Girl boss not Girl box! (Elon, we really need the ability edit.) I am hearing the pilot failed four prior training flights.
It is possible she was feeling overwhelmed and unable to make a split second decision which would have saved lives. Plenty of blame to go around in this tragedy. Go here to read all about it. She, apparently, was a subpar chopper pilot who should never have been put into this situation at night above one of the busiest civilian airports on the planet. Inspector Callhan, what do you say?
When it becomes more important to check off boxes and keep up appearances. I’ve seen this for years in the hiring of teachers as well…
It’s precisely the kind of thing the Lord warned against in his time on earth. Now it is costing (physical) lives in a very highly visible fashion.
At least when there’s spiritual tomfoolery there is always the possibility of realization and repentance. Not so much with high speed aeronautical crashes.
I guess the co-pilot could have corrected it 🙁
She failed her fifth training flight too.
The third Dirty Harry movie, The Enforcer, 1976, attempted to warn about DEI. If I recall correctly, Kate Moore, (Tyne Daly), did not survive. Eastwood has always been ahead of his time. I wish his personal life was a bit more upstanding.
As I said on Twitter / X, such women are now captains of nuclear powered fleet ballistic missile submarines with an arsenal that can eradicate all life on a continent. When these women are playing chicken with crazy Ivan or one of the Chicom captains, who do you think will come out on top? Likely we’ll have a President crying as Augustus once did, “Quintili Vare, legiones redde!“
I’ve always been a tad fond of Tyne Daly for some reason.
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I suppose the question to which I’d want to know the answer is why the ‘personnel and records’ department was staffed by people you’d sent through the police academy rather than by people off the street who scored well on a civil service exam. I guess I’d also want to know why Ofc. Moore had never requested a lateral transfer to a patrol beat (or was refused one if she did apply).
Does the preliminary report say she failed four training flights? How does that stack up against median performance?
Regarding Art Deco’s question, IMHO, anyone who fails a helicopter pilot’s exam four times should not be a helicopter pilot even as anyone who fails a submarine reactor operator exam four times should not be a submarine reactor operator. That applies to both male and female without distinction.
[…] Hatred Is Always a Good Idiot Detector – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at the American CatholicDEI Kills – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at the American […]
I question the use of a busy commercial passenger air corridor for evaluation/training flights. The people onboard the doomed airliner look to me like they were involuntary test subjects in this exercise. Were they given the option to opt out of this test exercise and its associated risks? There is such a thing as informed consent.
“ She, apparently, was a subpar chopper pilot …”
The best publicly available information shows: She only had 450 hours of flight time.
Those are “apprenticeship” hours.
I know people in the military with extensive flight time. +1500, +2000 hours and over, is “extensive.” We had a family member who was a skilled aircraft mechanic with 2000+ hours. The media has gone into stone-walling on Biden-Harris DEI defense since this story broke.
But it won’t work: 67 people died Jan 29, 2025. Their families are owed an answer.
The latest is that Warrant Officer Eaves was the pilot for the first 105 minutes of the flight. The crash occurred 17 minutes after she took the controls.
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Robert Stacy McCain notes that her name was withheld for two days after those of the other members of the crew were announced. He points out that the two extra days allowed her family to scrub her social media.
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I was assigned to an Army aviation unit during the Vietnam War. The instructor, no matter the difference in rank, is always to be obeyed during a flight command situation. It is simply a matter of prudence and necessity.
“How does that stack up against median performance?”
Best for an Army pilot to answer that question.
Yet, … I have typically understood military flight training to be quite rigorous and demanding. Even in civilian life though, I’d question a man’s abilities if he can’t pass in two efforts. Flying isn’t easy, yet it’s not THAT difficult.
..I’m reminded of the Fairchild AFB incident in the 90s wherein a “hot-dog” pilot succeeded in killing himself and 3 others with an overly aggressive turn in a B-52.
“I question the use of a busy commercial passenger air corridor for evaluation/training flights.”
I’d had that thought initially, yet…. I consider it may be needed. I suspect it may be aimed at testing a man’s capabilities for an emergency situation. There’s always the risk of a surprise…event…say, another 9/11. In such a situation, a sudden, fast, low-level chopper flight might be the least hazardous way to accomplish a mission.
…Which does, of course, raise the specter of what emergencies someone expects..
“I question the use of a busy commercial passenger air corridor for evaluation/training flights.”
I’d had that thought initially, yet…. I consider it may be needed. I suspect it may be aimed at testing a man’s capabilities for an emergency situation. There’s always the risk of a surprise…event…say, another 9/11. In such a situation, a sudden, fast, low-level chopper flight might be the least hazardous way to accomplish a mission
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A mission is one thing a training/evaluation flight is another. A check flight is something that you can do advanced planning for in order to minimize risk to the general public. There is a Navy bombing range near where I live that is in a national forest. I see notices in the media when bomb tests are taking place. Even then there was a recent bomb drop that fell six miles wide of the target and started a fire. Accidents can and do happen. What kind of heads up was the general public given when flying into Reagan? You can get a do over in a simulator and no one gets killed. The real world is not as forgiving of mistakes, as we have all seen. That is why I brought up informed consent.
“A mission is one thing a training/evaluation flight is another.”
I would like to to see numbers about the number of times Army aircrews have run this mission without issue. They have rules about it, that implies many.
As for informed consent, …I think you provide that when you buy the plane ticket.
Any occasion you fly to a large city, especially where cities merge together a lot, ..you assume the risk of someone messing up. That’s pretty much the entire Eastern Seaboard.
If there is a mission involved with this, …it’ll be remarkably difficult for different sort of evaluation, yet still be worth doing. Simulators and remote-area flying have their limits. If they deem that training or evalution for low-level flight, at night, with NVGs, in crowded airspace bears too much risk, …they probably need to consider alternatives to ever running the mission.
I think that the point that I am making is that the entire check flight was a hypothetical simulation. How much real world risk is it reasonable to take when there are no people whose lives are at real world risk who would serve as a justification for the mission? IIRC Chernobyl was a test gone horribly wrong. IIRC in both cases the hypothetical tests became the real world disasters.
“How much real world risk is it reasonable to take when there are no people whose lives are at real world risk who would serve as a justification for the mission?”
…Consider why we have Secret Service.
The performance of the Secret Service was less than exemplary during the first attempted Trump assassination. Their stonewalling the investigation that followed was also questionable. IIRC most officers of the law have to justify their use of their guns in the line of duty. Where do they practice their marksmanship skills? Also the current fad of swatting people is very dangerous.
I just saw a video on YouTube by Captain Steeeve about a recent Army helicopter incident at DCA where loose radio discipline by the helicopter pilot caused two go arounds at DCA. The video is titled “Helicopter Pilot Ghosts Tower, Disrupts DC Airspace”:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3sY3faRcaA
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He goes into how constricted the DCA airspace is.