There is SO much news that a roundup is in order, and even then it’s very incomplete.
(1) About the DC crash – here’s a heartbreaking list of some of the victims. RIP.
The control tower was understaffed that night. Plus:
“DC airspace is very unique,” Henry Harteveldt, President and travel industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group, told The Post, citing the proximity of the military operations and the outdated design of the airport.
Reagan National was built in the 1930s as the original airport in DC … commercial and military aircraft share the airspace … We’ve been lucky to have never before had an incident like this happen,” he added.
In May 2024 there was nearly a collision between an American Airlines jet and a small airplane at DCA and there was another almost bang-up in April 2024 between Southwest and JetBlue airplanes.
Harteveldt attributes that partly to the fact Reagan “has runway configurations that are no longer used at contemporary airports. We’ve got runways that intersect with one another.”
The precarious situation is exacerbated due to the fact that the airport’s main runway is half the length of the standard — 7,000 feet instead of 13,000 — resulting in the compact scheduling for takeoffs and landings.
Despite this, in 2024 Congress allowed the airport to increase its number of daily flights from DCA.
Unbelievable – yet all too believable.
Also, the helicopter was significantly higher than it should have been, and we don’t know why. In addition, although the Army has said that the pilot of the helicopter was a woman, here name is not being released yet, at the request of the family.
(2) The FAA has restricted helicopter flights from the airspace around Reagan Airport. Why didn’t that happen a long time ago? It’s not as though there wasn’t a lot of warning.
(3) A small medevac jet with six Mexican nationals onboard crashed in Philadelphia last night. It was returning a pediatric patient to Mexico after treatment in the US. RIP. Six people on the ground were injured as well.
(4) At the DOJ, some of the J6 prosecutors have been let go.
(5) Guess what? The administration has halted federal aid to NGOs that assist illegal aliens in coming here:
“Today we are announcing that we have stopped all grant funding that’s being abused by NGOs to facilitate illegal immigration into this country,” she told host Will Cain. “So it’s amazing to me the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent by the federal government that has been sent to NGOs to facilitate this invasion of our country.”