Plane crash DCA?

[Anonymous]

Washington Post (whose reporting has been a bit lacking on this crisis thus far) actually has a well-reported story today addressing a lot of what we are talking about here -- the tendency of helicopters to violate the set flight path through that corridor and fly above prescribed altitude or away from the eastern shore.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/30/dc-helicopters-potomac-river-dangers/

One thing noted in the article is that they are looking at whether the set flight paths are simply unacceptable even when helicopters stay low and to the east. One expert noted that even if the flight paths are followed exactly, you will only get a couple hundred feet of separation between a plane landing at runway 33 and a helicopter passing below. He doesn't say this, but that does not leave a lot of room for error should something go wrong -- a weather event that is strong enough to push either aircraft off course, a piloting error that brings either aircraft higher or lower, etc.

I thought it was interesting because a lot of people are focused on what potentially went wrong in this scenario. But what if everyone did everything right for the most part? What if the helicopter had the right plane in sight and was staying low and to the east but something happened that led to them flying up and west at the last minute, and the real problem is that the flight paths should never have been so close together to begin with?

[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.

It can absolutely be pointed at the powers that be that allowed the ATC towers to be half staffed; those that have pressed for DCA to be so overloaded with flights; and the military geniuses that decided that the busiest hour at DCA is the time to do night training exercises that cross the flight path (rather than waiting until midnight when there are no flights).

But is the “training exercises” thing just a canard? This helicopter had dropped off a VIP someplace (likely Langley) and had to get back to its base. So they call the return flight a training exercise, even though it’s completely unnecessary - essentially some VIP’s desire to avoid traffic and sit in a black SUV for a few minutes longer led to the deaths of 70 people.

Do you actually know someone was dropped off at Langley? Or was that an early on guess on this thread of guessing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't the helicopters stay under 200 feet? Is there a reason they would rather fly higher? I don't get it.

I have not seen one reporter mention the VIP aspect of the flight. Very lackadaisical reporting. Where's that reporter from the Fairfax Times?

I saw Hegseth’s update this morning. While there was no mention of an actual VIP, it was said something along the lines of it was a training mission and helicopter have to be in this same airspace as commercial jets at part of government contingencies- getting VIPs in/out quickly. And that it is crucial to be able to train as you would be expect to perform on an actual mission. It was also said all victims’ next of kin had been notified.

So he is being dishonest about the first leg of the flight. Its clear the helo took off from Langley.

[Anonymous]

Does the route between Langley to Belvoir ever have them follow 495 to 95? Or do they always go up the Potomac?

[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.

Put aside blame, Trump’s reaction to this crash has been immoral and unconscionable. There are nearly 70 dead Americans, including 3 soldiers (he doesn’t even seem to realize what Commander-in-Chief actually means, he just thinks it sounds cool I guess) and his impulse is to place blame on everyone else and somehow imply that if only we could hire white men all the time, none of this would have happened.

He is a soulless monster, and an incredibly stupid person.

+1 His immediate response was to deflect blame from himself.

This is also interesting because no one serious was blaming him. Sure, there have been people saying it's his fault for the "fork in the road" email and the hiring freeze. And I disagree with both those actions. But neither of them caused this accident and no one serious thinks they did. ATC was not going to hire and train enough controllers in one week to make up the shortfall that was leading to the staffing issues on that particular day. That's a longstanding systemic problem Trump didn't cause. And while that fork in the road email has cause a lot of federal workers undue stress, ATCs already work full time in person and always have -- I doubt ATCs viewed that email as being relevant to their jobs beyond maybe offering someone who had been thinking of quitting anyway and offramp for doing so that would be financially advantageous.

So it wasn't Trump's fault and no one serious was saying it was his fault and yet his first instinct was to run out and blame all his usual scape goats (Dems, Obama, Biden, DEI, this amorphous army of unqualified non-white, disabled, women he and his supporters seem to think are destroying the country) instead of doing the easy and obvious thing and just saying "this is a terrible incident and we will investigate it fully, in the mean time please pray for the families of those involved and for the first responders how are participating in the search and rescue operation.

He was reactionary but he was reacting to NOTHING. He just walks around in a state of permanent grievance for no reason which is why he's such an a$$hole, but the demons he's fighting are probably things his parents said to him 70 years ago. They don't actually reflect current reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does the route between Langley to Belvoir ever have them follow 495 to 95? Or do they always go up the Potomac?

You can find published maps of set routes but I don't think here is one along the freeway. Most helicopter routes follow waterways because it's the easiest way to avoid obstacles like power lines and trees, as well as to keep low flying aircraft out of residential neighborhoods.

[Anonymous]

Why are they not revealing the 3rd pilot name? More they conceal more rumors will keep spreading.

[Anonymous]

Imagine being the VIP whose initial flight had necessitated this return flight over (if that's why this helo had to conduct this particular flight). Would love to know who that was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It can absolutely be pointed at the powers that be that allowed the ATC towers to be half staffed; those that have pressed for DCA to be so overloaded with flights; and the military geniuses that decided that the busiest hour at DCA is the time to do night training exercises that cross the flight path (rather than waiting until midnight when there are no flights).

But is the “training exercises” thing just a canard? This helicopter had dropped off a VIP someplace (likely Langley) and had to get back to its base. So they call the return flight a training exercise, even though it’s completely unnecessary - essentially some VIP’s desire to avoid traffic and sit in a black SUV for a few minutes longer led to the deaths of 70 people.

I suspect "training" is a pretty wide catch-all bucket for any time they are flying without a specific mission, like the return part of dropping off someone could count towards your flight hours. A joyride with a few friends could be "training." I am skeptical this was some meticulously planned out exercise for the benefit of the pilot in a formal sense. It doesn't make sense that as part of formal training a pilot in an instructor role would allow the trainee to fly so wildly out of bounds in terms of height, but if training is basically a coding thing for time tracking and that was not an uncommon practice (and the way I see this helps wilding all over the place makes me think it wasn't...) that makes much more sense.

If it was a specifically planned training mission in the way Hegseth describes, it actually raises more questions about military operations than it answers. This was a bad time to be doing a training mission through that corridor -- rush out at National, in the dark. Thank you but as someone who flies in and out of National regularly, I don't want to be a part of a nighttime training mission for one of their pilots. Leave me and my plane out of it. You can do that training flight at 11pm or 1am when very few flights are landing or taking off.

Whereas if they just tacked a training mission on after dropping of some lazy, entitled VIP who didn't want to sit in traffic for 15 minutes at Langley, then I have more sympathy for the military because that's a problem of leadership and abuse of power. Not a rank and file decision that put civilians at risk.

Hegseth would rather pin this on the people who design training exercises than on the bigwig who used a military helicopter to avoid traffic out to McLean. Unsurprising.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It can absolutely be pointed at the powers that be that allowed the ATC towers to be half staffed; those that have pressed for DCA to be so overloaded with flights; and the military geniuses that decided that the busiest hour at DCA is the time to do night training exercises that cross the flight path (rather than waiting until midnight when there are no flights).

But is the “training exercises” thing just a canard? This helicopter had dropped off a VIP someplace (likely Langley) and had to get back to its base. So they call the return flight a training exercise, even though it’s completely unnecessary - essentially some VIP’s desire to avoid traffic and sit in a black SUV for a few minutes longer led to the deaths of 70 people.

I suspect "training" is a pretty wide catch-all bucket for any time they are flying without a specific mission, like the return part of dropping off someone could count towards your flight hours. A joyride with a few friends could be "training." I am skeptical this was some meticulously planned out exercise for the benefit of the pilot in a formal sense. It doesn't make sense that as part of formal training a pilot in an instructor role would allow the trainee to fly so wildly out of bounds in terms of height, but if training is basically a coding thing for time tracking and that was not an uncommon practice (and the way I see this helps wilding all over the place makes me think it wasn't...) that makes much more sense.

If it was a specifically planned training mission in the way Hegseth describes, it actually raises more questions about military operations than it answers. This was a bad time to be doing a training mission through that corridor -- rush out at National, in the dark. Thank you but as someone who flies in and out of National regularly, I don't want to be a part of a nighttime training mission for one of their pilots. Leave me and my plane out of it. You can do that training flight at 11pm or 1am when very few flights are landing or taking off.

Whereas if they just tacked a training mission on after dropping of some lazy, entitled VIP who didn't want to sit in traffic for 15 minutes at Langley, then I have more sympathy for the military because that's a problem of leadership and abuse of power. Not a rank and file decision that put civilians at risk.

Hegseth would rather pin this on the people who design training exercises than on the bigwig who used a military helicopter to avoid traffic out to McLean. Unsurprising.

How has this passenger not been named yet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Knowing people on the plane, I want to get all you ghouls to be quiet. If you have any interest in understanding the actual events, this video is a completely apolitical analysis of the flights by someone highly respected in the industry for accident analysis.

https://youtu.be/_3gD_lnBNu0?si=aYBclsfvNdb1ZM83

I don’t even have the energy to get into how despicable the statements by the commander in chief are.

Thanks for posting this. Sorry for your loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are they not revealing the 3rd pilot name? More they conceal more rumors will keep spreading.

I believe it has been confirmed the third pilot is female. That probably had something to do with the delay in release. Perhaps the family is staying quiet on it and not voluntarily talking about it. It will have to be officially released

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It can absolutely be pointed at the powers that be that allowed the ATC towers to be half staffed; those that have pressed for DCA to be so overloaded with flights; and the military geniuses that decided that the busiest hour at DCA is the time to do night training exercises that cross the flight path (rather than waiting until midnight when there are no flights).

But is the “training exercises” thing just a canard? This helicopter had dropped off a VIP someplace (likely Langley) and had to get back to its base. So they call the return flight a training exercise, even though it’s completely unnecessary - essentially some VIP’s desire to avoid traffic and sit in a black SUV for a few minutes longer led to the deaths of 70 people.

I suspect "training" is a pretty wide catch-all bucket for any time they are flying without a specific mission, like the return part of dropping off someone could count towards your flight hours. A joyride with a few friends could be "training." I am skeptical this was some meticulously planned out exercise for the benefit of the pilot in a formal sense. It doesn't make sense that as part of formal training a pilot in an instructor role would allow the trainee to fly so wildly out of bounds in terms of height, but if training is basically a coding thing for time tracking and that was not an uncommon practice (and the way I see this helps wilding all over the place makes me think it wasn't...) that makes much more sense.

If it was a specifically planned training mission in the way Hegseth describes, it actually raises more questions about military operations than it answers. This was a bad time to be doing a training mission through that corridor -- rush out at National, in the dark. Thank you but as someone who flies in and out of National regularly, I don't want to be a part of a nighttime training mission for one of their pilots. Leave me and my plane out of it. You can do that training flight at 11pm or 1am when very few flights are landing or taking off.

Whereas if they just tacked a training mission on after dropping of some lazy, entitled VIP who didn't want to sit in traffic for 15 minutes at Langley, then I have more sympathy for the military because that's a problem of leadership and abuse of power. Not a rank and file decision that put civilians at risk.

Hegseth would rather pin this on the people who design training exercises than on the bigwig who used a military helicopter to avoid traffic out to McLean. Unsurprising.

How has this passenger not been named yet?

They likely never will be. Easy to classify that info, especially for a drop off at Langley which is a classified facility. And they can deem it immaterial to the investigation because then passenger was not on the helicopter when the accident occurred. They'll say "it is not relevant who might have been on this helicopter earlier in the day." They will ignore the argument that it is relevant to finding out why that helicopter was in that airspace at that time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It can absolutely be pointed at the powers that be that allowed the ATC towers to be half staffed; those that have pressed for DCA to be so overloaded with flights; and the military geniuses that decided that the busiest hour at DCA is the time to do night training exercises that cross the flight path (rather than waiting until midnight when there are no flights).

But is the “training exercises” thing just a canard? This helicopter had dropped off a VIP someplace (likely Langley) and had to get back to its base. So they call the return flight a training exercise, even though it’s completely unnecessary - essentially some VIP’s desire to avoid traffic and sit in a black SUV for a few minutes longer led to the deaths of 70 people.

I suspect "training" is a pretty wide catch-all bucket for any time they are flying without a specific mission, like the return part of dropping off someone could count towards your flight hours. A joyride with a few friends could be "training." I am skeptical this was some meticulously planned out exercise for the benefit of the pilot in a formal sense. It doesn't make sense that as part of formal training a pilot in an instructor role would allow the trainee to fly so wildly out of bounds in terms of height, but if training is basically a coding thing for time tracking and that was not an uncommon practice (and the way I see this helps wilding all over the place makes me think it wasn't...) that makes much more sense.

If it was a specifically planned training mission in the way Hegseth describes, it actually raises more questions about military operations than it answers. This was a bad time to be doing a training mission through that corridor -- rush out at National, in the dark. Thank you but as someone who flies in and out of National regularly, I don't want to be a part of a nighttime training mission for one of their pilots. Leave me and my plane out of it. You can do that training flight at 11pm or 1am when very few flights are landing or taking off.

Whereas if they just tacked a training mission on after dropping of some lazy, entitled VIP who didn't want to sit in traffic for 15 minutes at Langley, then I have more sympathy for the military because that's a problem of leadership and abuse of power. Not a rank and file decision that put civilians at risk.

Hegseth would rather pin this on the people who design training exercises than on the bigwig who used a military helicopter to avoid traffic out to McLean. Unsurprising.

How has this passenger not been named yet?

They likely never will be. Easy to classify that info, especially for a drop off at Langley which is a classified facility. And they can deem it immaterial to the investigation because then passenger was not on the helicopter when the accident occurred. They'll say "it is not relevant who might have been on this helicopter earlier in the day." They will ignore the argument that it is relevant to finding out why that helicopter was in that airspace at that time.

Who can be pursued to put pressure on the govt to release this? Senate? I want "vips" to think twice before asking for these unnecessary traffic skipping hops

[Anonymous]

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.

A later poster brings up a great point - how often do helicopters violate the 200’ altitude rule in this situation? If the answer is “never”, then yes, I think we can consider it a major transgression. But we don’t know that answer yet. Perhaps, as the later poster said, there was an obstacle to avoid, like a flock of birds. Perhaps the 200’ feet rule was not adhered to all the time, much like most of us don’t adhere to the 55 mph rule on the highway.

The point is, there are too many factors at play to make a determination of blame. I assume you are not a Blackhawk pilot. Because even the Blackhawk pilots out there are saying to wait until we have all the evidence. I suggest we follow their advice.

I’m sick of systems where we all have to make work arounds for the one guy or one group that just won’t follow the requirements.

That’s dysfunctional at home and at work.

ATC, commercial jet pilots, ground crew are not supposed to be constant stopgaps for military exercises that aren’t following the rules or even common sense.