Plane crash DCA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just getting caught up, and I am absolutely disgusted by Trump’s response. He is a sick man. He barely uttered his condolences before blaming everyone he could think of:

Biden/Obama
Pete
Disabled
Minorities
Women

He is a child. He acts like an actual child. In this moment, it is not appropriate on any level to start pointing fingers and passing blame. People are grieving. People need reassurance that it is safe to fly.

The way he shook up the entire government on day one makes it absolutely absurd for him to blame Biden for anything at all. Nothing is as he left it. Trump had already wreaked havoc on every agency and procedure involved. He owns this.

Not to mention his flippant response when asked if he would visit the site - “You want me to go swimming?”

Egg update: prices still increasing

Behavior scientist here. We actually see “blame” (basically a form of aggression when you can’t be physically violent) across multiple species when they perceive another animal has something they don’t. Example, if you have 2 rats together, and one has to press a button more than the other to get food, the one that has to press more will attack the one who has to press less. And if it can’t attack, it’ll often find other ways to behave aggressively. Even if it doesn’t result in more food for it.

This is what goes on with trump and trump supporters. The see others getting things they don’t or in greater amounts (jobs, money, etc) and the gut instinct is to attack those people, especially if they are lower on the social hierarchy (in monkeys, they will attack lower status monkeys but groom higher status, which is why people fawn over Trump and Musk). It’s the whole crabs in a bucket thing.

When logically trump’s solution make no sense. He says we need to have geniuses as pilots and ATC. This is one of his usual responses - we need better people, geniuses. But there just aren’t that many geniuses to fill every role he says need them. Military especially, which typically attracts people from low income families who don’t have many options.

You can show trump or his supporters all the data in the world and it won’t matter because they are operating on a base level instinct to attack others. And in fact that typically makes things worse because you are taking away the one hope they have of their own lives improving.

So, how do we minimize the harmful impact of these people’s behavior on the world?

[Anonymous]

One of the problems is that the FAA makes most of the flights land from the South even when winds are from the south. They think they can increase capacity because of the two runways there, but it gets so busy that it is dangerous. So many people asked the FAA why they insist on landing from the south most of the time and this is what the FAA put out:

https://www.flyreagan.com/sites/flyreagan.com/files/legacyfiles/2019_09_18_-_operational_advantages_of_a_north_configuration_at_dca_dlh.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The dashcam footage shows the helicopter seemingly moving too fast to have avoided the collision.

Someone up thread said around 30+ minutes had elapsed between ATC communicating with helicopter for first time about the plane and if they had sight and when collision happened. That’s seems to be plenty of time to gain bearings and avoid the plane.

Was that a typo though? Thirty minutes is a long distance in aviation terms.

Clearly not

They updated them on runway 33, regional jet, do you see around Georgetown University, they said yeah yeah.
then it spent a min and went behind Hains point, emerged, was asked again if it had CRJ landing on 33 in sight, then said go behind it. Was told yeah yeah.

Nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Came out last night that the sidestep to 33 was because ATC had put multiple jets on final for 1 too close. The whole event started long before, with at least one plane refusing to switch to 33. Still primarily the helicopter fault but having 1 tower ATC was a large contributing factor. Many of us in the aviation community have felt this is the exact scenario the multiple near collisions over the last 24 months would bring.

Runway 33 is perfect for regional jets.

200 seaters can’t use it.

Not a big deal. Usually.

That's fine but that wasn't the original flight plan - the tower ATC had multiple landings spaced too closely and needed one of them to move from the pattern (landing on 1) to landing on 33. This is normal, but it shouldn't be normal - there should be enough ATC capacity so that the tower doesn't get behind the queue. Like everything else by itself it's fine, but it's another hole in the swiss cheese that led to this disaster. Just like having see and avoid. Just like night vision goggles. Just like conflicting traffic patterns. None of these on their own was the only cause. They all had to line up together and they did tonight. The public has no idea how close things have been.

I strongly disagree with the "all had to line up together" argument. There is one issue that is one major violation of protocol that trumps everything: the altitude of the helicopter.

You can discuss that there should be a better procedure in place and many would agree with you. But here is one that was in place and was violated. Everything else is a contributing factor.

Disobeying the command from ATC to wait until the plane passed in front of them was probably the bigger failure.

Ok. I stand corrected. Two major violations on the part of military helicopter.

Reduced staffing of the ATC tower.

Conflicting air traffic patterns that regularly require deconflicting were the norm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

In some of the near miss examples, it seems the planes had alerts / alarms telling them another plane was too close and they chose to manouever away. I wonder what we will hear on the black box for both.

Do we know the helicopter made a sudden change in movement near the end? I thought they were just flying straight into the plane.

Yes if you watch the YouTube expert someone linked up thread, helo made sudden changes at last second. It was flying at 200 feet before but then suddenly rose to 350-400. It also turned sharply right.

I definitely have questions about those last second maneuvers by the helicopter. Assuming that the helicopter did not realize the plane was right on top of them and were actually tracking the plane further south headed for runway 1 (still a screwup on their part because I believe the ATC had specifically said the plan was headed to runway 33 and in any case they should have seen it on radar), it is still confusing why they climbed and turned at that specific moment in time.

Both choices (the altitude change and the turn) are technically violations of the prescribed route the helicopter was on, which directs helicopters to stick as close as they can to the eastern shore of the Potomac and to stay at or below 200ft until they get to the Woodrow Wilson bridge. Both directives exist explicitly to keep helicopters out of National's air traffic. But helicopters through that corridor like to violate both directives. They prefer to fly down the middle of the river because it's easier and keeps them away from trees, power lines, and other low level obstructions (it also looks cool when you are in a helicopter and have the river centered). And the also like to climb over 200ft in that area, though I don't actually know why this is -- perhaps just difficult to maintain the lower altitude and they get sloppy? I actually don't know, but they do it all the time.

But the fact that this helicopter did both things at the same time right as it was passing one of National's runways is so baffling to me. Note that if there had been a plane landing on runway 1 at that moment, these choices still make no sense and could have potentially caused a collision. At that specific point in space, it is particularly important for the helicopter to be lower and further east. So why on earth choose that moment to lift and turn west?

Perhaps we'll never know but it's so frustrating to see it happen and just not understand why it's happening. Even if they had misunderstood where the plane was. The maneuvers still baffle me. Maybe there was some kind of obstacle, like a flock of birds or a drone? I don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The dashcam footage shows the helicopter seemingly moving too fast to have avoided the collision.

What dash cam?

The Kennedy rooftop one (or wherever it’s from) has the angle of the RJ flying right at it so can’t gauge its speeds, and the helicopter coming out from behind Haines point going left to right. So of course it looks “faster” than something coming straight at you.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dashcams/s/0oEmmm1CjD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trump isn’t to blame, Biden isn’t to blame. Neither is ATC. They followed protocol, even if short staffed, they still did exactly what they should have done. I don’t see how the finger can be pointed anywhere other than directly at the helicopter at this point.

THIS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trump isn’t to blame, Biden isn’t to blame. Neither is ATC. They followed protocol, even if short staffed, they still did exactly what they should have done. I don’t see how the finger can be pointed anywhere other than directly at the helicopter at this point.

It will be at the helicopter and then we have to come up with a bunch of safety nets and catch alls for when it doesn’t follow directions. Jsut like most things in America.

I lived in Japan for 5 years, never had to double check a thing ever- flights, trains, bills, services, bookings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump isn’t to blame, Biden isn’t to blame. Neither is ATC. They followed protocol, even if short staffed, they still did exactly what they should have done. I don’t see how the finger can be pointed anywhere other than directly at the helicopter at this point.

THIS.

I would say there is no doubt the fault is with the helicopter but it seems sometimes the ATC or the pilots of the other planes are able to take preventative action even for things that aren't their fault. They are able to see or say or hear something that leads to a near miss instead of a crash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the problems is that the FAA makes most of the flights land from the South even when winds are from the south. They think they can increase capacity because of the two runways there, but it gets so busy that it is dangerous. So many people asked the FAA why they insist on landing from the south most of the time and this is what the FAA put out:

https://www.flyreagan.com/sites/flyreagan.com/files/legacyfiles/2019_09_18_-_operational_advantages_of_a_north_configuration_at_dca_dlh.pdf

The poorer people live south of DCA and complain less than North Arlington and Bethesda. That's why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the problems is that the FAA makes most of the flights land from the South even when winds are from the south. They think they can increase capacity because of the two runways there, but it gets so busy that it is dangerous. So many people asked the FAA why they insist on landing from the south most of the time and this is what the FAA put out:

https://www.flyreagan.com/sites/flyreagan.com/files/legacyfiles/2019_09_18_-_operational_advantages_of_a_north_configuration_at_dca_dlh.pdf

Omg stop.

You land INTO the wind, for control purposes.
And you takeoff WITH the wind.

So runway direction uses changes based on the wind.

In fact the runways were out in place given main wind patterns of the immediate area and climate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I landed at this forum after Googling my question. I apologize if this is not an acceptable means for joining in:

From the helo pilot’s point of view, if you are traveling in a direction nearly head-on with an approaching plane whose path is slowly curving to the plane’s left towards an assigned runway, isn’t a request to "pass behind the plane" dangerously ambiguous relative to whether turning left or right is a safe maneuver? If at the time of the “pass request” the approaching plane is in-sight but is headed slight left of the current path of the helo, then the helo pilot steers his craft to his right. But within a few seconds, the approaching plane’s left-curve path has crossed the old projected path of the helo and is now to the right of the helo’s path, and the helo has tried to avoid the plane’s near head-on path by choosing the wrong path to “pass behind”.

This is a great point. I do feel like ATC lacked urgency and clear direction, given the couple recordings I’ve read.

From what I have read, the tower usually reduces by one ATC at 9:30pm and then a reamining ATC manages both helicopters and planes but on this night, the other ATC left an hour early - at 8:30. It seems maybe the crash happened during this shift turnover when the ATC was still doing his job and taking over for the ATC leaving early that night.

But ATC did communicate with the helicopter a couple times. But it gave the vague direction to “go behind” the plane. But given they were flying straight on, saying go behind assumes the helicopter knew the plane was about to make a hard turn to the runway. That seems obvious- but when given directions to flying planes it seems like protocol would be to use specific direction, not behind. The helicopter and the plane aren’t on the same frequency and couldn’t communicate.

There’s a lot of trust with pilots, each other and ATC.
When they say they see it and further request “visual separation” they are taking responsibility.

3+ terrible mistakes happened here in the helicopter part.

It is terrible that the jet didn’t look down and right, see the dark black hawk and abort landing/pull up.

Terrible that ATC didn’t explicitly order the help to drop altitude and bank left immediately.

And super terrible that the help didn’t understand where a RJ landing on 33 would be coming in from.

The regional jet pilit's line of sight over the nose and underneath is basically non existent

In some of the near miss examples, it seems the planes had alerts / alarms telling them another plane was too close and they chose to manouever away. I wonder what we will hear on the black box for both.

Do we know the helicopter made a sudden change in movement near the end? I thought they were just flying straight into the plane.

Yes if you watch the YouTube expert someone linked up thread, helo made sudden changes at last second. It was flying at 200 feet before but then suddenly rose to 350-400. It also turned sharply right.

I definitely have questions about those last second maneuvers by the helicopter. Assuming that the helicopter did not realize the plane was right on top of them and were actually tracking the plane further south headed for runway 1 (still a screwup on their part because I believe the ATC had specifically said the plan was headed to runway 33 and in any case they should have seen it on radar), it is still confusing why they climbed and turned at that specific moment in time.

Both choices (the altitude change and the turn) are technically violations of the prescribed route the helicopter was on, which directs helicopters to stick as close as they can to the eastern shore of the Potomac and to stay at or below 200ft until they get to the Woodrow Wilson bridge. Both directives exist explicitly to keep helicopters out of National's air traffic. But helicopters through that corridor like to violate both directives. They prefer to fly down the middle of the river because it's easier and keeps them away from trees, power lines, and other low level obstructions (it also looks cool when you are in a helicopter and have the river centered). And the also like to climb over 200ft in that area, though I don't actually know why this is -- perhaps just difficult to maintain the lower altitude and they get sloppy? I actually don't know, but they do it all the time.

But the fact that this helicopter did both things at the same time right as it was passing one of National's runways is so baffling to me. Note that if there had been a plane landing on runway 1 at that moment, these choices still make no sense and could have potentially caused a collision. At that specific point in space, it is particularly important for the helicopter to be lower and further east. So why on earth choose that moment to lift and turn west?

Perhaps we'll never know but it's so frustrating to see it happen and just not understand why it's happening. Even if they had misunderstood where the plane was. The maneuvers still baffle me. Maybe there was some kind of obstacle, like a flock of birds or a drone? I don't know.

They need to find the data recorders. Is there a voice recorder on those helicopters?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Came out last night that the sidestep to 33 was because ATC had put multiple jets on final for 1 too close. The whole event started long before, with at least one plane refusing to switch to 33. Still primarily the helicopter fault but having 1 tower ATC was a large contributing factor. Many of us in the aviation community have felt this is the exact scenario the multiple near collisions over the last 24 months would bring.

Runway 33 is perfect for regional jets.

200 seaters can’t use it.

Not a big deal. Usually.

That's fine but that wasn't the original flight plan - the tower ATC had multiple landings spaced too closely and needed one of them to move from the pattern (landing on 1) to landing on 33. This is normal, but it shouldn't be normal - there should be enough ATC capacity so that the tower doesn't get behind the queue. Like everything else by itself it's fine, but it's another hole in the swiss cheese that led to this disaster. Just like having see and avoid. Just like night vision goggles. Just like conflicting traffic patterns. None of these on their own was the only cause. They all had to line up together and they did tonight. The public has no idea how close things have been.

I strongly disagree with the "all had to line up together" argument. There is one issue that is one major violation of protocol that trumps everything: the altitude of the helicopter.

You can discuss that there should be a better procedure in place and many would agree with you. But here is one that was in place and was violated. Everything else is a contributing factor.

Disobeying the command from ATC to wait until the plane passed in front of them was probably the bigger failure.

Ok. I stand corrected. Two major violations on the part of military helicopter.

Reduced staffing of the ATC tower.

Conflicting air traffic patterns that regularly require deconflicting were the norm.

Reduced staffing of the ATC tower.

The staff did exactly what it was supposed to do, so reduced or not, that is not the problem. Red herring.

Conflicting air traffic patterns that regularly require deconflicting were the norm.

For future improved safety, good point. For this situation: red herring. ATC was on top of the situation and gave instructions to avoid collision. Helicopter confirmed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump isn’t to blame, Biden isn’t to blame. Neither is ATC. They followed protocol, even if short staffed, they still did exactly what they should have done. I don’t see how the finger can be pointed anywhere other than directly at the helicopter at this point.

THIS.

I would say there is no doubt the fault is with the helicopter but it seems sometimes the ATC or the pilots of the other planes are able to take preventative action even for things that aren't their fault. They are able to see or say or hear something that leads to a near miss instead of a crash.

And they did! The helicopter just didn't do what it was told, which was to wait.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump forced the faa director to quit.

This airport and ATC standards have been a problem for a long time. It didn’t suddenly fall apart Jan 20. The hiring freeze has nothing to do with current ATC

Trump’s acute harassment of federal workers this week absolutely could have contributed to reducing performance by the military crew and FAA. It’s literally what he planned to do - “torture” federal employees. People undergoing torture don’t perform at their peak.

So, criticism of federal employees is torture?

This administration is giddily enacting Russell Vought’s plan to inflict “trauma” in federal employees, that’s for sure c