DCA...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...land/2012/08/01/gJQAxxPSQX_story.html?hpid=z1

"Seconds from disaster."

Shouldn't TCAS have gone off? I saw there is no mention of it in the article

Alright.... Who was asleep this time?

They may not have been close enough for it to give them an RA, or they could have been low enough that they wouldn't have gotten one. There's a floor under which TCAS won't give you an RA because it figure hitting the ground usually has a worse outcome than coming close to hitting another aircraft.

You get "DESCEND, DESCEND" and then "TOO LOW, TERRAIN"...which one do you pay attention to? Oh right. Big sky theory.

I thought you hit the brakes, and they fly right by. No?

I believe we discussed this at our last simulator briefing.

Just noticed this ^ NICE FRICKING COLLARED SHIRT UNDER THE FLIGHT SUIT. Top Gun was ruined for me A LONG TIME ago, but THAT. W..T..F..

Is this not considered acceptable?

(I've never worn, nor do I have aspirations to wear, a flight suit.)

No. It may have been different, back in the 80's, I don't know....

From what someone told me at one time that was the squadron shirt, so therefor they can wear it under the flightsuit but I'm sure one of our respectable military aviators will be able to clarify better than I will.

The audio is interesting but not particularly elucidating.

What's w the really poor transmission quality? Is that from the frequency congestion of the east coast? Standard?

Pilots make way more errors than controllers do from what I can tell, while this is a little unnerving it's not like it happens all the time. The mistakes of ATC are extremely rare compared to the aircraft they control IMO.

I'm assuming it's a LiveATC feed? If so, it's the location of the feed receiver relative to the transmitter.

Makes sense. Good to know that's all it is.

Even with the RA function inhibited, they still should have had the TA portion of the system working.

Correct, but that still doesn't mean they got close enough to get a TA.

ahh the audio wasn't up when I originally posted the article, but I had listened to this on liveATC, I was expecting to hear AWE not RPA callsigns, since the article said it was all US Airways aircraft involved. Obviously the active switch did not go as smoothly as it should, but I didn't hear any kind of duress in the controllers voice. Probably not as close as the written article made it sound.