Airplanes and Iran
Quick hits
The big news of the morning is a collision between an Air Canada Jazz CRJ airliner and airport emergency vehicles crossing a runway at New York’s La Guardia International AirPort. The two pilots of the CRJ were killed, and several others were injured.
The ATC audio recording (a video has also surfaced) shows that the controller cleared the emergency vehicles across the runway where the CRJ was landing, but the big question is why. The accident occurred at 11:47 pm, and air traffic control facilities are often understaffed at night. This is speculation at this point, but l’ll be interested to see whether controller workload played a role.
Screenshot of the CRJ runway collision from OSINTDefender
You might wonder why the airplane didn’t go around or the ground vehicles didn’t swerve out of the way. There are a lot of multicolored lights around a runway at a big airport, so the lights of the emergency vehicles and the airplane probably blended in. They may not have seen each other until it was too late. Further, the CRJ was reportedly traveling at about 100 mph. This would be too slow to fly and too fast to stop or take evasive action.
At towered airports, pilots and ground vehicles are dependent on ATC to coordinate traffic movements. Looking before you cross a runway is always a good safety practice, but this seems a clear case of human error on the part of the controller.
Speaking of aviation, if you have airline tickets this week, I’d recommend that you cancel the flight and drive. The DHS funding shutdown has resulted in extremely long security lines at airports around the country. Trump has ordered ICE in to assist TSA in their airport security duties even though ICE agents are not trained for such work.
American voters might want to ask themselves why ICE is the only DHS agency that is funded and why it is funded so well that it can do TSA’s job as well as its own. The answer in part is that Republicans massively overfunded ICE in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill with a multiyear appropriation. Why they threw so much money at ICE and insulated it from the normal appropriations process is something that Republicans need to answer, along with why they are going to such lengths to prevent ICE from being subject to the same rules as other law enforcement agencies.
Republicans online have been busy blaming Democrats for the long TSA lines, but in reality, Republicans have been quietly killing partial funding bills. On Monday morning, news broke that congressional Democrats and Republicans had reached a deal to end the shutdown, but Trump would not agree to the compromise. This means that the shortage of transportation security workers during a war with a terrorist nation will continue, along with a passenger inconvenience of YUGE proportions.
I predicted online that putting ICE officers in contact with the public at airports would be a disaster that made the agency even less popular. That seems to be quickly coming true as social media reports trickle in of ICE agents milling around aimlessly, along with the violent arrest of a reported US citizen mother who was traveling with her daughter (#GOVT GONE WILD). Trump has acknowledged that ICE will be conducting immigration arrests at airports, so that’s something else travelers have to look forward to.
Along the same lines, I saw a marked ICE vehicle at a major Florida airport this morning. This was the first time in my life that I have seen any ICE vehicle, much less inside the secure area of an airport. I am only speculating, but they seemed to be acting like Customs officers, who are a frequent sight on airport ramps.
Finally, Trump announced that he had been conducting talks with Iran and would suspend a threatened bombing campaign against Iranian power plants. Iran has denied that talks were taking place, but the buried lede is that Trump is more willing to negotiate with terrorists than Democrats.
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