Comment by mrguyorama
3 months ago
The entire point of Human ATC is that those rules are breached regularly in normal operations and we still expect traffic to be routed safely despite that
One complaint I've seen is that the ATC should not have let the helicopter do visual spacing in that regime, that it was somewhat careless and unsafe and possibly discouraged. If the ATC operator was overloaded with work, they would be incentivized to "outsource" the spacing management to the helicopter who would then be able to screw it up by "seeing" the wrong plane. I can see the merits of the argument but it would take the NTSB to have the right knowledge to confirm or deny it.
that it was somewhat careless and unsafe and possibly discouraged
This is what I mean. Clearly, people are unfamiliar with what actions certain military/government pilots are able to take in that airspace. It's rules. It's not about being encouraged or discouraged or overworked or underworked or rainbow farting unicorns. That's not how ATC works.
I would want to change the rules that allow military pilots to do this sort of thing. Or at least, have a reasoned conversation about why it's necessary to allow them to do this sort of thing. But that sort of conversation is difficult. So everyone wants to talk about everything else instead. The issue being that everything else is very likely not the root problem.
I hope when the reports do come out we can stop this nonsense about ATC, or Reagan being a moron, or civilian airliner holding patterns or whatever else and actually have the hard sit down on that issue.
The real problem is that the problem could happen. Even if the helicopter ATC guy was present, and HAD vectored them behind and they HAD complied, or X or Y or Z or whatever had prevented this accident, it would have happened eventually.
The problem isn't that the controller didn't notice they were too close; it is that less than 1000 feet of separation is considered fine and normal and commonplace. It's too close and leaves no room for error.
You're just highlighting a different aspect of parent's concern: there shouldn't be special-casing for military aircraft in shared airspace.
Do you have a description of or citation for the rules you’re mentioning? I’m curious what they are.