TL;DR: Because of her position and the difficulty of acquiring experience, Captain Lobach only had 454 total flying hours at the time of the accident, of which 326 were on the UH-60. She had flown only 56 hours in the past year,[1:12] below the already inadequate minimum of 60 for non-line pilots, due to a knee injury that kept her off the flight line for three months in 2024.[41] And in the two months before the accident flight, she had only flown for 4.4 hours,[1:12] in part because she forewent flying duties during the month of December in order to support her White House liaison role.[40:52–53] Taken in total, then, it cannot be said that Lobach was an experienced pilot; in fact, quite the opposite was true. With 454 hours, she would be ineligible to apply for a First Officer position at a commercial airline in the United States, and even in countries where airlines can hire First Officers right out of flight school with 250 hours, she would have been considered a rookie.
[Note: To understand the scale: think of Captain Peter "Maverick" Mitchell in the movie.]
This is a very bad tl;dr and is definitely not the main takeaway of the article.
Edit: to add details, the article explains that the helicopter pilot was flying within the poorly defined helicopter route and within expected altitude on the altimeter. Her instructor was the one who made the critical mistake of saying he had visual on the airplane, when he in fact didn’t not.
... "While I was working on this article, a well-known aviation journalist said to me that blaming the Potomac River midair collision on an interaction between complex systems is a copout that allows those responsible for the accident to walk free and prevents corrective actions from being taken."
(Also my post was direct quote from the article. I understand what you are trying to do. Because of that people already died and this will be repeated. I have zero tolerance for that BS. You should too.)
The article explains that the helicopter pilot was flying within the poorly defined helicopter route and within expected altitude on the altimeter. Her instructor was the one who made the critical mistake of saying he had visual on the airplane, when he in fact didn’t not.
I don’t know how you could have read the article and come to the conclusion that that was the takeaway. My only guess is that you ctrl-F searched for something that confirmed your priors.
Can you please try this, as experiment? Feed this URI to Mythos and have a chat about it. You will be surprised to find many things you are ignoring, may be for virtue signalling, may be because you honestly believe so. (If you don't have Mythos – try Gemini 3.1 Pro via API. Other models will refuse to discuss it with you, I mean flat out refuse, especially Fable.)
Comments
TL;DR: Because of her position and the difficulty of acquiring experience, Captain Lobach only had 454 total flying hours at the time of the accident, of which 326 were on the UH-60. She had flown only 56 hours in the past year,[1:12] below the already inadequate minimum of 60 for non-line pilots, due to a knee injury that kept her off the flight line for three months in 2024.[41] And in the two months before the accident flight, she had only flown for 4.4 hours,[1:12] in part because she forewent flying duties during the month of December in order to support her White House liaison role.[40:52–53] Taken in total, then, it cannot be said that Lobach was an experienced pilot; in fact, quite the opposite was true. With 454 hours, she would be ineligible to apply for a First Officer position at a commercial airline in the United States, and even in countries where airlines can hire First Officers right out of flight school with 250 hours, she would have been considered a rookie. [Note: To understand the scale: think of Captain Peter "Maverick" Mitchell in the movie.]
An Army Captain and a Navy Captain are different things.
Army Captain is an O-3, same as a Navy Lt. Commander. You make O-3 at 5 years of service, or a little less. An O-3 is a jr. officer.
Navy Captain is an O-6, same as an Army Colonel. This takes about 20 years of experience, and is a high rank.
This is a very bad tl;dr and is definitely not the main takeaway of the article.
Edit: to add details, the article explains that the helicopter pilot was flying within the poorly defined helicopter route and within expected altitude on the altimeter. Her instructor was the one who made the critical mistake of saying he had visual on the airplane, when he in fact didn’t not.
... "While I was working on this article, a well-known aviation journalist said to me that blaming the Potomac River midair collision on an interaction between complex systems is a copout that allows those responsible for the accident to walk free and prevents corrective actions from being taken." (Also my post was direct quote from the article. I understand what you are trying to do. Because of that people already died and this will be repeated. I have zero tolerance for that BS. You should too.)
It’s a direct quote taken out of context.
The article explains that the helicopter pilot was flying within the poorly defined helicopter route and within expected altitude on the altimeter. Her instructor was the one who made the critical mistake of saying he had visual on the airplane, when he in fact didn’t not.
I don’t know how you could have read the article and come to the conclusion that that was the takeaway. My only guess is that you ctrl-F searched for something that confirmed your priors.
Can you please try this, as experiment? Feed this URI to Mythos and have a chat about it. You will be surprised to find many things you are ignoring, may be for virtue signalling, may be because you honestly believe so. (If you don't have Mythos – try Gemini 3.1 Pro via API. Other models will refuse to discuss it with you, I mean flat out refuse, especially Fable.)
You might want to read this, for a better sense of local attitudes toward AI:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151933
Did you miss the part immediately after this where the author then explains why that journalist’s take is incorrect?