Latest news with #CanadairRegionalJet
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DIA adds new daily nonstop international flight
DENVER (KDVR) — A new nonstop international flight that will run daily out of the Denver International Airport took off for the first time Thursday. The flight is on United Airlines and offers nonstop service to Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, year-round. Layover, delayed flight at DIA? Unique things to see in every concourse More than 425,000 passengers traveled from Denver to Canada in 2024, accounting for 10% of DIA's international travel demand, according to a press release from DIA, making Canada Denver's second-largest international market. Regina is the seventh destination across six Canadian provinces that the Denver airport offers service to. 'Coloradans and Saskatchewanians have a lot in common and this new service will connect residents and visitors of these beautiful regions through tourism, trade and cultural exchange,' Consul General of Canada in Denver Sylvain Fabi said in the release. The new flight seats 50 passengers on a Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ-200), and is available for booking now. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Delta plane that flipped at Toronto airport flew out of Cleveland this morning
CLEVELAND (WJW) – The Delta Airlines plane that flipped over while landing in Toronto Monday flew out of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport earlier in the day, according to FlightAware. The Canadair Regional Jet CRJ-900 departed from Hopkins just after 8 a.m. ET and safely landed at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport just before 10 a.m. CT, the tech company reported on its real-time database. That same plane left Minneapolis around 11:30 a.m., heading to Toronto Pearson International Airport, according to FlightAware. Child among those hurt after Delta flight flips while landing at Toronto airport Delta officials said the flight was carrying 76 passengers and four crew members when it experienced an 'incident while landing' in Toronto, leaving at least 17 people injured, including a child. Injured passengers were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment. No passengers have been identified yet. There were no reported fatalities, Delta officials said in a statement Monday evening. The cause of the incident remains under investigation at this time. Follow along for more updates right here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The Minor Events That May Have Sparked a Major Tragedy
A large portion of the damaged plane fuselage is lifted from the Potomac River during recovery efforts after the American Airlines crash on February 03, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. Credit - Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images As I ate breakfast last week, I scrolled through my newsfeed and read with dismay about the tragedy at Reagan National Airport outside of Washington D.C. in which an American Airlines jet collided with an Army helicopter. With more than 60 believed to be dead, the accident had a particularly painful sting. For 25 years, I worked in civilian aerospace at Rolls Royce and Airbus. Then, I taught college students to dispassionately analyze the probability of a fatal failure. For the last 10 years, I have been developing unmanned rotorcraft, regularly sharing airspace with military helicopters. The full details of what happened may not be known for months. Yet it seems likely to have involved a tragic convergence of minor events. The airport was at or above capacity, requiring the Air Traffic Control ('ATC')—itself already overstretched—to redirect the passenger jet to a different runway at short notice. The ATC was aware that a military helicopter in the area presented a complication and advised the pilot to avoid it, who then attempted to 'eyeball' the plane away from the risk. In the dark, without confusion but with complication, the pilots' luck ran out. Aircraft design, automation, enhanced ATC, and global safety initiatives have actually drastically reduced accident rates over the years. A 2024 study from MIT found that from 1968 to 1977, the chance of a fatal accident on a commercial flight was about one in 350,000. But now, that chance has dropped to one in 13.7 million. More shockingly, if we had modern traffic levels but 1970s safety rates, we would see a fatal accident every few days. However, all of these reassuring statistics do nothing to calm the jolt of anxiety I experience every time my flight hits turbulence. And they will certainly do nothing to console the families of the victims of the tragedy in DC. So instead, we attempt to understand what exactly went wrong. As the emerging details of the accident seem to illustrate, air traffic controllers tried to warn the Army helicopter about the nearby Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ). But in my experience, the military helicopter world can be less ordered and its traffic control processes can be less mechanized. The result is that military helicopter pilots are then expected to react skilfully to the more ad hoc world in which they operate. It is possible that when the two quite different aviation worlds of conventional civil aircraft and military helicopters mixed, the structured collaboration that facilitates safety broke down. For instance, after the CRJ was redirected, the helicopter pilot acknowledged seeing the commercial plane and accepted the task of steering clearly. Perhaps with more automated tracking and communication, we can ensure that this kind of incident never happens again. Around the world, thousands of aircraft communicate successfully under the watchful eye of security, control, and regulation organizations. This regulated communication may seem at odds with the Western world's instinct for deregulation. Trump has unfortunately already turned the crash into a political battle, saying that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hires in ATC were to blame. These comments came days after he gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee. Perhaps Trump should leave the air safety and communication to the professionals. Everyday, commercial aircrafts provide safe transport for travelers around the world by effectively communicating. The horrible D.C. crash should remind us that we must clearly communicate so that we can all co-exist. Contact us at letters@
Sky News
31-01-2025
- General
- Sky News
Washington plane crash: What air traffic audio tells us about helicopter pilot's actions moments before mid-air collision
New audio reveals the helicopter pilot said he was able to see the American Airlines passenger plane, and twice requested permission to manoeuvre around it by sight and without further ground support. The audio shows how the helicopter, using the code Priority Air Transport 25 (PAT-25), specifically asked for visual separation from the CRJ (Canadair Regional Jet) passenger plane. That means the helicopter's pilot requested permission to proceed, taking responsibility to look out for the plane and avoid it. 0:17 The request was in response to a question by air traffic control (ATC) asking whether they could see the passenger jet. • ATC: "PAT-25, do you have the CRJ in sight? PAT-25, pass behind the CRJ." • PAT-25: "PAT25 has the traffic in sight [unintelligible], request visual separation." • ATC: "Confirmed." The helicopter made this same request again a short while later, after air traffic control again alerted them to the presence of the CRJ passenger jet. • ATC: "PAT-25, there's traffic just south of the Wilson Bridge, CRJ is at 1,200ft setting up for Runway 33." • PAT-25: "Requesting visual separation." • ATC: "Visual separation approved." It is not clear if the helicopter was responding to the wrong aircraft. Another jet nearly hit a helicopter just 24 hours earlier The mixing of helicopters and passenger jets around the airport had also led to confusion just 24 hours earlier. On the evening of 28 January, a different American Airlines jet, flight 4514, had to take evasive action to avoid a helicopter near the airport. The plane landed safely on its second attempt. The suspected helicopter was next spotted 40 seconds later at an altitude of 1,600ft, having veered off in the opposite direction to the plane. Staffing was 'not normal' As part of its investigation into Wednesday's crash, the US National Transportation Safety Board is looking into various areas, including staffing at the airport's air traffic control tower. Sky's US partner network NBC revealed that an air traffic controller left work early on the day of the crash. That allegedly left just one person to monitor both airplane and helicopter traffic. Air traffic controllers are only allowed to operate alone after 9.30pm. The accident took place at 8.47pm. The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) preliminary report into the crash said staffing at Reagan Washington National Airport was "not normal" in advance of the accident. Across the US, FAA data does show a decline in the number of air traffic controllers over the years. The context, however, is an even larger decline in air traffic - meaning there arguably isn't a need for as many air traffic controllers as in the past. It also remains unclear whether air traffic control staffing levels affect passenger safety. Fatal air accidents are, thankfully, rare - but that means it's hard to spot patterns in the data. A more common occurrence is runway incursions - where a plane, in the grounds of the airport, goes where it isn't supposed to be. The vast majority of runway incursions have no safety consequences at all, but it's a useful proxy to measure the number of mistakes on the ground. The chart below shows the number of runway incursions per million flights has actually been falling, and last year was the lowest it's been since the pandemic. A board member of the National Transportation Safety Board said that staffing is likely to be only one small part of the investigation. Investigators may also be examining the altitude of the helicopter involved in the crash. Maps published by the FAA show that helicopters are required to stay below 200ft in the area around the airport, but flight tracking data suggests the helicopter may have been flying at 300ft in the moments before the crash. 0:35 "With military traffic, quite a lot of the time they can negotiate these restrictions," says Marco Chan, a senior lecturer in aviation operations at Buckinghamshire New University and an experienced pilot. "If air traffic controllers know what's going on with traffic in the vicinity, they can allow them to go beyond the minimum or maximum altitude." Investigators will need to determine if the data is accurate, and whether the helicopter had received prior authorisation to breach the altitude limit. The videos of the collision are strikingly, shockingly clear. The reasons are, so far, not.
Sky News
31-01-2025
- General
- Sky News
Washington crash: Clues and questions from air traffic audio, another near-miss and 'not normal' staffing
New audio reveals the helicopter pilot said he was able to see the American Airlines passenger plane, and twice requested permission to manoeuvre around it by sight and without further ground support. The audio shows how the helicopter, using the code Priority Air Transport 25 (PAT-25), specifically asked for visual separation from the CRJ (Canadair Regional Jet) passenger plane. That means the helicopter's pilot requested permission to proceed, taking responsibility to look out for the plane and avoid it. 0:17 The request was in response to a question by air traffic control (ATC) asking whether they could see the passenger jet. • ATC: "PAT-25, do you have the CRJ in sight? PAT-25, pass behind the CRJ." • PAT-25: "PAT25 has the traffic in sight [unintelligible], request visual separation." • ATC: "Confirmed." The helicopter made this same request again a short while later, after air traffic control again alerted them to the presence of the CRJ passenger jet. • ATC: "PAT-25, there's traffic just south of the Wilson Bridge, CRJ is at 1,200ft setting up for Runway 33." • PAT-25: "Requesting visual separation." • ATC: "Visual separation approved." It is not clear if the helicopter was responding to the wrong aircraft. Another jet nearly hit a helicopter just 24 hours earlier The mixing of helicopters and passenger jets around the airport had also led to confusion just 24 hours earlier. On the evening of 28 January, a different American Airlines jet, flight 4514, had to take evasive action to avoid a helicopter near the airport. The plane landed safely on its second attempt. The suspected helicopter was next spotted 40 seconds later at an altitude of 1,600ft, having veered off in the opposite direction to the plane. Staffing was 'not normal' As part of its investigation into Wednesday's crash, the US National Transportation Safety Board is looking into various areas, including staffing at the airport's air traffic control tower. Sky's US partner network NBC revealed that an air traffic controller left work early on the day of the crash. That allegedly left just one person to monitor both airplane and helicopter traffic. Air traffic controllers are only allowed to operate alone after 9.30pm. The accident took place at 8.47pm. The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) preliminary report into the crash said staffing at Reagan Washington National Airport was "not normal" in advance of the accident. Across the US, FAA data does show a decline in the number of air traffic controllers over the years. The context, however, is an even larger decline in air traffic - meaning there arguably isn't a need for as many air traffic controllers as in the past. It also remains unclear whether air traffic control staffing levels affect passenger safety. Fatal air accidents are, thankfully, rare - but that means it's hard to spot patterns in the data. A more common occurrence is runway incursions - where a plane, in the grounds of the airport, goes where it isn't supposed to be. The vast majority of runway incursions have no safety consequences at all, but it's a useful proxy to measure the number of mistakes on the ground. The chart below shows the number of runway incursions per million flights has actually been falling, and last year was the lowest it's been since the pandemic. A board member of the National Transportation Safety Board said that staffing is likely to be only one small part of the investigation. Investigators may also be examining the altitude of the helicopter involved in the crash. Maps published by the FAA show that helicopters are required to stay below 200ft in the area around the airport, but flight tracking data suggests the helicopter may have been flying at 300ft in the moments before the crash. 0:35 "With military traffic, quite a lot of the time they can negotiate these restrictions," says Marco Chan, a senior lecturer in aviation operations at Buckinghamshire New University and an experienced pilot. "If air traffic controllers know what's going on with traffic in the vicinity, they can allow them to go beyond the minimum or maximum altitude." Investigators will need to determine if the data is accurate, and whether the helicopter had received prior authorisation to breach the altitude limit. The videos of the collision are strikingly, shockingly clear. The reasons are, so far, not.
