Summary
After a mid-air collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Eagle flight near Washington, D.C., Trump speculated on Truth Social, questioning why the crash wasn’t avoided.
Billionaire Bill Ackman suggested terrorism, though the FBI found no evidence of criminal activity.
Officials confirmed 67 people were onboard but have not reported fatalities. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser urged patience as rescue efforts continue.
Trump’s comments have fueled conspiracy theories despite the lack of confirmed details.
Just based on my initial understanding of the situation, it looks like pilot error on the part of the helicopter. So, Trump’s not wrong; he’s just an asshole, and him injecting himself into this is counterproductive. Conspiracy theories relating to this is just…stupid.
Pilot error is a convenient way of ignoring the systemic causes of the crash.
Human error is almost never the root cause of an incident.
As lots of people pointed out, there are lots of well identified contributing factors to this accident that don’t have anything to do with the pilots.
Anyone who has flown into this airport will know how crazy that airspace is, and how close it feels to everything in DC. It’s an incredible approach, but this accident doesn’t exactly surprise me because all it takes is just a slight lapse in attention for a disaster to occur.
Yeah many years ago some friends and I went to fly some trick kites at Gravelly point park and when the first plane came in we realized how close the kites were to the planes, so we packed up our stuff and started to leave, as we were doing that another couple came out with kites and started to unpack theirs. When we were driving away we saw several Park police surrounding that couple and interrogating them.