alt Hacker News+1 on this.
So far we have IR pilot, known aviation journalist and yours truly saying same thing: "If the controller doesn't, the pilot should demand instructions from the controller." or / and "It's not the plane, it's the pilot." There are plenty of female aviators, most of them are brilliant (again ref. "Maverick" etc.) In this particular case the highest ranked pilot on board was unqualified and, most dangerous – not ready for the flight mentally. She happened to be a woman. Yes, she died. RIP. But she took a company with her. Hiding this simple fact is wrong. For whatever reason. "There are no female jobs in aviation".
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Speaking of great female aviators. Find the video and story of the 20 something pilot that landed on the interstate in Pensacola, FL yesterday (Aug 3, 2026) after engine troubles. The point where she gets down and under an overhead road sign is incredible and something you only imagine ever happens in the movies. Let me see if I can find a link.
To that point, I also co-founded an aviation charity org that does disaster relief. We randomly had a female volunteer show up and offer to assist us during the aftermath of hurricane Florence in NC in 2018. She had a couple of young guys who were flying small private airplanes for local biz owners, one of which is now an airline pilot years later.
She didn't advertise her credentials, she just said "I have experience, and some young guys with airplanes who want to help."
Vetting her on google said she was a full Col with about 3500 total hours of flight time in a Blackhawk, and the former vice commander at Andrews, recently retired.
https://www.jba.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2001689178/
https://www.counton2.com/news/local-news/mt-pleasant-regiona...
She helped us organize local helicopter pilots again in 2024 in western NC, after that hurricane.
Don't judge people in aircraft by their physical stature, lol. You don't have to be a big strong man to sit in a chair, turn knobs, push buttons, and talk on the radio. You do need to be mentally alert, and you need to be able to visualize your surroundings mentally even if you can't see them with your eyeballs. If something doesn't seem right, you need to speak up and figure out how to handle it. That's about it.
I also agree with the article that a controller working 12 aircraft is not necessarily dangerous. As the article says, it depends on who the 12 are. 8 airlines in sequence on the same approach procedure and 4 random IFR general aviation guys like me who all have GPS nav equipment? It's fine. 5 students, 4 helicopters, and 3 bizjets buzzing around to 3 different municipal airports near each other? That's a different story.
This seems like exactly the kind of attempt to blame a single person rather than the system that the article is arguing against. Yes, the helicopter pilot was a major part of the series of mistakes that led to the crash, but there were many other points where, if someone had done something differently, the crash may never have happened. This includes:
- the instructor who let the helicopter pilot keep flying through dangerous airspace despite her being clearly disoriented, and who ALSO failed to appropriately consider or respond to ATC’s request for visual separation
- the FAA employee who refused the helicopter chart updates to make dangerous areas clearer
- the ATC who failed to respond appropriately to the alarm by giving the helicopter a specific instruction - the supervisor who failed to separate the local and helicopter duties when the level of traffic was high
And that’s just specific individuals, to say nothing of the military bureaucracy that kept aging fleets with poor equipment operating in close proximity to heavy commercial traffic, or the idiocy of the FAA reclassifying reagan as an airport where controllers get paid less despite a heavy workload and thus increasing the incentive for controllers to leave as soon as they could, preventing any building of institutional knowledge.
Assigning all the blame to one individual, no matter how critical their role in the accident, robs us of opportunities to make the system safer. That is always the point of Admiral Cloudberg’s articles, but especially this one.