In 1956, a United Airlines DC-7 was involved in a midair collision with a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 souls aboard. This is cited as a driving impetus behind the nationalization of American air traffic control.
🧵
🧵
I was completely ignorant of all this, this morning, I just looked this up; but when you read about it, you can kind of see why this led to a nationalized air traffic control service.
It starts from just asking 'why' - the 'five whys' exercise, really.
It starts from just asking 'why' - the 'five whys' exercise, really.
Why did the planes collide?
Because they weren't being tracked in realtime.
Why weren't they being tracked in realtime?
Because they were 'off-airways', which meant, in 1956, in uncontrolled airspace.
Why was there uncontrolled airspace through which PASSENGER PLANES flew?
Because they weren't being tracked in realtime.
Why weren't they being tracked in realtime?
Because they were 'off-airways', which meant, in 1956, in uncontrolled airspace.
Why was there uncontrolled airspace through which PASSENGER PLANES flew?
Because air traffic control in 1956 was a patchwork completely not resembling the system we have today.
Why was air traffic control in 1956 a patchwork?
Because air traffic control hadn't been nationalized yet.
Why was air traffic control in 1956 a patchwork?
Because air traffic control hadn't been nationalized yet.
The Grand Canyon crash in '56 happened because there wasn't a national air traffic control service. The network of government-run, volunteer, and privately-managed radar stations across the country to monitor air traffic didn't exist. It wasn't pilot error, or air frame problems.
It was the 'system', such as it was in 1956, being incapable of safety assurance for air traffic above a certain threshold level of volume and complexity. The Grand Canyon crash was very far from an anomaly in fact, it was just the worst one that people could recall in some time.
A few years after the Grand Canyon crash, Congress, and the American electorate, perceived that problem, and passed laws to fix it, and the result is one of the few truly 'nationalized', socialist entities we have today, albeit on a much smaller scale than others
It's a mildly interesting aside, but, as Sebastian Junger argued, I think rightly, the U.S. Armed Services are, technically, another example of massively successful socialist entities under U.S. auspices, with cradle-to-grave single-payer health care & insurance benefits for all.
If you want to get 'spicy' with it, really, the only and best proof we have that socialist health care systems work are things like TriCare.
It is the most successful single-payer health insurance scheme in the world.
Ponder that, comrade.
Anyway -
It is the most successful single-payer health insurance scheme in the world.
Ponder that, comrade.
Anyway -
When you step back a bit and consider where air traffic control and aviation regulation stands in American society actually, especially given where the 'shadow President' Elon Musk stands on it all...
theverge.com/news/603113/fa…
theverge.com/news/603113/fa…
Maybe it makes sense that this would be something really, really important that Trump is at risk of screwing up with dire, dire consequences.
Like, a publicly-run critical service borne out of a series of tragedies of lack of regulation which the country relies on?
Yeah no that kind of thing should be seen as a natural target of the Musk/Trump Presidency moving forward.
Yeah no that kind of thing should be seen as a natural target of the Musk/Trump Presidency moving forward.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
