Delta/Bluestreak vs AF T-38

The thing is, flyovers in honor of of internments or other official events at Arlington have been going on for at least 75 or so years. Many times per year. Just so happens that this time around, the formation was approaching from the SE, as it had come from LFI, and appears to have been on a track to make it’s timing for an east to west flyover. DCA just happened to be launching the to the south off of 19. I’m sure it’s commonplace for TRACON to put a pause on IFR releases out of DCA for a short window of time, as has likely been done hundreds of times before. The issue isn’t that these flyovers are unsafe in the general congested airspace there; the question is what was or wasn’t done this time, to where a normally perfectly safe operation, got a little closer than desired with another aircraft?
 
Lawman said:
And how did the flyover existing endanger anyone? Show us where the flyover departed from clear instructions or did something in a non briefed and approved manner.

Like I said you’ve got a lot of opinion for somebody who neither has experience in the arrangement of such activities in general or the specifics of this incident. Nobody was bounced off a ceiling of an aircraft until you insinuated such. Do you have actual evidence that such a violent procedural deviation was taking place at the time of the flyover? Or is this just my hyper inflation of the event by you along with planes full of dead people

Hey here’s a reversal on this: Why was an aircraft cleared for and allowed to conduct takeoff with a 4 ship conducting a flyover (which are all pre-coordinated)? Seems like the flyover was being conducted without issue to the rest of the busy airspace, and an aircraft was directed to take off into it. Obviously the answer is to get mad at flyovers right?


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How fragile is your ego that you feel the need to personally defend the U.S. Government almost crashing into yet another airliner at DCA?
 
So aaaaaaanyway.

I wonder why departures weren’t held sooner.

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statusseeker1 said:
How fragile is your ego that you feel the need to personally defend the U.S. Government almost crashing into yet another airliner at DCA?
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Oh the US government did it? You’ve got the chain of events then. Exactly what outside of the sensationalist language chosen by the news media (which has exactly the history of aviation reporting we should all be suspect of) that anything justifying your statement or the earlier insinuations that people were bounced around the cabin in some desperate attempt to avoid impending doom? “Almost crashing,” again based off what exactly.

This is news to generate the clicks that generate the revenue because both military & civil aircraft were involved not because of its impending doom narrowly avoided by some drastic action. Flyovers don’t just happen. The aircraft aren’t just flown into the airspace at will. You’d know that if you’d ever been part of or planned and coordinated one. And we’ve put more than a few heads on spikes of people who took minor style deviations from those plans for good reason.

Maybe we should just restrict them to all those less busy airspace sectors we do them in like Seattle, Dallas, Chicago, Denver, etc. Or we can drop a massive TFR if that’s the demanded solution from our commercial airspace partners. Or maybe this wasn’t near the sensational moment it’s being made out as, and we can identify the procedural breakdown that allowed the aircraft departing to ever get close to a planned formation, correct that breakdown, and move on with existing.


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Lawman said:
Maybe we should just restrict them to all those less busy airspace sectors we do them in like Seattle, Dallas, Chicago, Denver, etc. Or we can drop a massive TFR if that’s the demanded solution from our commercial airspace partners. Or maybe this wasn’t near the sensational moment it’s being made out as, and we can identify the procedural breakdown that allowed the aircraft departing to ever get close to a planned formation, correct that breakdown, and move on with existing.
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I think the point being made is that one of those aircraft should not have been in that exact place at that exact time. It could have been the flight of four (who weren't actually getting radar vectors at that point in time) or it could have been the CRJ (that was flying a published segment of an ILS). Both aircraft have a right to be there, doing what they are doing, just not at the same time. If TOT was something important to the T38s, then probably it was the CRJ shouldn't have been where it was at that point in time.

And sensationalized for media consumption or not, an RA is a big deal to a passenger jet. Even a 1g pull or push is enough to knock somebody off their feet in the cabin. Hopefully nobody was up and about at that point (since they were landing within a few minutes) but in general it has the potential to be a problem.
 
Again, none of these ops are anything new in this airspace, for ATC to deal with; been going on fr a very long time. This time, things were a bit closer than desired.

One has to ask, as many here have agreed that DCA is an airport of convenience more than any kind of airport of necessity; with IAD and BWI, and considering all the various areas of flight ops surrounding DCA, is DCAs time as a useful airport in terms of congestion and safety, nearing its end, if not already there? Because places like ADW certainly aren’t closing down, nor are government flight ops in that area reducing.
 
MikeD said:
Again, none of these ops are anything new in this airspace, for ATC to deal with; been going on fr a very long time. This time, things were a bit closer than desired.

One has to ask, as many here have agreed that DCA is an airport of convenience more than any kind of airport of necessity; with IAD and BWI, and considering all the various areas of flight ops surrounding DCA, is DCAs time as a useful airport in terms of congestion and safety, nearing its end, if not already there? Because places like ADW certainly aren’t closing down, nor are government flight ops in that area reducing.
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No argument from me.
 
MikeD said:
Again, none of these ops are anything new in this airspace, for ATC to deal with; been going on fr a very long time. This time, things were a bit closer than desired.

One has to ask, as many here have agreed that DCA is an airport of convenience more than any kind of airport of necessity; with IAD and BWI, and considering all the various areas of flight ops surrounding DCA, is DCAs time as a useful airport in terms of congestion and safety, nearing its end, if not already there? Because places like ADW certainly aren’t closing down, nor are government flight ops in that area reducing.
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I'm totally fine with them giving DCA the Meigs treatment.
 
BobDDuck said:
I think the point being made is that one of those aircraft should not have been in that exact place at that exact time. It could have been the flight of four (who weren't actually getting radar vectors at that point in time) or it could have been the CRJ (that was flying a published segment of an ILS). Both aircraft have a right to be there, doing what they are doing, just not at the same time. If TOT was something important to the T38s, then probably it was the CRJ shouldn't have been where it was at that point in time.

And sensationalized for media consumption or not, an RA is a big deal to a passenger jet. Even a 1g pull or push is enough to knock somebody off their feet in the cabin. Hopefully nobody was up and about at that point (since they were landing within a few minutes) but in general it has the potential to be a problem.
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And did you get that point out of any of the conversations insinuating the needless nature of the flyover or a sensationalist statement like that the US Government almost crashed another plane in DCA?

Seriously take a look around at this and the other thread, the crash with the Hawk has given license to some of the NIMBY’ism demanding everybody else is the problem and default right of way belongs to commercial 121 ops. It’s not an objective discussion line of have we been allowing this the whole time, do we need to change or reevaluate ops at Reagan, or is/was there a simple procedural breakdown we aren’t seeing that was countered by downstream mitigations built into the system.

Flyovers (especially that one) are historically performed safely and coordinated long before aircraft step or departure, so having been part of that I’m highly inclined to believe that despite some others feelings on the subject the T-38s weren’t out there cowboying up the airspace at the risk of all the civil passengers in the area. Let’s have an actual investigation and not go off CNN reports with some flightaware24 data sprinkled in to try and pass judgement on the matter.


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Lawman said:
And did you get that point out of any of the conversations insinuating the needless nature of the flyover or a sensationalist statement like that the US Government almost crashed another plane in DCA?

Seriously take a look around at this and the other thread, the crash with the Hawk has given license to some of the NIMBY’ism demanding everybody else is the problem and default right of way belongs to commercial 121 ops. It’s not an objective discussion line of have we been allowing this the whole time, do we need to change or reevaluate ops at Reagan, or is/was there a simple procedural breakdown we aren’t seeing that was countered by downstream mitigations built into the system.

Flyovers (especially that one) are historically performed safely and coordinated long before aircraft step or departure, so having been part of that I’m highly inclined to believe that despite some others feelings on the subject the T-38s weren’t out there cowboying up the airspace at the risk of all the civil passengers in the area. Let’s have an actual investigation and not go off CNN reports with some flightaware24 data sprinkled in to try and pass judgement on the matter.


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Sounds like you feel like your feelings got hurt in this discussion? Toughen up there buttercup... nobody was gunning for you or military aviation. If the doom chyrons on CNN and Fox are bothering you, you can always just ignore them. There are actual adults talking about actual aviation things here and you contributing to the conversation instead of just whipping your dick and and peeing all over the room would be kind of nice since you've got experience on the side of the coin that many of us don't.

The general consensus seems to be that changes need to be made in that airspace so that sort of thing doesn't happen again. And I'd guess the voices are just a bit louder this time around because the same discussion was had over and over (and over) again about low level rotor ops conflicting with traffic landing 15, 19, and 33 (I filed my first ASAP about it in 2007) but nothing ever was done about it, and now 70 people are dead. Sure would be nice to plug the next set of holes in the swiss cheese before it happens again.
 
arkavgal said:
Please present evidence that the FAA and NTSB are failing to investigate the root causes of accidents because they assume that race or gender played a role.
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BobDDuck said:
Sounds like you feel like your feelings got hurt in this discussion? Toughen up there buttercup... nobody was gunning for you or military aviation. If the doom chyrons on CNN and Fox are bothering you, you can always just ignore them. There are actual adults talking about actual aviation things here and you contributing to the conversation instead of just whipping your dick and and peeing all over the room would be kind of nice since you've got experience on the side of the coin that many of us don't.

The general consensus seems to be that changes need to be made in that airspace so that sort of thing doesn't happen again. And I'd guess the voices are just a bit louder this time around because the same discussion was had over and over (and over) again about low level rotor ops conflicting with traffic landing 15, 19, and 33 (I filed my first ASAP about it in 2007) but nothing ever was done about it, and now 70 people are dead. Sure would be nice to plug the next set of holes in the swiss cheese before it happens again.
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No Im reminding our own population on this thread with their nose out of joint all that sky out there doesn’t just default belong to 121. And that wasn’t coming off the top rope until somebody decided to double down on the bold faced insinuations and stupid statements with no evidence so they could concoct a the scenario of people being bounced around an aircraft while it had to pull some drastic recovery to the situation. The crew reacted within the doctrine to a dynamic situation they found themselves placed in and by all accounts did it well.

You likewise could have ignored it rather than try to take their statements and make something adult out of them. If somebody doesn’t think a scheduled flyover of a national cemetery merits the use of the airspace, they should stand by that statement. Likewise if somebody wants to imply that the Air Force (or any other government agency) is just up there operating unprofessionally and nearly getting people killed they should offer some actual evidence to the fact or be a professional themselves, recognize that isn’t what occurred here and not go full clutch on the pearls.

Yes changes need to be made as with any good and healthy system that learns from investigation of operational risk. But right now loud and occasionally really stupid voices are absolutely advocating for severe restrictions or overcorrections. You can go back through the most recent posts in the other thread and see examples of that from our own population here not just Fox and CNN. We have the same overly rapid movement to conclusions in Congress. Example below.

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I’m sure she listened to the air traffic tapes and got all the pertinent information before jumping on social media. Just like I’m sure Senator Cruz familiarized himself with all the facts before taking his time to campaign grandstand over BG Braman.


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TCAS events are abnormal and reportable in the airline business.

TCAS RA’s are super abnormal and generally involve investigations and ASAP reports.

I really didn’t read the rest of the thread.
 
arkavgal said:
Seeing that no one made specious speculation about the cause of this incident, let alone claiming it was due to race or sex, in this thread, it's a bit out of context. The meaning of his post is obvious, but it seems very random in this thread.
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We need you to focus!
 
jhugz said:
If you think a TCAS RA is no biggie, then you obviously don't grasp the seriousness of this event.
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derg said:
TCAS events are abnormal and reportable in the airline business.

TCAS RA’s are super abnormal and generally involve investigations and ASAP reports.

I really didn’t read the rest of the thread.
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Tbf I get tcas RA’s literally every day over the most benign situations. TCAS is so sensitive now that overflying a VFR by 500’ with both level is almost a guaranteed RA. I get RA’s cause someone levelling off 1000’ below you climbed at a higher rate than normal. I’ve had RA’s climb people to avoid the VFR and into the IFR traffic above them causing a cascade of RA’s for 3 planes.
 
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