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OOTB's Political Thread . ..

it's hard to tell what with the quality of reporting nowadays, but I get the impression it might very well have been her. It's very hard to understand how this had to happen when it could have been prevented by simply staying within the given acceptable altitude, particularly when intersecting flight paths.

ETA...I have gotten pretty disgusted that an already overloaded air space around DC was made more crowded and dangerous by self-serving politicians who insisted on even more traffic just to make it more convenient for them to travel back and forth from their homes.
I am OK with DCA since it is convenient when I go to DC for work.

Reality is the helos need go stay the hell out of commercial airliner traffic and go fly some other pattern around DC. This BS should have never happened if not for the helo violating the 200 feet AGL rule.
 
I am OK with DCA since it is convenient when I go to DC for work.

Reality is the helos need go stay the hell out of commercial airliner traffic and go fly some other pattern around DC. This BS should have never happened if not for the helo violating the 200 feet AGL rule.
what I read was that in spite of an already overly congested airspace around DC, Congressmen from all over contrived to have direct flights to their home areas added. It sickens me to see our representatives get elected to serve us but instead help themselves, particularly when that takes precedence over public safety.
 
I am OK with DCA since it is convenient when I go to DC for work.

Reality is the helos need go stay the hell out of commercial airliner traffic and go fly some other pattern around DC. This BS should have never happened if not for the helo violating the 200 feet AGL rule.
what I read was that in spite of an already overly congested airspace around DC, Congressmen from all over contrived to have direct flights to their home areas added. It sickens me to see our representatives get elected to serve us but instead help themselves, particularly when that takes precedence over public safety.
I've got a buddy who is a couple years retired ATC that worked in that exact tower. He had some observations of things he told me the day or two after the incident as well as some things he said he'd keep to himself until we were on a golf course somewhere this summer. Here's a summary. Helicopters, particularly military, operate over water and highways for noise abatement reasons. Anyone who's had one come over their house with that eardrum splitting, chest pounding whomp, whomp understands why. This flight was nothing unusual. He said it probably happens 25 to 30 times everyday there on that exact route and that close to 250 are in operation there daily between military, law enforcement, medivac, and national security.

The military is always training there as it's part of the continuation of government plan. That's how they will evac cabinet members, senators, speaker of the house, etc. They will fly them out prearranged routes to prearranged locations and it gets practiced constantly with there being minimal requirements of hours each month. The PAT helicopter involved stands for priority air transport and it's used to fly military brass around (very fortunate, apparently, that there wasn't a couple generals on board at the time). From what he had seen and heard of the communications, he said they had normal operations and it wasn't a busy environment or anything unusual at the time. Basically, normal for that time of night. Listening to the audio of the ATC, they were competent. While it will take time to fully analyze, his initial impression was that this will fall squarely on the helo pilot although there will be a bunch of finger pointing due to the benefit of hindsight and blame shifting. Bottom line is that they were too high at that exact moment and there has even been speculation that they got pushed up due to unusual wind gusts that evening. Time will tell. But, very sad regardless of the determinations.
 
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Not sure but I am sure he's virtue-signaling and diagnosing mental states somewhere.
Funny you say that because he's posted a good bit in the various threads about whether HD should be fired or given another year. In those posts, that aspect has been leaking out and there have been a couple of times where I was very tempted to out his act of playing Switzerland while actually holding another view. I have held my tongue not wanting to turn those threads into the same shenanigans we get into here, but it has been obvious to many with some of the responses he has gotten.

His disappearance here has been very revealing whether he intended it to be or not. Actions do speak louder than words sometimes. And, of all those people who should be unaffected and the least impacted by an election, you'd think it would be those that are "neutral". Their commentary should persist regardless of office holder. But, the crickets say otherwise about his actual stances.
 
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