The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 90% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
"The investigation is going to be 90% human factors"
If so, then I fear it will be wrong - at least if those factors are the aircrew and controllers alone.
It looks as though there have been several (at least) near misses before. When you get different people making similar 'mistakes' on many different occasions, human factors become far less important than the processes and systems they were having to work under.
It might well be that the controllers, or one or both sets of aircrew, made mistakes on the night. But they would have been at the end of a long chain of causal factors that led to the incident. Much more attention needs to be paid to the processes that led to the decisions that caused the collision.
Oh don’t worry, I reckon the NTSB are going to rip apart the whole operation at Reagan Airport. They’ve had so many near misses in recent days, weeks, months, and years, with a lot of documentary evidence and previous reports with recommendations. The day before this accident, a plane went around because of a mil helo in his windscreen.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 90% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
"The investigation is going to be 90% human factors"
If so, then I fear it will be wrong - at least if those factors are the aircrew and controllers alone.
It looks as though there have been several (at least) near misses before. When you get different people making similar 'mistakes' on many different occasions, human factors become far less important than the processes and systems they were having to work under.
It might well be that the controllers, or one or both sets of aircrew, made mistakes on the night. But they would have been at the end of a long chain of causal factors that led to the incident. Much more attention needs to be paid to the processes that led to the decisions that caused the collision.
As mentioned yday, and having gone through every comment on PPrune (12 pages as was), it seems to have been an accident waiting to happen. Hugely congested, lights everywhere, different radio channels, different aircraft doing different things, the willingness of aircraft (as permitted by ATC) to fly on visuals (see, I'm an expert now), the seeming misidentification of aircraft (by the helicopter, who acknowledged they'd seen "a" plane, just not, it is likely, "the" plane), etc. And all underpinned by the need (?) to have that airport a hugely busy one given its location in Washington.
Everyone was doing the right thing (said one Apache guy on PPrune) to which another commentator said:
"If everyone is 'doing the right thing', then **** shouldn't happen, because the rules should be designed to avoid 100% of accidents if everyone follows those rules. So either somebody was not 'doing the right thing', or something is wrong with the rules. **** happens when there are unexpected circumstances. This was not an unexpected circumstance."
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Apparently, the crops benefit from windbreaks, so it makes perfect sense to use solar panels for that purpose. The crops grow just as well, and there is still access for machinery.
I guess the panels are cheap enough now that it's fine to have them in a suboptimal orientation, particularly if that means you can also use the land for agriculture.
My only concern is that this could restrict a new generation of Theresa Mays from running through farmers' fields - or at least, limit them to a single direction
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Farmers getting 90% of their income from subsidies is totally disgusting.
Any other industry, and they'd have been shut down decades ago by the Thatcher government.
The reason is very simple. And speaks as to why the Thatcher government didn't shut them down.
Every government around the world (pretty much) subsidises agriculture. As is usual with such subsidies, it's a race that costs lots of money, and gets nowhere.
President Bush I got as far, in his reelection trade ambitions about getting agricultural subsidies tabled, internationally. Blair was famously insulted by Chirac when he tried to bring the topic up (after giving p the British EU rebate in return for the promise to discuss subsidies...)
So, we have a full on, continuing arms race in subsidies for farming. There are a couple of places (New Zealand for lamb?) where zero subsidies can survive.
But removing subsidies would mean handing the entire food supply to someone else, at the moment.
The lesson for car manufacturers is interesting, isn't it?
The removal of subsidies and barriers to nearly everything else, in the EU, was a massive triumph for these reasons.
The reason that the EU, and others, continues with subsidies rather than super high tariff barriers is that the tariff barriers are more provoking of trade wars. And more importantly, the flow of food, internationally, is important for prevention of hunger.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 99% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
Also newsworthy were Trump's crass comments afterwards.
Though no doubt some fresh new folly today will supersede them.
Yes the President needed to stick to the sombre mood for much longer than he did. He was mostly just repeating what he’d been briefed, but to go on the political angle before families of the deceased had been informed should have been resisted for at least a day or two. Let the friendly journos run with that angle, but stay above it yourself.
I really don’t like the politicisation of accident investigations, but this one looks like it was going to be inevitable the more one reads about it. The NTSB are one of very few truly independent agencies in the country, but their report will be studied like none they’ve written since the 9/11 reports - which led to locked cockpit doors and the invasive ‘security’ measures at US airports.
As I mentioned on the last thread, it appears there’s been serious management issues with air traffic control at Reagan for years. Those who were on duty on Wednesday night are unlikely ever to be declared fit to return to work, and will need years if not decades of counselling. They’ll need to be on suicide watch for a long time, as I’m sure you’d appreciate.
Really?
It doesn't appear to be the fault of the ATC. More likely the chopper had sight of the wrong plane.
The evidence base on PTSD from the military is that short term withdrawal from the front line, debriefing both individually and in small groups of peers then a return to the front is the most effective strategy. It's why there were fewer psychological casualties in WW2 than WW1.
That’s a response I wasn’t expecting.
I wonder if the civvies can learn from the military in this regard, in terms of PTSD treatment?
I know that in the event of minor incidents and accidents, “get back on the horse” is the right approach, but certainly within the aviation industry there’s a long history of suicide from accident survivors who saw themselves are responsible for the deaths of others, as pilots, engineers, ATC etc.
As to this accident, the non-human factors are going to involve what view the ATC had of the two aircraft on their screens. A Congressman posted this video yesterday, which I think is a computer simulation of the accident rather than an actual replay of the recording. https://x.com/repthomasmassie/status/1885017091964637558. (Ignore his commentary, the screens are deliberately decluttered to improve clarity). The flashing red “CA”, however, would be accompanied by an alarm to the controller. It stands for collision alert, or collision avoidance. It’s not impossible that, because of the nature of the airport, that these alerts had become routine and therefore ignored, which would be a major systems factor in the accident.
Yes, there has been a lot of work, particularly in the military about effective treatment about PTSD, it's well summarised here:
The key change is to recognise combat exhaustion, treat near the front, treat with peers and return to duty fairly rapidly. Long term withdrawal to more distant locations away from unit peers breaks unit cohesion and increases feelings of guilt and letting comrades down. In modern practice exhaustion is normalised rather than medicalised and pathologised.
The NHS took a similar approach during the peaks of covid, with my hospital setting up "Staff wellbeing" areas (with appropriate infection control) where staff could formally and informally debrief, eat healthily, talk through what they had seen etc. The areas where these were set up kept stress related absences to a minimum.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
The FAA have already said the staffing at ATC was “Not Normal” on Wednesday night.
Until we hear from the NTSB, who usually give an initial statement within a week or so, we won’t know what are being considered as causal factors in this accident.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
No, of course not. Right now it’s just the Trumpist right using this tragedy to push their political agenda.
It is /possible/ that ATC was affected by DEI-caused problems, but it’s frankly more likely to be a management issue given the apparent recent history of near misses. The erosion of safety margins in a safety critical system by management pushing to “get the job done” appears to be a universal problem who’s cause almost always lies with a management that refuses to face up to the increasing risks they are taking until they blow up in their faces.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 99% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
Also newsworthy were Trump's crass comments afterwards.
Though no doubt some fresh new folly today will supersede them.
Yes the President needed to stick to the sombre mood for much longer than he did. He was mostly just repeating what he’d been briefed, but to go on the political angle before families of the deceased had been informed should have been resisted for at least a day or two. Let the friendly journos run with that angle, but stay above it yourself.
I really don’t like the politicisation of accident investigations, but this one looks like it was going to be inevitable the more one reads about it. The NTSB are one of very few truly independent agencies in the country, but their report will be studied like none they’ve written since the 9/11 reports - which led to locked cockpit doors and the invasive ‘security’ measures at US airports.
As I mentioned on the last thread, it appears there’s been serious management issues with air traffic control at Reagan for years. Those who were on duty on Wednesday night are unlikely ever to be declared fit to return to work, and will need years if not decades of counselling. They’ll need to be on suicide watch for a long time, as I’m sure you’d appreciate.
Really?
It doesn't appear to be the fault of the ATC. More likely the chopper had sight of the wrong plane.
The evidence base on PTSD from the military is that short term withdrawal from the front line, debriefing both individually and in small groups of peers then a return to the front is the most effective strategy. It's why there were fewer psychological casualties in WW2 than WW1.
That’s a response I wasn’t expecting.
I wonder if the civvies can learn from the military in this regard, in terms of PTSD treatment?
I know that in the event of minor incidents and accidents, “get back on the horse” is the right approach, but certainly within the aviation industry there’s a long history of suicide from accident survivors who saw themselves are responsible for the deaths of others, as pilots, engineers, ATC etc.
As to this accident, the non-human factors are going to involve what view the ATC had of the two aircraft on their screens. A Congressman posted this video yesterday, which I think is a computer simulation of the accident rather than an actual replay of the recording. https://x.com/repthomasmassie/status/1885017091964637558. (Ignore his commentary, the screens are deliberately decluttered to improve clarity). The flashing red “CA”, however, would be accompanied by an alarm to the controller. It stands for collision alert, or collision avoidance. It’s not impossible that, because of the nature of the airport, that these alerts had become routine and therefore ignored, which would be a major systems factor in the accident.
Yes, there has been a lot of work, particularly in the military about effective treatment about PTSD, it's well summarised here:
The key change is to recognise combat exhaustion, treat near the front, treat with peers and return to duty fairly rapidly. Long term withdrawal to more distant locations away from unit peers breaks unit cohesion and increases feelings of guilt and letting comrades down. In modern practice exhaustion is normalised rather than medicalised and pathologised.
The NHS took a similar approach during the peaks of covid, with my hospital setting up "Staff wellbeing" areas (with appropriate infection control) where staff could formally and informally debrief, eat healthily, talk through what they had seen etc. The areas where these were set up kept stress related absences to a minimum.
It’s better than Patton’s approach
There was an inadvertent control study after the Falklands when some units were flown straight back to the UK after the conflict, and others spent days (weeks) on the warships coming back.
Those on the ships fared much better as they had a) been with their comrades; which meant b) they had time to process events (probably wasn't called "process" back then; and c) were among people who understood what they had gone through to the point whereby they had devised coping strategies.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is "political angle" the new "alternative fact"?
Here’s CNN reporting from a year ago, that they’re 3,100 ATC short (11,500 rather than 14,600, 21%), and struggling to recruit.
Those of you with long, good or sad memories may recall that I actually won a PB competition held three years ago on the number of Covid vaccines dispensed in January 2022. My victory was based entirely on a lucky guess. I have adopted the same approach to this year's competition, so expect to win.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 90% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
"The investigation is going to be 90% human factors"
If so, then I fear it will be wrong - at least if those factors are the aircrew and controllers alone.
It looks as though there have been several (at least) near misses before. When you get different people making similar 'mistakes' on many different occasions, human factors become far less important than the processes and systems they were having to work under.
It might well be that the controllers, or one or both sets of aircrew, made mistakes on the night. But they would have been at the end of a long chain of causal factors that led to the incident. Much more attention needs to be paid to the processes that led to the decisions that caused the collision.
Oh don’t worry, I reckon the NTSB are going to rip apart the whole operation at Reagan Airport. They’ve had so many near misses in recent days, weeks, months, and years, with a lot of documentary evidence and previous reports with recommendations. The day before this accident, a plane went around because of a mil helo in his windscreen.
I fear it has become so politicised (thanks to Trump)... that either the investigation will be fudged to meet what he wants (*), or people will just ignore what the reports say and continue blaming things they don't like.
(*) Yes, I like and trust the NTSB. But even they have to work under the environment the government produces. And it's already clear that if you say something he, or the people around him, do not like, you are out on your ear.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Farmers getting 90% of their income from subsidies is totally disgusting.
Any other industry, and they'd have been shut down decades ago by the Thatcher government.
The reason is very simple. And speaks as to why the Thatcher government didn't shut them down.
Every government around the world (pretty much) subsidises agriculture. As is usual with such subsidies, it's a race that costs lots of money, and gets nowhere.
President Bush I got as far, in his reelection trade ambitions about getting agricultural subsidies tabled, internationally. Blair was famously insulted by Chirac when he tried to bring the topic up (after giving p the British EU rebate in return for the promise to discuss subsidies...)
So, we have a full on, continuing arms race in subsidies for farming. There are a couple of places (New Zealand for lamb?) where zero subsidies can survive.
But removing subsidies would mean handing the entire food supply to someone else, at the moment.
The lesson for car manufacturers is interesting, isn't it?
The removal of subsidies and barriers to nearly everything else, in the EU, was a massive triumph for these reasons.
The reason that the EU, and others, continues with subsidies rather than super high tariff barriers is that the tariff barriers are more provoking of trade wars. And more importantly, the flow of food, internationally, is important for prevention of hunger.
The current world famines listed here. Want to have a guess at why these famines happen?
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 90% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
"The investigation is going to be 90% human factors"
If so, then I fear it will be wrong - at least if those factors are the aircrew and controllers alone.
It looks as though there have been several (at least) near misses before. When you get different people making similar 'mistakes' on many different occasions, human factors become far less important than the processes and systems they were having to work under.
It might well be that the controllers, or one or both sets of aircrew, made mistakes on the night. But they would have been at the end of a long chain of causal factors that led to the incident. Much more attention needs to be paid to the processes that led to the decisions that caused the collision.
Oh don’t worry, I reckon the NTSB are going to rip apart the whole operation at Reagan Airport. They’ve had so many near misses in recent days, weeks, months, and years, with a lot of documentary evidence and previous reports with recommendations. The day before this accident, a plane went around because of a mil helo in his windscreen.
I fear it has become so politicised (thanks to Trump)... that either the investigation will be fudged to meet what he wants (*), or people will just ignore what the reports say and continue blaming things they don't like.
(*) Yes, I like and trust the NTSB. But even they have to work under the environment the government produces. And it's already clear that if you say something he, or the people around him, do not like, you are out on your ear.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 99% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
Also newsworthy were Trump's crass comments afterwards.
Though no doubt some fresh new folly today will supersede them.
Yes the President needed to stick to the sombre mood for much longer than he did. He was mostly just repeating what he’d been briefed, but to go on the political angle before families of the deceased had been informed should have been resisted for at least a day or two. Let the friendly journos run with that angle, but stay above it yourself.
I really don’t like the politicisation of accident investigations, but this one looks like it was going to be inevitable the more one reads about it. The NTSB are one of very few truly independent agencies in the country, but their report will be studied like none they’ve written since the 9/11 reports - which led to locked cockpit doors and the invasive ‘security’ measures at US airports.
As I mentioned on the last thread, it appears there’s been serious management issues with air traffic control at Reagan for years. Those who were on duty on Wednesday night are unlikely ever to be declared fit to return to work, and will need years if not decades of counselling. They’ll need to be on suicide watch for a long time, as I’m sure you’d appreciate.
Really?
It doesn't appear to be the fault of the ATC. More likely the chopper had sight of the wrong plane.
The evidence base on PTSD from the military is that short term withdrawal from the front line, debriefing both individually and in small groups of peers then a return to the front is the most effective strategy. It's why there were fewer psychological casualties in WW2 than WW1.
That’s a response I wasn’t expecting.
I wonder if the civvies can learn from the military in this regard, in terms of PTSD treatment?
I know that in the event of minor incidents and accidents, “get back on the horse” is the right approach, but certainly within the aviation industry there’s a long history of suicide from accident survivors who saw themselves are responsible for the deaths of others, as pilots, engineers, ATC etc.
As to this accident, the non-human factors are going to involve what view the ATC had of the two aircraft on their screens. A Congressman posted this video yesterday, which I think is a computer simulation of the accident rather than an actual replay of the recording. https://x.com/repthomasmassie/status/1885017091964637558. (Ignore his commentary, the screens are deliberately decluttered to improve clarity). The flashing red “CA”, however, would be accompanied by an alarm to the controller. It stands for collision alert, or collision avoidance. It’s not impossible that, because of the nature of the airport, that these alerts had become routine and therefore ignored, which would be a major systems factor in the accident.
Yes, there has been a lot of work, particularly in the military about effective treatment about PTSD, it's well summarised here:
The key change is to recognise combat exhaustion, treat near the front, treat with peers and return to duty fairly rapidly. Long term withdrawal to more distant locations away from unit peers breaks unit cohesion and increases feelings of guilt and letting comrades down. In modern practice exhaustion is normalised rather than medicalised and pathologised.
The NHS took a similar approach during the peaks of covid, with my hospital setting up "Staff wellbeing" areas (with appropriate infection control) where staff could formally and informally debrief, eat healthily, talk through what they had seen etc. The areas where these were set up kept stress related absences to a minimum.
Good morning, everyone.
That's very interesting.
In psychology there's long been a drive to pathologise every little personality quirk into a syndrome or condition, so it's reassuring to see something move the other way.
The something moving the other way is presumably driven by psychologists.
This looks like an increasing trend which paused during the pandemic.
The number of foreigners working in Japan surged by 250,000 in a year to 2.3m in October, the largest year-on-year increase since records began in 2008, as efforts by companies to shore up labor shortages with employees from overseas start to bear fruit. https://x.com/NikkeiAsia/status/1885210933816893885
If Japan starts taking more immigrants that will be a big shift
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 90% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
"The investigation is going to be 90% human factors"
If so, then I fear it will be wrong - at least if those factors are the aircrew and controllers alone.
It looks as though there have been several (at least) near misses before. When you get different people making similar 'mistakes' on many different occasions, human factors become far less important than the processes and systems they were having to work under.
It might well be that the controllers, or one or both sets of aircrew, made mistakes on the night. But they would have been at the end of a long chain of causal factors that led to the incident. Much more attention needs to be paid to the processes that led to the decisions that caused the collision.
Oh don’t worry, I reckon the NTSB are going to rip apart the whole operation at Reagan Airport. They’ve had so many near misses in recent days, weeks, months, and years, with a lot of documentary evidence and previous reports with recommendations. The day before this accident, a plane went around because of a mil helo in his windscreen.
I fear it has become so politicised (thanks to Trump)... that either the investigation will be fudged to meet what he wants (*), or people will just ignore what the reports say and continue blaming things they don't like.
(*) Yes, I like and trust the NTSB. But even they have to work under the environment the government produces. And it's already clear that if you say something he, or the people around him, do not like, you are out on your ear.
Okay, so there’s already a class action lawsuit open against the FAA, with regard to diversity quotas for air traffic control recruits. That’ll explain how the politicians knew about it so quickly.
Meanwhile: At the time of the collision, there was one controller managing traffic for both helicopters and planes, a job normally handled by two people from 10am until 9.30pm, according to The New York Times.
The duties are typically combined at 9.30pm as traffic subsides into the night, but on Wednesday evening a supervisor reportedly clocked off early.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) found that staffing levels in the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport were “not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic”.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there actual evidence, or just the usual MAGA bullshit "reports"?
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Farmers getting 90% of their income from subsidies is totally disgusting.
Any other industry, and they'd have been shut down decades ago by the Thatcher government.
The reason is very simple. And speaks as to why the Thatcher government didn't shut them down.
Every government around the world (pretty much) subsidises agriculture. As is usual with such subsidies, it's a race that costs lots of money, and gets nowhere.
President Bush I got as far, in his reelection trade ambitions about getting agricultural subsidies tabled, internationally. Blair was famously insulted by Chirac when he tried to bring the topic up (after giving p the British EU rebate in return for the promise to discuss subsidies...)
So, we have a full on, continuing arms race in subsidies for farming. There are a couple of places (New Zealand for lamb?) where zero subsidies can survive.
But removing subsidies would mean handing the entire food supply to someone else, at the moment.
The lesson for car manufacturers is interesting, isn't it?
The removal of subsidies and barriers to nearly everything else, in the EU, was a massive triumph for these reasons.
The reason that the EU, and others, continues with subsidies rather than super high tariff barriers is that the tariff barriers are more provoking of trade wars. And more importantly, the flow of food, internationally, is important for prevention of hunger.
The current world famines listed here. Want to have a guess at why these famines happen?
During the 1980s, it was considered very rude to point out that the famine in Ethiopia happened in the areas that were fighting against the government. Strangely, when that government went away, things improved massively.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Potentially dangerous too given we are about the get into the biggest global trade war since the 1930s led by the US, aren't getting food supplies from Russia and Ukraine now either and also no longer have the guaranteed restriction free food supply we did from the EU and single market either
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there actual evidence, or just the usual MAGA bullshit "reports"?
There’s a class action lawsuit against the FAA, from white men who scored 100% in the entrance exam and weren’t offered a position on the course.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Yet he will still almost certainly be Chancellor after next month's election, indeed the first post war opposition leader ever in Germany to win an election and re enter power merely one term after his party lost office.
Okay, so there’s already a class action lawsuit open against the FAA, with regard to diversity quotas for air traffic control recruits. That’ll explain how the politicians knew about it so quickly.
Meanwhile: At the time of the collision, there was one controller managing traffic for both helicopters and planes, a job normally handled by two people from 10am until 9.30pm, according to The New York Times.
The duties are typically combined at 9.30pm as traffic subsides into the night, but on Wednesday evening a supervisor reportedly clocked off early.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) found that staffing levels in the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport were “not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic”.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is "political angle" the new "alternative fact"?
Here’s CNN reporting from a year ago, that they’re 3,100 ATC short (11,500 rather than 14,600, 21%), and struggling to recruit.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there actual evidence, or just the usual MAGA bullshit "reports"?
There’s a class action lawsuit against the FAA, from white men who scored 100% in the entrance exam and weren’t offered a position on the course.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 99% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
Also newsworthy were Trump's crass comments afterwards.
Though no doubt some fresh new folly today will supersede them.
Yes the President needed to stick to the sombre mood for much longer than he did. He was mostly just repeating what he’d been briefed, but to go on the political angle before families of the deceased had been informed should have been resisted for at least a day or two. Let the friendly journos run with that angle, but stay above it yourself.
I really don’t like the politicisation of accident investigations, but this one looks like it was going to be inevitable the more one reads about it. The NTSB are one of very few truly independent agencies in the country, but their report will be studied like none they’ve written since the 9/11 reports - which led to locked cockpit doors and the invasive ‘security’ measures at US airports.
As I mentioned on the last thread, it appears there’s been serious management issues with air traffic control at Reagan for years. Those who were on duty on Wednesday night are unlikely ever to be declared fit to return to work, and will need years if not decades of counselling. They’ll need to be on suicide watch for a long time, as I’m sure you’d appreciate.
So just a matter of slight mistiming by Trump? Sorry Sandpit but you have gone so far down the rabbit hole that you are starting to become properly delusional. You are better than this.
Trump lied about changes in FAA hiring, and falsely blamed diversity policies for the crash. It's not just the timing that was disgusting.
Except that he didn’t lie, the FAA is currently being sued for their hiring practices.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is "political angle" the new "alternative fact"?
Here’s CNN reporting from a year ago, that they’re 3,100 ATC short (11,500 rather than 14,600, 21%), and struggling to recruit.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is "political angle" the new "alternative fact"?
Here’s CNN reporting from a year ago, that they’re 3,100 ATC short (11,500 rather than 14,600, 21%), and struggling to recruit.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Only insofar as (reportedly) one controller was responsible for both aircraft, when the usual procedure was separate controllers for each.
The evidence base on PTSD from the military is that short term withdrawal from the front line, debriefing both individually and in small groups of peers then a return to the front is the most effective strategy. It's why there were fewer psychological casualties in WW2 than WW1.
In the depths of my PTSD experience, what I wanted more than anything else was to go to war again (still do to some extent, TBH). The certainty, structure and comradeship is very appealing compared to the ambiguities of civilian life.
In another life I could have been a Royal Navy Psychiatrist. That was my initial desire as a speciality, and I was accepted into the RN medical cadet scheme. In 1986
However, I met Mrs Foxy and my life turned in another direction.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is "political angle" the new "alternative fact"?
Here’s CNN reporting from a year ago, that they’re 3,100 ATC short (11,500 rather than 14,600, 21%), and struggling to recruit.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 90% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
"The investigation is going to be 90% human factors"
If so, then I fear it will be wrong - at least if those factors are the aircrew and controllers alone.
It looks as though there have been several (at least) near misses before. When you get different people making similar 'mistakes' on many different occasions, human factors become far less important than the processes and systems they were having to work under.
It might well be that the controllers, or one or both sets of aircrew, made mistakes on the night. But they would have been at the end of a long chain of causal factors that led to the incident. Much more attention needs to be paid to the processes that led to the decisions that caused the collision.
Oh don’t worry, I reckon the NTSB are going to rip apart the whole operation at Reagan Airport. They’ve had so many near misses in recent days, weeks, months, and years, with a lot of documentary evidence and previous reports with recommendations. The day before this accident, a plane went around because of a mil helo in his windscreen.
I fear it has become so politicised (thanks to Trump)... that either the investigation will be fudged to meet what he wants (*), or people will just ignore what the reports say and continue blaming things they don't like.
(*) Yes, I like and trust the NTSB. But even they have to work under the environment the government produces. And it's already clear that if you say something he, or the people around him, do not like, you are out on your ear.
Disagree entirely.
You disagree entirely that it's become politicised or that it's Trump that has done the politicising?
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Only insofar as (reportedly) one controller was responsible for both aircraft, when the usual procedure was separate controllers for each.
Which is exactly the opposite of what one might think would end up with a mid-air.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
On current polls the CDU/CSU and AfD combined will have over 50% of the vote. Of course Merz would prefer a deal with the liberal centre right FDP but they are set to not even win enough seats to enter parliament again.
A CDU and SPD grand coalition again is the likeliest outcome but that runs the risk of the nationalist hard right AfD then being the main party of opposition and further able to gain the protest vote
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is "political angle" the new "alternative fact"?
Here’s CNN reporting from a year ago, that they’re 3,100 ATC short (11,500 rather than 14,600, 21%), and struggling to recruit.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 99% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
Also newsworthy were Trump's crass comments afterwards.
Though no doubt some fresh new folly today will supersede them.
Yes the President needed to stick to the sombre mood for much longer than he did. He was mostly just repeating what he’d been briefed, but to go on the political angle before families of the deceased had been informed should have been resisted for at least a day or two. Let the friendly journos run with that angle, but stay above it yourself.
I really don’t like the politicisation of accident investigations, but this one looks like it was going to be inevitable the more one reads about it. The NTSB are one of very few truly independent agencies in the country, but their report will be studied like none they’ve written since the 9/11 reports - which led to locked cockpit doors and the invasive ‘security’ measures at US airports.
As I mentioned on the last thread, it appears there’s been serious management issues with air traffic control at Reagan for years. Those who were on duty on Wednesday night are unlikely ever to be declared fit to return to work, and will need years if not decades of counselling. They’ll need to be on suicide watch for a long time, as I’m sure you’d appreciate.
So just a matter of slight mistiming by Trump? Sorry Sandpit but you have gone so far down the rabbit hole that you are starting to become properly delusional. You are better than this.
Trump lied about changes in FAA hiring, and falsely blamed diversity policies for the crash. It's not just the timing that was disgusting.
Except that he didn’t lie, the FAA is currently being sued for their hiring practices.
I’m happy to say that Trump messed up yesterday, he should have avoided the political angle completely and been much more sombre in his attitude.
This is what Trump actually said:
"The FAA website states they include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism all qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country"
“As you know last week, long before the crash, I signed an executive order restoring our highest standards for air traffic controllers.”
“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system. I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.”
"When Biden took over he changed them back to lower than ever before"
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Only insofar as (reportedly) one controller was responsible for both aircraft, when the usual procedure was separate controllers for each.
Which is exactly the opposite of what one might think would end up with a mid-air.
Not necessarily. Work overload in the short space of time available could be a factor.
Without waiting for the investigation report, it's impossible to say. But this was a non routine situation - a rarely used runway and landing direction, together with one person apparently doing the normal role of two.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I see Merkel has now criticised Merz for proposing tough new immigration laws with AfD support
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Trump himself said that the military helicopter did “the opposite of what it was told”, which would seem to contradict his statements apparenlty blaming ATC for the collision.
I'd love to predict that lying Rachel from Accounts would return to the back benches where she belongs, but sadly it may not happen. Shows that the man who claimed he was going to "clean up politics" is happy to have people who lie on their CV in his team
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
Black boxes have been recovered from the aircraft involved in the accident yesterday. They’re likely to give investigators an idea of the beginning of the accident sequence and the relative positions of the two aircraft as they met each other.
Also starting to see names released of the victims, including the crews of both aircraft. A number of those on board were returning from an ice-skating competition in Kansas, including teens and young adults in an elite Washington-based training group.
RIP.
It is horrid - extremely sad for the victims' families.
I don't quite know why there is quite so much news and discussion about it though.
Because it’s Washington DC, and because it’s a mid-air between a civvy and a mil aircraft.
It’s an accident between two perfectly serviceable aircraft, that should quite simply never happen. The investigation is going to be 99% human factors, and we already have whistleblowers and journalists saying that Reagan Airport has been an accident waiting to happen for years.
Hundreds of political journalists have witnessed the accident and its aftermath first hand, and tens of thousands of the DC ‘blob’ have had their travel plans for the weekend ruined.
The UK equivalent would be a plane heading to LCY crashing into the Thames half a mile from Parliament, with 60 people all heading for Westminster on board.
If it had been a plane that went down after an engine failure in the middle of a field somewhere in Appalachia, it would have dropped off the news already.
Also newsworthy were Trump's crass comments afterwards.
Though no doubt some fresh new folly today will supersede them.
Yes the President needed to stick to the sombre mood for much longer than he did. He was mostly just repeating what he’d been briefed, but to go on the political angle before families of the deceased had been informed should have been resisted for at least a day or two. Let the friendly journos run with that angle, but stay above it yourself.
I really don’t like the politicisation of accident investigations, but this one looks like it was going to be inevitable the more one reads about it. The NTSB are one of very few truly independent agencies in the country, but their report will be studied like none they’ve written since the 9/11 reports - which led to locked cockpit doors and the invasive ‘security’ measures at US airports.
As I mentioned on the last thread, it appears there’s been serious management issues with air traffic control at Reagan for years. Those who were on duty on Wednesday night are unlikely ever to be declared fit to return to work, and will need years if not decades of counselling. They’ll need to be on suicide watch for a long time, as I’m sure you’d appreciate.
So just a matter of slight mistiming by Trump? Sorry Sandpit but you have gone so far down the rabbit hole that you are starting to become properly delusional. You are better than this.
Trump lied about changes in FAA hiring, and falsely blamed diversity policies for the crash. It's not just the timing that was disgusting.
Except that he didn’t lie, the FAA is currently being sued for their hiring practices.
DEI seems at best marginally relevant to FAA staffing problems.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/30/dc-plane-crash-safety-warnings-00201495 ..The Covid pandemic worsened a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, only for demand for air travel to soar once passengers returned. Politically motivated government funding showdowns made it harder to train new workers and replace outmoded safety equipment. And the agency at the center of it all, the Federal Aviation Administration, spent extended stretches without a permanent leader — while investigators expressed warnings about a spike in near-collisions at airports...
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Only insofar as (reportedly) one controller was responsible for both aircraft, when the usual procedure was separate controllers for each.
Which is exactly the opposite of what one might think would end up with a mid-air.
Not necessarily. Work overload in the short space of time available could be a factor.
Without waiting for the investigation report, it's impossible to say. But this was a non routine situation - a rarely used runway and landing direction, together with one person apparently doing the normal role of two.
It's very typically the case for such incidents that there's no single cause, rather a series of unfortunate circumstances that combine to lead to disaster - hence the Swiss cheese description.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Only insofar as (reportedly) one controller was responsible for both aircraft, when the usual procedure was separate controllers for each.
Which is exactly the opposite of what one might think would end up with a mid-air.
It seems to, or might have meant (no idea how recurrent it is) that requests for "visual separation" made by the apache, having presumably "seen" the wrong aircraft, were granted quickly.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Potentially dangerous too given we are about the get into the biggest global trade war since the 1930s led by the US, aren't getting food supplies from Russia and Ukraine now either and also no longer have the guaranteed restriction free food supply we did from the EU and single market either
Most sensible thing I have seen you post. Our food security is in many ways more important than energy security. We should be looking at ways we can increase our food independence rather than further damage it.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Only insofar as (reportedly) one controller was responsible for both aircraft, when the usual procedure was separate controllers for each.
Which is exactly the opposite of what one might think would end up with a mid-air.
Not necessarily. Work overload in the short space of time available could be a factor.
Without waiting for the investigation report, it's impossible to say. But this was a non routine situation - a rarely used runway and landing direction, together with one person apparently doing the normal role of two.
Yes, it ended up with an unusual but not uncommon situation, and the most likely supposition is a combination of ATC overload and the helo pilots looking at the wrong aircraft (on a training flight where one pilot was likely blindfolded to the outside). The CRJ pilot was on a visual (rather than an instrument) approach and should also have been looking out, thanks to a late change of runway.
The secondary factors are going be a very long list indeed. As many have said since Wednesday night, this was an accident waiting to happen.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Trump himself said that the military helicopter did “the opposite of what it was told”, which would seem to contradict his statements apparenlty blaming ATC for the collision.
Trump was just spewing blame randomly. Don't expect logic to be involved.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
But while performing the complicated manoeuvre of having them still vote for him.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
I just saw a squadron of pigs fly past by my window.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is there any evidence so far that the controllers, let alone the number of controllers on duty, were a causal factor in this incident?
Only insofar as (reportedly) one controller was responsible for both aircraft, when the usual procedure was separate controllers for each.
Which is exactly the opposite of what one might think would end up with a mid-air.
Not necessarily. Work overload in the short space of time available could be a factor.
Without waiting for the investigation report, it's impossible to say. But this was a non routine situation - a rarely used runway and landing direction, together with one person apparently doing the normal role of two.
It's very typically the case for such incidents that there's no single cause, rather a series of unfortunate circumstances that combine to lead to disaster - hence the Swiss cheese description.
Absolutely. I'm just noting what's currently reported. Any reliable conclusions will be quite some time off.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
AfD MPs have called for Tommy Robinson to be released. They were also thrown out of the far right MEP group for being a bit too extreme...
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The CDU will try to pass their 2nd bill this week relying on AfD support, this week is the first time that AfD support has been relied on. The German politics expert on R4 this morning (from Queens Uni, Belfast) said that this is only promoting the AfD. Though breaking news is that the Conservative coalition is having 2nd thoughts https://www.dw.com/en/german-lawmakers-set-to-vote-on-contentious-immigration-law/live-71465034
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
Closer to Britain First than Reform.
Yup. Farage is not someone I would ever vote for - but he has done *something* to keep the really rancid nutters out of Reform.
I suspect that preventing such entryism was one of the reasons for the company structure with Farage holding the shares.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
Yes, the fundamental purpose of such programs is to eliminate bias. This includes, for example, anonymising job applications so that candidates are judged purely on merit rather than on preconceptions relating to their name or appearance. If done properly, these programs should improve rather than reduce the quality of employees.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
I just saw a squadron of pigs fly past by my window.
Well, the AfD has plenty of people that *Yarxley-Lennon* wouldn't want in his little tea parties. And Farage has barred YL (among others of his ilk) from Reform.
So I would say that it is proven that the AfD is much worse than Reform.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
The UK Government is working 24 hours a day to make energy more expensive, food more expensive, and competition more and more difficult by importing five or six figures' worth of people per year. But it's planting trees and making fields a bit more mossy.
So that's alright then
(walks to the window, opens it, screams "Holy Shi[Yes we get it - Ed!])
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
I will correct that slightly for you: The AfD are composed of the people Farage is attempting to give the impression of trying to keep out of Reform.
Let's face it if he tried too hard he would lose a large part of his activists and supporters. It would be akin to the SNP kicking out all people who hate the English!
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
Let's be honest, all parties have people in them who are pretty vile, no exception. The problem for Reform is that if they win as many seats as predicted, they will have a lot of new MPs with no experience and little scrutiny and inevitably they will face a number of Jared O'Mara types.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
The UK Government is working 24 hours a day to make energy more expensive, food more expensive, and competition more and more difficult by importing five or six figures' worth of people per year. But it's planting trees and making fields a bit more mossy.
So that's alright then
(walks to the window, opens it, screams "Holy Shi[Yes we get it - Ed!])
Can I just point out the CDU leader Merz is an idiot. Widely seen as arrogant, out of touch, thin-skinned and clumsy, he's also just rubbish at politics.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
Aiming for a coalition with the AfD rather than with more centrist parties would be the suspicion. He must have bunked off history lessons.
There's no chance of a coalition with the AfD after the next election. I've no idea what goes on in Merz's brain, but the CDU wouldn't allow it, it's a non-starter.
I get the impression that the "normal" politicians in Germany are flailing around, a bit, as here. They don't know what to do. Which is ripe for stupid decisions.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
The AfD are composed of the people Farage is trying, with varying degrees of success, to keep out of Reform.
Let's be honest, all parties have people in them who are pretty vile, no exception. The problem for Reform is that if they win as many seats as predicted, they will have a lot of new MPs with no experience and little scrutiny and inevitably they will face a number of Jared O'Mara types.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
Doesn't really sound like a DEI program, in fact sound the antithesis as I think you are implying. There are many elements of DEI that make for better companies, but it requires people who know what they are doing. Diversity is proven to create more creativity and improve broader understanding of a company's customer base as well as creating a larger talent pool. Where it goes wrong is if there is a "quota" system and (as in parts of the US) "affirmative action" is applied.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
The UK Government is working 24 hours a day to make energy more expensive, food more expensive, and competition more and more difficult by importing five or six figures' worth of people per year. But it's planting trees and making fields a bit more mossy.
So that's alright then
(walks to the window, opens it, screams "Holy Shi[Yes we get it - Ed!])
Bradshaw is noted on wikipedia as having introduced renewable energy on to his farm from 2010, farming can coexist with renewable energy generation, electricity transmission (pylons), grid storage options and EV charging. Once farmers see the £-signs then there'll be solar panels, pylons next to battery storage and small EV charge stations on the access roads and they'll farm around them.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
The number of flight slots at Reagan airport actually gets discussed by the US Senate, with of course Senators from almost everywhere wanting more of them to the closest airport to their offices.
The UK equivalent would be the MPs demanding one flight a minute into LCY, from every little regional airport in a country with no motorways and no railway lines. Because they all think LHR is too far away.
Also, Republican politics and what happened to the ATCs. Reagan isn't in the current mix just because he has the airport named after him. Some people on Pprune are of the view that US ATC never recovered from the mass sackings at that time - culture and staffing levels changed. IANAE though.
Obviously it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan, there’s no-one involved in ATC now who was there four decades ago when the President took the nuclear option to resolve a labour dispute. That option wouldn’t be there now, as the airspace is so much busier and there are a lot of more civvy and a lot fewer mil controllers to take over.
The allegations are that there has been racial and ‘gender’ profiling in recruitment in recent years, which has led to staff shortages, and in common with most Biden-era agencies there’s plenty of public documents and videos saying that “aviation has a white man problem” and similar sentiments.
The NTSB investigation isn’t going to go into the hiring policies of the FAA, but it is very much going to go into staffing levels, shift patterns, and work hours at Reagan Airport. There’s been suggestions that ATC have been working 10h days and 6d weeks, which would be totally illegal in pretty much every other Western country.
Isn't it true that all ATC recruits go though the same training and assessments before entering service?
And that both aircraft were being flown by white males?
Absolutely you don’t get to be an active ATC without passing all the exams and being certified for your position (same as a medical specialism or an aircraft type rating, ATC need to be certified for the specific piece of airspace they are working)
The political angle is that ATC couldn’t recruit enough people, because the recruiters wanted to have their employees “represent the makeup of the population”, or some such woke DEI bollocks. There are reports of potential recruits being turned down “because they were white men”. (Similar to stories around university admission in the US). So ATC ended up understaffed as they’re couldn’t find enough “minorities” who both applied, met the appliacation standard, and completed the course.
Is "political angle" the new "alternative fact"?
Here’s CNN reporting from a year ago, that they’re 3,100 ATC short (11,500 rather than 14,600, 21%), and struggling to recruit.
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
Apparently, the crops benefit from windbreaks, so it makes perfect sense to use solar panels for that purpose. The crops grow just as well, and there is still access for machinery.
I guess the panels are cheap enough now that it's fine to have them in a suboptimal orientation, particularly if that means you can also use the land for agriculture.
My only concern is that this could restrict a new generation of Theresa Mays from running through farmers' fields - or at least, limit them to a single direction
It looks to me like those panels are mounted on a tilting mechanism, so they can be stored vertically whilst the combine is in, but turned to a better angle when being used for generation.
However, I'm not quite sure this is more efficient than a field of solar panels and a field of wheat. No doubt someone has the numbers...
A tenth of British Farmland to be repurposed for net zero
Solar farms, tree planting and wildlife habitats to replace food production.
Meanwhile from 2022 to 2032 our population will grow by 5 Million people.
‘Brutal Budget has hurt farming’ Tom Bradshaw, president of the NFU, said it was “imperative this framework does not further restrict farmers’ ability to produce the nation’s food”. “Over the past 18 months, the UK farming industry has taken a battering,” he said. “Volatile input costs, commodity prices on the floor in some sectors, a reduction in direct payments, one of the wettest periods in decades, and a brutal Budget delivered by this Government. All have left their mark and have put homegrown food production under serious pressure.” The Government believes food production can be largely maintained at current levels by focusing on removing only the least productive land. About 20 per cent of England’s farmed land produces just 3 per cent of total calories, in areas where subsidies have historically accounted for 90 per cent of farm incomes.
The UK Government is working 24 hours a day to make energy more expensive, food more expensive, and competition more and more difficult by importing five or six figures' worth of people per year. But it's planting trees and making fields a bit more mossy.
So that's alright then
(walks to the window, opens it, screams "Holy Shi[Yes we get it - Ed!])
Bradshaw is noted on wikipedia as having introduced renewable energy on to his farm from 2010, farming can coexist with renewable energy generation, electricity transmission (pylons), grid storage options and EV charging. Once farmers see the £-signs then there'll be solar panels, pylons next to battery storage and small EV charge stations on the access roads and they'll farm around them.
The additional income streams will make farming more financially resilient.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
Doesn't really sound like a DEI program, in fact sound the antithesis as I think you are implying. There are many elements of DEI that make for better companies, but it requires people who know what they are doing. Diversity is proven to create more creativity and improve broader understanding of a company's customer base as well as creating a larger talent pool. Where it goes wrong is if there is a "quota" system and (as in parts of the US) "affirmative action" is applied.
It sounds like you want the D without the EI, but that’s not how the laws that underpin DEI work.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
To be fair on the diversity teams I've spoken with, getting people in with parents who did not go to university is a big focus - and that's often white working class kids from the north of England etc. It's why the Sutton Trust's work is so important, and why we monitor such metrics.
DEI works both ways. If you bin it in the UK, it's probably going to adversely impact a higher proportion of low income white men than any other combination of ethnicity/gender/income, particularly if the focus is education background.
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
Doesn't really sound like a DEI program, in fact sound the antithesis as I think you are implying. There are many elements of DEI that make for better companies, but it requires people who know what they are doing. Diversity is proven to create more creativity and improve broader understanding of a company's customer base as well as creating a larger talent pool. Where it goes wrong is if there is a "quota" system and (as in parts of the US) "affirmative action" is applied.
It was the classic of people trying to do something that they have no idea about.
In America, the intersection of politics, massive inequalities and vested interests gives us stuff like the College Sports comedy. Where "student" athletes make vast sums for their universities. But often get next to no actual education. And if injured, get dropped like a slow horse. But reforming it would collapse participation for some ethnic minorities, in university education....
A short post to make MAGA supporters froth: DEI (aka EDI) programs, if properly implemented (and there is the crux) increase the candidate pool rather than decrease it. Axing DEI programs is very unlikely to make skill shortages better and will most likely make them worse.
On DEI programs. And idiots.
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
To be fair on the diversity teams I've spoken with, getting people in with parents who did not go to university is a big focus - and that's often white working class kids from the north of England etc. It's why the Sutton Trust's work is so important, and why we monitor such metrics.
DEI works both ways. If you bin it in the UK, it's probably going to adversely impact a higher proportion of low income white men than any other combination of ethnicity/gender/income, particularly if the focus is education background.
That's real DEI. As opposed to "we need DEI - quick, someone invent a PowerPoint pack...
My guesstimate is that the university barrier hits the white working class and long term UK origin Afro-Carribbean working class the most. You see every group in banking but those 2 - you see recent immigrants from African countries, but none from the long term black community. And the barrow boys are virtually extinct.
Suspect Reform will be jumping on stuff like this as it is just not sustainable. Should say that the figures don't correlate, as the dependant could be from previous year, but it is the picture it paints. Figures from Home Office visa tables.
Karl Williams @MalvernianKarl · 17h Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
It's also absolutely not reflected in the OBR figures for migrants, which *do* now represent migrants as a net fiscal drain, but on the evidence of the above, would seem barely to scrape the surface.
Comments
Any other industry, and they'd have been shut down decades ago by the Thatcher government.
Everyone was doing the right thing (said one Apache guy on PPrune) to which another commentator said:
"If everyone is 'doing the right thing', then **** shouldn't happen, because the rules should be designed to avoid 100% of accidents if everyone follows those rules. So either somebody was not 'doing the right thing', or something is wrong with the rules. **** happens when there are unexpected circumstances. This was not an unexpected circumstance."
2: Lab 19, Con 18, Lib Dem 7, Reform 16,
3: 8
4: 7
5: 5
6: 5
7: 180
8: 3.5%
9: £190 bn
10: 2.1%
11: 2.1%
12: 0.9%
13: 214 USD/RUB).
14: Aus: 3, Eng 1
agingjb, who hereby proves that he knows nothing.
#PBpedantry#
Every government around the world (pretty much) subsidises agriculture. As is usual with such subsidies, it's a race that costs lots of money, and gets nowhere.
President Bush I got as far, in his reelection trade ambitions about getting agricultural subsidies tabled, internationally. Blair was famously insulted by Chirac when he tried to bring the topic up (after giving p the British EU rebate in return for the promise to discuss subsidies...)
So, we have a full on, continuing arms race in subsidies for farming. There are a couple of places (New Zealand for lamb?) where zero subsidies can survive.
But removing subsidies would mean handing the entire food supply to someone else, at the moment.
The lesson for car manufacturers is interesting, isn't it?
The removal of subsidies and barriers to nearly everything else, in the EU, was a massive triumph for these reasons.
The reason that the EU, and others, continues with subsidies rather than super high tariff barriers is that the tariff barriers are more provoking of trade wars. And more importantly, the flow of food, internationally, is important for prevention of hunger.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/air-traffic-control-staffing-plane-crash.html
Until we hear from the NTSB, who usually give an initial statement within a week or so, we won’t know what are being considered as causal factors in this accident.
It is /possible/ that ATC was affected by DEI-caused problems, but it’s frankly more likely to be a management issue given the apparent recent history of near misses. The erosion of safety margins in a safety critical system by management pushing to “get the job done” appears to be a universal problem who’s cause almost always lies with a management that refuses to face up to the increasing risks they are taking until they blow up in their faces.
Those on the ships fared much better as they had a) been with their comrades; which meant b) they had time to process events (probably wasn't called "process" back then; and c) were among people who understood what they had gone through to the point whereby they had devised coping strategies.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/faa-short-on-air-traffic-controllers/index.html
Here’s a more political angle, driven by whistleblower statements, also from a year ago.
https://x.com/mattwalshblog/status/1745211799635398896
I have adopted the same approach to this year's competition, so expect to win.
Which is effectively what managing unprofitable land use is in this country.
The farmers are being funded so that tourists can see sheep in fields surrounded by dry stone walls.
Whether having Upper Swaledale so covered is a good idea is open for debate.
In the middle of a general election campaign, he's decided to pull a massive political stunt by putting forward rushed, unworkable legislation that has zero chance of becoming law any time soon. But it doesn't even make any sense as a political stunt, as all it achieves is to boost the AfD (unless that is his aim - I'm beginning to wonder), make the job of making a coalition after the election much more difficult, and upset lots of people in his own party.
For instance, the fact the FAA has no head atm is down to Trump and Musk. I'd argue there being a head of the FAA is rather vital, and Whitaker was not bad at his job.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/faa-chief-michael-whitaker-quit-on-jan-20-after-elon-musk-told-him-to-resign/
(*) Yes, I like and trust the NTSB. But even they have to work under the environment the government produces. And it's already clear that if you say something he, or the people around him, do not like, you are out on your ear.
https://www.actionagainsthunger.org.uk/our-impact/stories/the-hungriest-countries-in-the-world
Of course Ed Miliband has also scrapped the last mine to be opened in the UK Boris was pushing and Wilson closed more mines than Thatcher ever did
1) 32, 28, 10, 37
2) 21, 17, 6, 18
3) 6
4) 2
5) 5
6) 3
7) 115
8) 2.3
9) 103 bn
10) 1.7%
11)3.5 %
12) 1.4%
13) 230
14) 0-5
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/01/31/diversity-hiring-cost-me-job-at-faa-a-crash-was-inevitable/
Meanwhile:
At the time of the collision, there was one controller managing traffic for both helicopters and planes, a job normally handled by two people from 10am until 9.30pm, according to The New York Times.
The duties are typically combined at 9.30pm as traffic subsides into the night, but on Wednesday evening a supervisor reportedly clocked off early.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) found that staffing levels in the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport were “not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/01/31/washington-plane-crash-trump-air-traffic-control-latest-new/
Closely followed by food as a weapon.
During the 1980s, it was considered very rude to point out that the famine in Ethiopia happened in the areas that were fighting against the government. Strangely, when that government went away, things improved massively.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/01/31/washington-plane-crash-trump-air-traffic-control-latest-new/
Fib. Fib.
Your party should have done something about supermarkets for a start, if it were worried about the farmers. It's income now that they need.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/01/31/diversity-hiring-cost-me-job-at-faa-a-crash-was-inevitable/
Matt Walsh is a far right troll.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/01/31/diversity-hiring-cost-me-job-at-faa-a-crash-was-inevitable/
I’m happy to say that Trump messed up yesterday, he should have avoided the political angle completely and been much more sombre in his attitude.
His documentaries “What is a Woman?” and “Am I Racist?” have made millions at the box office.
The AfD is considerably worse than Reform, I think.
Thoughts?
"It's the fault of DEI !!!!" was the very first thing Trump said
However, I met Mrs Foxy and my life turned in another direction.
A CDU and SPD grand coalition again is the likeliest outcome but that runs the risk of the nationalist hard right AfD then being the main party of opposition and further able to gain the protest vote
"The FAA website states they include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism all qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country"
“As you know last week, long before the crash, I signed an executive order restoring our highest standards for air traffic controllers.”
“We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system. I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.”
"When Biden took over he changed them back to lower than ever before"
I could go on...
Trump is a lying piece of shit.
1. 32, 28, 18, 35
2. 15, 15, 5, 17
3. 7
4. 0
5. 6
6. 8
7. 155
8. 2.8
9. 165
10. 0.2
11. 3.5
12. 0.1
13. 200
14. 2-2
1) 32, 28, 10, 37
2) 21, 17, 6, 18
3) 6
4) 2
5) 5
6) 3
7) 115
8) 2.3
9) 103 bn
10) 1.7%
11)3.5 %
12) 1.4%
13) 230
14) 0-5
Work overload in the short space of time available could be a factor.
Without waiting for the investigation report, it's impossible to say. But this was a non routine situation - a rarely used runway and landing direction, together with one person apparently doing the normal role of two.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/friedrich-merz-ap-berlin-union-christian-democratic-union-b2689062.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsChqV7nals
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/30/dc-plane-crash-safety-warnings-00201495
..The Covid pandemic worsened a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, only for demand for air travel to soar once passengers returned. Politically motivated government funding showdowns made it harder to train new workers and replace outmoded safety equipment. And the agency at the center of it all, the Federal Aviation Administration, spent extended stretches without a permanent leader — while investigators expressed warnings about a spike in near-collisions at airports...
Congress is also in the frame.
The secondary factors are going be a very long list indeed. As many have said since Wednesday night, this was an accident waiting to happen.
Right, I have work to do, laters all.
Don't expect logic to be involved.
I'm just noting what's currently reported. Any reliable conclusions will be quite some time off.
Though breaking news is that the Conservative coalition is having 2nd thoughts https://www.dw.com/en/german-lawmakers-set-to-vote-on-contentious-immigration-law/live-71465034
Any markets on Merz going?
I suspect that preventing such entryism was one of the reasons for the company structure with Farage holding the shares.
So I would say that it is proven that the AfD is much worse than Reform.
So that's alright then
(walks to the window, opens it, screams "Holy Shi[Yes we get it - Ed!])
Let's face it if he tried too hard he would lose a large part of his activists and supporters. It would be akin to the SNP kicking out all people who hate the English!
A little while ago, we had a presentation at a meeting by the HR group in charge of Diversity. One lady actually got up and said that one way we could help increase diversity was to invite *friends and neighbours* children into the bank for open days and encourage them to apply for internships....
My guffaw at this attracted some negative looks.
My thought is that, for real DEI, we should invite the children of the cleaners and security guards in for open days and encourage them to apply for internships.
Karl Williams
@MalvernianKarl
·
17h
Apropos of nothing, in the first six months of 2024, we gave out 1,063 health & care visas to workers from Zimbabwe. They brought with them 10,670 dependants. That's 10 dependants for every (likely minimum wage) social care worker.
Like "Normal for Norfolk"
However, I'm not quite sure this is more efficient than a field of solar panels and a field of wheat. No doubt someone has the numbers...
EU officials back plan to restart Russian gas flows as part of Ukraine peace deal - FT
Germany and Hungary lead push to resume Russian gas flows despite opposition from eastern EU states
https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1884919573536760311
DEI works both ways. If you bin it in the UK, it's probably going to adversely impact a higher proportion of low income white men than any other combination of ethnicity/gender/income, particularly if the focus is education background.
In America, the intersection of politics, massive inequalities and vested interests gives us stuff like the College Sports comedy. Where "student" athletes make vast sums for their universities. But often get next to no actual education. And if injured, get dropped like a slow horse. But reforming it would collapse participation for some ethnic minorities, in university education....
My guesstimate is that the university barrier hits the white working class and long term UK origin Afro-Carribbean working class the most. You see every group in banking but those 2 - you see recent immigrants from African countries, but none from the long term black community. And the barrow boys are virtually extinct.
Admitting you are pro-Brexit is like soiling yourself in public.