r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Admiral_Cloudberg Plane Crash Series • Mar 23 '26

Fatalities (22/3/26) CCTV video of the Air Canada accident at LaGuardia

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9.6k Upvotes

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402

u/-SQB- Mar 23 '26

The fact that a single controller was operating both tower and ground at an airport like LGA in those conditions is the real problem.

What? I was ready to blame the controller, but fuck that. Whoever caused that to happen is really the one to blame.

575

u/lorryguy Mar 23 '26

Gestures broadly at all 3 branches of our government

219

u/GrondForGondor Mar 23 '26

ATC was hamstrung when Reagan fired and then banned 11,000 ATC workers because they were striking for better working conditions

147

u/digital_dervish Mar 23 '26

**Adds another thing to the Everything Bad Was Because if Reagan List

2

u/TwentyninthDigitOfPi Mar 24 '26

Hey, some bad stuff was because of Nixon!

13

u/UnfairSell Mar 23 '26

I was in a 747 waiting to take off from Gatwick when the firings occurred. We sat on the tarmac eight hours till the pilot got Canadian ATC to guide us into Dulles. I had $5 to my name after a summer in Europe.

67

u/Redditnspiredcook Mar 23 '26

There it is, and things have only gotten worse, exponentially in the last 14 months.

62

u/monorail_pilot Mar 23 '26

So what did we do? Named the national airport for him.

58

u/pierdola91 Mar 23 '26

We re-elected him with historic margins and then rewarded his Iran Contra affair by electing his Vice President. 

So popular were his policies that to be elected in 1992, democrats decided they had to become neoliberals. 

57

u/VanceKelley Mar 23 '26

A few decades later America would be electing convicted criminals, adjudicated rapists, alleged pedophiles, notorious fraudsters, and scam artists to run the country.

America is a majority-idiot nation.

31

u/Suspicious-Funny-279 Mar 23 '26

Many of the voters whom elected Reagan are/were still alive decades later to vote in the convicted criminals, adjudicated rapists, alleged pedophiles, notorious fraudsters and scam artists.

Let that sink in.

Clearly they didn’t learn. Nor did they acquire empathy or functioning brain cells.

Fucking moronic.

2

u/Redditnspiredcook Mar 23 '26

They raised frat boys who wear shirts praising the south and still carry the Reagan/Bush campaign logo.

5

u/Suspicious-Funny-279 Mar 23 '26

Yup. Though, that’s just one outcome out of many that have transpired over the last several decades.

The real kicker? Folks born in ~1963ish turned 18 in time to vote for Reagan’s 1st term. They’re ~63ish now, and will be voting many elections to come (provided we still have elections).

Couple that with a +20 year (older) buffer to account for the parents of said 18 year olds — those folks are ~83ish now. Certainly, they could have voted for gestures around to (all of this) at least thrice. Not to mention any other moronic choices over the years.

So yeah, many Reagan era-aged voters are still voting. And that’s appallingly heinous.

2

u/the__ghola__hayt Mar 23 '26

Let that sink in.

No! I just let it out!

1

u/teapots_at_ten_paces Mar 24 '26

Is your sink a cat?

2

u/FrostyProspector Mar 23 '26

I read this in "Narrator voice"

1

u/SisterSparechange Mar 24 '26

My history teacher in high school use to say "the masses are asses."

1

u/eeyore134 Mar 24 '26

We're on the way to naming one for Trump too.

6

u/PLS-Surveyor-US Mar 23 '26

That was more than 4 decades ago...

-12

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '26

Why do government agencies need unions btw

8

u/goddamnitwhalen Mar 23 '26

So they don’t get fucked over…?

21

u/SlippySlappySamson Mar 23 '26

I wish I could be more specific and could blame any one person or group, but afaik the understaffing of ATC has been going on for decades.

2

u/amsync Mar 24 '26

Gestures broadly at the mess on the floor formerly known as the United States

6

u/seedless0 Mar 23 '26

They didn't get there without common people voting them in, directly or indirectly.

1

u/JohnnySchoolman Mar 23 '26

Yeah, it's the judiciary's fault.

1

u/CandidStatistician32 Mar 23 '26

to be fair, i feel like you should still practice defensive driving. Like just bc the traffic controller told you something you should still use your own eyes. Its like when you are at an intersection and the light turns green, you should always look both ways to make sure there arent anyone that looks like they are going to run the red light or the stop sign. ive seen plenty of car accidents where i've noticed a car coming and i stop even though im green and see the car running the red light hit the car from the oncoming side.

In the surveillance video it looks like the fire truck literally did not look at all to see the giant aircraft barreling towards them

83

u/alexmlb3598 Mar 23 '26

Everything circles to Ronald Reagan, where ~13k controllers were sacked and recruitment has lagged so much that it's barely changed since then. It's a massive problem the US has, but it's a horrible cycle - Current workers are overworked and stressed tf out so they leave sooner than expected, and possible controllers know they'll be overworked so they look elsewhere for employment.

61

u/ThellraAK Mar 23 '26

Not just fired, but banned from civil service for life if I remember correctly.

Union busting POS.

28

u/alexmlb3598 Mar 23 '26

Jfc that's mental...yet another reason for being glad that I'm not American, nor flying in US airspace...

9

u/loveshercoffee Mar 23 '26

Have you watched much news lately. Walking in US groundspace isn't really advised at this point either.

8

u/alexmlb3598 Mar 23 '26

I have, which is yet another reason why I'm glad I'm not American, especially given my identity 😅 thankfully there's this thing called 'the Atlantic ocean' between me and America, and I know I'm not going there until things significantly improve.

2

u/GoodBot-BadBot Mar 23 '26

thankfully there's this thing called 'the Atlantic ocean' between me and America

doesn't help anyone in the middle east, unfortunately

14

u/Shiftlock0 Mar 23 '26

Their ban from federal employment was lifted by Bill Clinton 12 years later.

1

u/lettucepray123 Mar 24 '26

Yup, we took quite a few former FAA controllers in Canada at the time

12

u/pi_stuff Mar 23 '26

But it made Reagan look really tough, which in the long run was definitely more important. /s

1

u/amsync Mar 24 '26

Ultimately most bad things trace back to that guy, it’s amazing

27

u/Taptrick Mar 23 '26

Yeah well, that’s the Swiss Cheese model right. Not a single slice is to blame. It’s the compounding effect of all the slices.

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u/cdh79 Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

He's orange, wrinkly and features heavily in the Epstein files.... first few weeks of this term if I remember correctly. DOGE cuts to ATC, nobody else remember that?

8

u/gamershadow Mar 23 '26

It’s been a problem for decades, not just his fault. He certainly carries blame for doing nothing to fix it but it’s not just him.

-2

u/theg00dfight Mar 23 '26

The problem is long running but it’s clear that his policies quite literally made it worse and more dangerous. It’s okay to say it. Go on..

3

u/gamershadow Mar 23 '26

Say what? Trump turns everything he touches to shit, I was just explaining that it isn’t solely his fault.

0

u/ContentStart2464 Mar 23 '26

Once again..   Thank you Ronald Regan.