Plane crash DCA?

[Anonymous]

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Wow these videos. I know looks can be deceiving but it just looks...so intentional. How do you not notice a jet flying at you. Do Blackhawks not have windows on the side? Are there blind spots?

Plexiglass bubble, and they were way above the tree line so no excuse not to see or look slightly left at a plane lining up for runway 33.
Plus the fact that ATC told them the facts twice.

At night it can be hard to tell if a stationary light in the sky is a light on the ground, or a light from a plane traveling directly at you. I help my dad spot traffic in his plane whenever I see him, and have since I was a teen, and night flying can be tricky because of that even in clear conditions.

This explanation is very unsettling to those of us who are not pilots and do not work in aviation.

"It's hard to see things that are right in front of you while flying at night" is never going to satisfy anyone for an explanation for this crash.

I know, right? Then these helicopters should not be flying anywhere near an airport at night!

[Anonymous]

One thing about the video is that it's easy to understand why the plane might have missed the helicopter altogether. Maybe more visible if you are looking at it head on (maybe?) but on the video the Black hawk is, as designed, fairly invisible against the night sky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow these videos. I know looks can be deceiving but it just looks...so intentional. How do you not notice a jet flying at you. Do Blackhawks not have windows on the side? Are there blind spots?

Plexiglass bubble, and they were way above the tree line so no excuse not to see or look slightly left at a plane lining up for runway 33.
Plus the fact that ATC told them the facts twice.

At night it can be hard to tell if a stationary light in the sky is a light on the ground, or a light from a plane traveling directly at you. I help my dad spot traffic in his plane whenever I see him, and have since I was a teen, and night flying can be tricky because of that even in clear conditions.

This explanation is very unsettling to those of us who are not pilots and do not work in aviation.

"It's hard to see things that are right in front of you while flying at night" is never going to satisfy anyone for an explanation for this crash.

I can see how city lights and lights in the sky from a moving plane blur together and become hard to distinguish….but still. I just cannot wrap my head around these are Black Hawk pilots! The are supposed to be the best and highly trained at flying in all sorts of difficult conditions and especially having had extra training to be flying around in DC with VIPs. Then to have such a huge and obvious error happen, despite all their training, ATC warnings, three people on board, and the plane technologies, is so hard to wrap my head around

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow these videos. I know looks can be deceiving but it just looks...so intentional. How do you not notice a jet flying at you. Do Blackhawks not have windows on the side? Are there blind spots?

Plexiglass bubble, and they were way above the tree line so no excuse not to see or look slightly left at a plane lining up for runway 33.
Plus the fact that ATC told them the facts twice.

At night it can be hard to tell if a stationary light in the sky is a light on the ground, or a light from a plane traveling directly at you. I help my dad spot traffic in his plane whenever I see him, and have since I was a teen, and night flying can be tricky because of that even in clear conditions.

The pilots had night vision goggles on so there shouldn't have been as much glare. It makes no sense that they didn't see the plane.

The pilots had night vision goggles on board - no information gives concrete info on whether or not they were wearing them or not. And again, the planes light could have appeared entirely stationary in the sky - which can make it hard to determine that it is a plane.

The crash is awful - and my hope is that the investigation by the NTSB is thorough and not politicized so that our system can learn good lessons from it so it doesn't happen again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have the ATC time stamps of when the 3 communications between ATC and the PAT25 were? I couldn't see the time stamps on the videos of ATC communication I watched and none are live time so it is hard to tell when the communication took place and how long before the crash the last communication was.

Look at this video: https://youtu.be/_3gD_lnBNu0?si=aYBclsfvNdb1ZM83

It has everything in real time. I came away thinking there is no way they didn't see that jet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing about the video is that it's easy to understand why the plane might have missed the helicopter altogether. Maybe more visible if you are looking at it head on (maybe?) but on the video the Black hawk is, as designed, fairly invisible against the night sky.

Yes, I believe the plane was totally unaware. I’d be surprised if there is anything at all on the jet’s black box. It’s probably mundane talk about what their plans are after landing.

[Anonymous]

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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.

IDA. He was born damaged. Some people just are. He did also apparently inherit a will of iron and a need to dominate. Result is the socio/psychopath we see blathering on about his personal grievances, but offering no genuine support or empathy to the 67 families blindsided by this tragedy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow these videos. I know looks can be deceiving but it just looks...so intentional. How do you not notice a jet flying at you. Do Blackhawks not have windows on the side? Are there blind spots?

Plexiglass bubble, and they were way above the tree line so no excuse not to see or look slightly left at a plane lining up for runway 33.
Plus the fact that ATC told them the facts twice.

At night it can be hard to tell if a stationary light in the sky is a light on the ground, or a light from a plane traveling directly at you. I help my dad spot traffic in his plane whenever I see him, and have since I was a teen, and night flying can be tricky because of that even in clear conditions.

The pilots had night vision goggles on so there shouldn't have been as much glare. It makes no sense that they didn't see the plane.

The pilots had night vision goggles on board - no information gives concrete info on whether or not they were wearing them or not. And again, the planes light could have appeared entirely stationary in the sky - which can make it hard to determine that it is a plane.

The crash is awful - and my hope is that the investigation by the NTSB is thorough and not politicized so that our system can learn good lessons from it so it doesn't happen again.

I heard a description from a pilot explaining the night vision goggles are built into the helmets but can be flipped up and down very easily. So it sounds like they were wearing the goggles but there's no way for us to know if they were flipped down or not.

He also said, and this part actually doesn't make sense to me, that if one pilot was wearing them, the other one would be too, and vice versa. This actually strikes me as odd because they've said that night vision goggles can help in some ways but also limit vision in other ways. So it actually seems like it would be advantageous to have one pilot wear them and the other not, so fill in the gaps in one another's vision.

But I'm a layperson, I know nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow these videos. I know looks can be deceiving but it just looks...so intentional. How do you not notice a jet flying at you. Do Blackhawks not have windows on the side? Are there blind spots?

Plexiglass bubble, and they were way above the tree line so no excuse not to see or look slightly left at a plane lining up for runway 33.
Plus the fact that ATC told them the facts twice.

At night it can be hard to tell if a stationary light in the sky is a light on the ground, or a light from a plane traveling directly at you. I help my dad spot traffic in his plane whenever I see him, and have since I was a teen, and night flying can be tricky because of that even in clear conditions.

I can appreciate that night flying is hard but three pilots on the BH missed it?? And it wasn't like the jet came out of nowhere. BH knew they were crossing right in front of runway 33. Not one person decided they should look left, even absent ANY atc communication? If this wasn't intentional or something mechanical, it really says a lot of not so good things about our military.

Have they ruled out something mechanical--or possibly a medical event suffered by the pilot? To my (very unexpert) eye, the helo's trajectory into the plane is extraordinary because it looks so steady, almost "auto-pilot"-like.

It would seem almost impossible to do this intentionally - especially as you are coming in perpendicular - like you would have to calculate the math of the two vectors in advance to get the timing right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow these videos. I know looks can be deceiving but it just looks...so intentional. How do you not notice a jet flying at you. Do Blackhawks not have windows on the side? Are there blind spots?

Plexiglass bubble, and they were way above the tree line so no excuse not to see or look slightly left at a plane lining up for runway 33.
Plus the fact that ATC told them the facts twice.

At night it can be hard to tell if a stationary light in the sky is a light on the ground, or a light from a plane traveling directly at you. I help my dad spot traffic in his plane whenever I see him, and have since I was a teen, and night flying can be tricky because of that even in clear conditions.

This explanation is very unsettling to those of us who are not pilots and do not work in aviation.

"It's hard to see things that are right in front of you while flying at night" is never going to satisfy anyone for an explanation for this crash.

I can see how city lights and lights in the sky from a moving plane blur together and become hard to distinguish….but still. I just cannot wrap my head around these are Black Hawk pilots! The are supposed to be the best and highly trained at flying in all sorts of difficult conditions and especially having had extra training to be flying around in DC with VIPs. Then to have such a huge and obvious error happen, despite all their training, ATC warnings, three people on board, and the plane technologies, is so hard to wrap my head around

The same is true of the BH pilots. If the plane was a stationary light in the sky (traveling directly at them it would appear to not be moving) then they could have mistaken it for a city light on the ground. It's very hard to know right now what happened. The pilots in the plane missed the BH, and the BH pilots missed the plane. Plus ATC was understaffed when they otherwise may have caught it in time. A perfect storm of conditions created the crash, and the NTSB investigation will expose/explain them all hopefully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven't followed whole thread but is anyone discussing possibility this was intentional? It just seems way too much of a coincidence that the helo doesn't see the correct plane after ATC gives explicit description using landmarks and then in the last seconds, fly up 150 feet and veer a bit right to smash directly into the plane. Even if helo had wrong plane in sight, if it didn't make these dramatic movements at the last second, there would have been no collision. It just seems way too coincidental for me.

I wondered that too except that it was the copilot (the instructor) who was on the radio saying they had visual separation. So if the pilot decided to intentionally crash the plane, the copilot and instructor wouldn't have been going along with it just second before the crash.

I’m not following your reasoning. Dp

They indicated visual separation while over the Lincoln and the plane was still south of the bridge. Plenty of time for action by the pilot to adjust the route.

The second new video shows they had their ‘search’ light running on the ground/water (no idea about helicopter lighting so maybe that’s usual). But there doesn’t seem to be any attempt to avoid the collision. How do three people not see a place?

[Anonymous]

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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.

It's all part of the swiss cheese model. All the failures need to line up.

So now ATC needs to assume the army pilots can look at their radar for their closest jets or at which runway is which? And describe everything in poetic detail? Teach the pilot you have model? All realtime- not trust the pilots to understand basic stuff like runway number, required altitude, active airport, middle of the river vs East bank?

No that’s not the Swiss Cheese model where every stakeholder is simultaneously failing.

This was helicopter pilot team not following altitude protocol and not double checking radars or two runway lines.

ATC did not fail

CRJ did not fail.

No thanks. Pilot DQ. Get a neuropsych.

I've seen this "look at their radar" comment a few times, from someone who obviously has never sat in a cockpit. The pilot flying is looking OUTSIDE, not staring at their on-board radar scopes. This isn't flight simulator - the radar systems are not the same at ATC and while yes there is a conflict alert this isn't something you can scan easily with might vision. Fault here will go to the helo pilot but this is absolutely swiss cheese - if ATC hadn't screwed up the incoming traffic he wouldn't have had to have anyone do a circling approach to 33 that always conflicts with Route 1.

Not to mention, if the BH didn't ALSO have TCAS, the plane's TCAS wouldn't have picked it up. Both aircraft have to have it.

[Anonymous]

All three on board helicopter were senior officers with years of experience.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/army-black-hawk-crew-involved-dc-crash-made/story?id=118276697

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All three on board helicopter were senior officers with years of experience.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/army-black-hawk-crew-involved-dc-crash-made/story?id=118276697

But but but I thought it was DE&I

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

It's all part of the swiss cheese model. All the failures need to line up.

So now ATC needs to assume the army pilots can look at their radar for their closest jets or at which runway is which? And describe everything in poetic detail? Teach the pilot you have model? All realtime- not trust the pilots to understand basic stuff like runway number, required altitude, active airport, middle of the river vs East bank?

No that’s not the Swiss Cheese model where every stakeholder is simultaneously failing.

This was helicopter pilot team not following altitude protocol and not double checking radars or two runway lines.

ATC did not fail

CRJ did not fail.

No thanks. Pilot DQ. Get a neuropsych.

I've seen this "look at their radar" comment a few times, from someone who obviously has never sat in a cockpit. The pilot flying is looking OUTSIDE, not staring at their on-board radar scopes. This isn't flight simulator - the radar systems are not the same at ATC and while yes there is a conflict alert this isn't something you can scan easily with might vision. Fault here will go to the helo pilot but this is absolutely swiss cheese - if ATC hadn't screwed up the incoming traffic he wouldn't have had to have anyone do a circling approach to 33 that always conflicts with Route 1.

We understand that but there were three people on board the helicopter. It was actually the instructional pilot communicating with ATC. If the training pilot were looking OUTSIDE the helicopter, surely the instructional pilot who has just received instructions from ATC to be aware of a plane in their flight path could look at radar to confirm the location of that plane.

I disagree ATC "screwed up" the incoming traffic. It is not ATC's fault that they had too many planes lining up for runway 1. They have an arrivals schedule but it's not infallible to the minute -- planes are arriving within a window of their schedule arrival and there is a preference for runway 1 because it is longer and easier to access for planes coming from the south. The ATC recognized he had planes too close together for runway 1 and requested that one of those planes adjust for runway 33 instead. That's SOP for a high traffic period at National and the plane deterred to runway 33 was a regional jet for whom that course correction is not difficult and for whom the shorter runway will not pose an issue.

This entire incident would not have happened if the helicopter had maintained visual separation from the plane, as instructed and confirmed multiple times by ATC. Whereas ATC is not in charge of how many planes show up at one time in need of runway clearance and properly assigned runways to planes to ensure safe landing. No screw up.