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A comment on The FAA's Real Air Traffic Control Crisis Runs Much Deeper. Parent comment

Re:The FAA's Real Air Traffic Control Crisis Runs Much Deeper by formerly_proven on Saturday February 01, 2025 @02:15PM (#42901223)
Visual separation at night in dense airspace has no checks and no margin for error. There is no way for anyone to tell whether the crew is tracking the correct aircraft or whether they are correctly guessing its attitude etc.

That practice is plainly asking for an accident to happen.

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Re:The FAA's Real Air Traffic Control Crisis Runs Much Deeper by PaulRobinson on Saturday February 01, 2025 @02:26PM (#42901311)
In the UK I know traffic is indicated with a relative position and altitude: “traffic at your 10 o’clock, 2 miles, altitude 1500 feet”.

The ATC for the Reagan crash did not indicate a relative or absolute position, only referencing “the CRJ”, which might be hard to identify in the dark, and the helicopter pilot may have assumed he “had visual”, but was looking at a different aircraft.

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Re:The FAA's Real Air Traffic Control Crisis Runs Much Deeper by davkan on Saturday February 01, 2025 @06:12PM (#42903512)
I keep seeing comments that no relative position was given but ATC does provide detail in their initial communications, though not subsequent.

> Traffic just south of the Woodrow Bridge, a CRJ, it's 1,200 feet setting up for Runway 33.

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Re:The FAA's Real Air Traffic Control Crisis Runs Much Deeper by lumost on Saturday February 01, 2025 @09:56PM (#42905262)
Where is the Woodrow bridge? Are all pilots expected to know this flying around the Reagan airport? There are multiple bridges on the Potomac.
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Re:The FAA's Real Air Traffic Control Crisis Runs Much Deeper by 15155 on Sunday February 02, 2025 @12:53PM (#42910292)
The helicopter crew resided in this area and this is one of the largest, widest, most-used bridges in the area.
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