Donald Trump's Significant Contribution to the Crash of American
Eagle Flight 5342
Great disasters have multiple causes, and the collision of
PSA's Bombardier CRJ-700 with a US Army Blackhawk Helicopter on January 30,
2025, over Reagan National Airport, is no exception.
I was not surprised by the disaster, although, in truth,
I thought it would be a collision between aircraft on the ground. On September
10, 2024, two Delta Airlines planes taxiing for takeoff at Atlanta's Hartsfield
Airport collided. The wing of an A-350 Airbus headed for Tokyo hit the tail of
a CRJ-900 regional jet heading for Louisiana. The big airliner knocked the
verticle stabilizer off the back of the smaller plane, although no one was
injured. On November 26, two planes collided at Boston's Logan Airport. There
was a near collision at New York's John
F. Kennedy in January 2023 and in March 2024 at La Guardia. In February, 2023 a
FedEx plane was cleared to land on a runway in Austin, Texas on which a
Southwest plane was about to take off. Disaster was averted by 100 feet. Reagan
National, an old inner-city airport, is known to be dangerous for many reasons.
The elephant in the room is
the overcrowded skies and airports, the result of a century of disinvestment in
America's rail network. The United States transportation system is unbalanced,
with an overemphasis on road and air travel, both heavily subsidized by public
expenditures, compared to the formerly private train companies that were taxed
to death. The Baltimore and Potomac rail Tunnel was opened in 1873, 151 years
ago, while the Hudson River rail Tunnels going into New York opened in 1910. Does
this sound like the greatest country on earth or a developing one? The country
needs a reliable high-speed train system so no one has to get on a plane to
travel less than 500 miles.
Elon Musk and Space X
Elon Musk
was at loggerheads with Michael Whitaker, head of the Federal Aviation
Authority, over fines levied on Space X for safety violations. Musk, like
Trump, is known as an anti-regulatory risk taker. He resisted closing the Tesla
factory in California at the onset of Covid and then announced he would move it
to Texas. On September 17, Musk accused the FAA of harassment, saying, "The
FAA space division is harassing SpaceX about nonsense that doesn’t affect
safety.." After Whitaker testified before a House committee on September
24, Musk, threatening to sue the FAA for regulatory overreach, tweeted
that Whitaker "needs to resign." . On December 12, 2024, Whitaker announced he would resign on
January 20, the day Trump was inaugurated. On January 16, a Space-X Starship
exploded after takeoff, showering debris on the Turks and Caicos Islands and
forcing civilian aircraft to divert, proving that the FAA had ample reason to
fine Space-X..
Trump's
Hamfisted Disruption of Air Traffic Control
On Tuesday, January 22, the Aviation
Security Advisory Committee’s members received a memo from the Trump administration saying that the
Department of Homeland Security was getting rid of the membership of all advisory
committees in a “commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring
that DHS activities prioritize our national security.” At the same time, Trump
also fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the
Coast Guard.
Why would the head
of the FAA resign with four more years left on his term? Because Musk, as
Trump's mouthpiece, can vilify people on X, which he owns. This would subject
Whitaker and his family to the danger of being harassed or worse by Trump's
ardent supporters. This is gangsterism, but by publicity instead of firearms.
This is why Trump pardoned the January 6 rioters as a signal to his followers
that they would be protected if they participated in political violence on his
behalf.
Trump's Non-Trivial Contribution to the
American Airlines Flight 5342 Crash
Just a day before a deadly midair collision at Reagan National
Airport outside Washington, D.C., employees at the Federal Aviation
Administration were sent an offer to resign with eight months' pay. The union
for air traffic controllers recommended to its members that they not accept
Tuesday’s offer because the FAA had not decided which positions would be
included in the resignation plan. It was part of an email blast to 2 million
federal employees urging them to quit and offering eight months of pay in
return.
Anyone with a
passing knowlege of personnel management knows that most companies are
reluctant to lay off workers because they know that once a worker fears for her
or his job, their main focus becomes keeping their job, worrying about finding
a new job, or worrying about how their bills will be paid, instead of doing
their job, or even being able to concentrate on doing their job. Trump is
destabilizing his own government. In whose interest is producing this chaos in
the American goernment and world economy?
Everyone thinks tax money should be wisely spent. But
wholesale firings and letting Elon Musk to show contempt for government workers
by seizing government offices, call the United States Agency for International
Development a "criminal organization and its employees as
"worms" without any push back shows that Trump and Musk are despicable
snobs who think everyone cares, like them, only about money.
Trump blamed D.E.I. at the FAA for the plane crash. He was
right: D.E.I. ‒ Donald, Elon, Incompetence.