As if such man-made tragedies were not sufficient to chill the bones in January, came the big blow when a passenger plane ran into an army helicopter killing 69 people on board the commercial aircraft and the Black Hawk helicopter
It wasn’t the best of months for human safety. Incited by a rumour of a fire, people jumped off a train and fell in the path of another. In a crowded place on the banks of a holy river, people jostled each other to the point of some dying from suffocation.
As if such man-made tragedies were not sufficient to chill the bones in January, came the big blow when a passenger plane ran into an army helicopter killing 69 people on board the commercial aircraft and the Black Hawk helicopter.
Early media reports had it that the air collision was caused by the sheer folly of understaffing the air traffic control system of the Reagan airport whereby one controller was handling both the incoming plane and the helicopter.
“Can you see the plane?” was the most foolish question an air traffic controller could have asked as the helicopter strayed from its approved flight path and the aircraft was swinging into another runway after change of landing plans.
What do you attribute such avoidable tragedies as the three mentioned than to human intelligence that was found wanting in crucial situations in which safety was compromised? Of course, only the warped minds of politicians, especially those in power, could have imagined there was a political reason for the mishaps caused solely by error-prone humans.
To blame ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ (DEI) policy as the reason for the horrendous crash that sent victims plunging into the icy waters of the River Potomac in Washington was something that only Donald Trump could envisage, converting a moment of tragedy into one of high farce, arising maybe from the depths of political polarisation of the US.
The real cause lay in an ATC controller being allowed to leave before the night hours got to the point of lesser air traffic and one controller directing two craft in close vicinity to each other. This was one risk of many regularly being taken with close calls that proved terribly fatal.
The point is chronic shortage of controllers and the propensity of governments to crimp on costs on such essential safety measures as manning ATCs stand in contrast with how they are willing to splurge on other things, including VIP security. It is such prioritising that leads to calamities – in the air, along the rails and on the ground.
