A Fairfax County Police helicopter circled over Ballston around 2pm, reporting a ‘special mission’ on the radio. Anyone know what that’s about, or heard that language before? Check it out on copterspotter.com
The collision avoidance tool that could help prevent the next midair disaster theaircurrent.com/aviation-saf... (via @willguisbond.com)
Anyone know what Maryland State Police was up to circling over Rockville around 4am this morning?
2/ Ground stops were lifted at most airports by 8 p.m., with Reagan National the last to resume. Delays of 2–3 hours persisted past 10 p.m. Cause of tonight's odor not yet identified. The March 13 incident was traced to an overheated circuit board.
1/ Potomac TRACON — the radar facility that sequences all flights in and out of D.C. airspace — was evacuated tonight due to a strong smell, triggering ground stops at DCA, IAD, BWI, CHO, and RIC around 7 p.m. ET. Second evacuation in two weeks.
Tweet from Pete Muntean at CNN: 🚨 BREAKING: Potomac TRACON, the key radar facility handling D.C. airspace, has been evacuated to “ATC ZERO” according to FAA alerts. The FAA is now implementing ground stops for flights to Reagan National, Dulles, BWI, Charlottesville and Richmond airports.
This sounds bad.
CopterSpotter is community funded, built on open data, and unlike some flight trackers, we don't take payments to remove flights or aircraft from our data. Check it out at CopterSpotter.com
CopterSpotter installed as an app on iOS
CopterSpotter is now installable as an app from your browser — full screen, no tabs, feels native. Works on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux. On desktop, you'll also get automatic notifications when CircleBot flags something or a new event is posted.
An event notice for expecting elevated helicopter activity from federal operators for the state of the union address
An White House schedule event which shows a scheduled Presidential departure by helicopter.
We now surface events related to helicopter flights, like police activity through AlertDC or major events hand-posted by our moderators, so you know why the sky just got busy. We also monitor the White House schedule, so you can see when Marine One departures and arrivals are expected.
the copterspotter UI in light mode with a circlebot spot selected
the UI for adding details to circlebot spots
Meet CircleBot. It automatically detects circling helicopters & flags them on the map. Anyone can add context to a spot: radio calls, news links, info about what is going on, anything useful. Directly inspired by John Wiseman's groundbreaking advisory circular bots (lemonodor.bsky.social)
The copterspotter UI in dark mode
the copterspotter UI in light mode with heatmap enabled under the advanced menu
The map now auto-switches between light and dark mode based on sunrise and sunset, or you can pin it to whichever you prefer. We also added a heatmap layer that shows where flights concentrate across the region.
We've been heads-down building for a while: dark mode, heatmaps, circling helicopter detection, installable as an app, and more. Here's a catch-up on what's new on CopterSpotter.com 🧵
the ROTOR Act failed because the Pentagon said they don’t want to be accountable to the FAA or the American public and half of Republicans were cool with it.
Don’t fly out of DCA or any other market that shares airspace with the military (good luck)
If you got caught up in the Epstein files and America’s latest foreign war you might have missed the Pentagon’s threats to a private company for not providing technology to make autonomous death robots and tools to surveil U.S. citizens.
#ImWithClaude
🚽 📦?
Sky crane, my favorite!
Airlift at Georgetown Hospital this morning - 8am
To my dismay, the failure of the House to act makes DC’s helicopter self-reporting system CopterSpotter.com more important than ever.
If you are for aviation transparency let’s start with the monthly release of the PlaneNoise reporting system you implemented to bypass FAA’s own system and obfuscate the publicly available noise reports.
By comparison @eleanornorton.bsky.social penned “the Holmes Letter” at my request which was cited by Senate 5 times while grilling a brigadier general - who is more PROACTIVE about DC’s helicopter problem and flight safety?
medium.com/@helicopters...
Unfortunate I told the Congressman’s Chief of Staff that military misuse of ADS-B was a problem on April 28, 2023 @militarytimes.bsky.social @defenseone.bsky.social @twz.com
Instead they waited until families flew in to honor their loved ones to break their hearts as they looked on today from the House Gallery.
Johnson engineered this defeat, voted against the bill, and closed the vote as Members were still voting – needlessly underhanded and disgraceful behavior.
Mike Johnson and his leadership team should be ashamed of the way they treated the families of the victims of last year's tragic air collision.
The ROTOR Act passed unanimously in the Senate, the DOD and Speaker Johnson had lots of time to raise issues constructively.
[AlertDC] The U.S. Military will conduct an Aircraft Flyover in the NCR over Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday, February ... evb.gg/n#5zgrre6xbk3
I recently got moved on a nearly full flight (737 I think) from the back row RIGHT side to one of the front rows RIGHT side for “balancing” how much does this same side balancing front to back matter?
