Plane crash DCA?
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Anonymous
ATC did fine he notified helicopter of the location, bearing and direction of the jet. Male pilot in helicopter confirmed. You could argue he should have picked up the collision course helicopter was running as that was like 25 seconds, and he only cottoned onto it in the last 10 secs or so. He warns them again, male helicopter pilot confirms visual sighting of jet. This implies he confirmed he would avoid it. Helicopter rose 100 feet into crash into jet. Yes, silly and dangerous to have helicopters running a 100-200 feet under landing planes - I'm not sure that was what was happening. It happened in this case because the helicopter kept a bearing directly into the plane. It could have done lots of things. hovered, deviated left, not elevated 100 feet suddenly. It's all very weird. Yes, it's obviously generally dangerous anyway to be clustering these military jets across these civil jet flight corridors. It makes me think White House and similar critical locations don't have bunkers - this is a big problem, what you want is a bunker in the presidential residence, beneath congress, etc., and underground tunnel and train to take you out of doge city. Plenty of other countries have something like this. Having rotary wing aircraft zapping the nation's brains around in the middle of a nuclear war sounds stupid. |
Anonymous
I'm leaning this way - it will come down to who was controlling the joystick and rudder of the copter right? It's no more trolling to think a woman did something wrong than it is to think a man did something wrong - that you see it this way though, shows your bias not the posters - it's speculation either way. What's not speculation is that at least one of the helicopter pilots' actions are inexplicable and caused the crash. At best this was gross incompetence. Worst is murder suicide. |
Anonymous
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It is possible that if the helicopter saw the plane at the last minute, that is why they went up - to try and go over the plane. The plane was descending so their only option at close distance would have been to go over the top.
According to the pilot forum and their airport maps, planes should be at ~280 feet as they cross the east bank of the river when coming in to runway 33. The TCAS (collision alert system) turns off when they are that low to the ground and in landing mode so they wouldn't have gotten a warning of a collision. The warning was going off for the ATC but if you watch the video of the day before, the PAT11 helicopter set off the warning system 3 times in its one flight so they must be very used to hearing it go off. |
Anonymous
I don’t know but when I listened to the ATC instructions they specifically tell the BH to confirm it sees the jet descending to land at runway 33, which requires planes to come diagonally across the Potomac (which there is less than 1 mile long) from Bolling in DC to the north of Daingerfield Island in Virginia/DCA. It literally jets across from east to west. NOT the runway that has planes line up behind the WW Bridge so they are coming up the middle of the Potomac. The BH not only was too high, it was too far west. Did the BH not know the difference between runway 33 and the other 2 runways? |
Anonymous
I do think it’s possible that’s why the help jerked erratically at the last minute. But it doesn’t explain why it was so far into the middle of the river for quite a few minutes before the crash. The route is to hug the east bank and they were west of that in the middle of the river. Had they stayed there and at the 200ft ceiling where they seemed to be for most of it, we wouldn’t be here discussing this. |
Anonymous
The radar data shows helicopter went up a few seconds before collission, several seconds before impact. No, flying up and left into a descending jet isn't all a rotary wing can do, it can stop, drop and hover, it can drop and turn right away from the jet. In a panic anyone can do anything, but I find it hard to believe they didn't see it for the 25 seconds they drove directly towards it. |
Anonymous
According to the pilot forum, it is extremely common practice for the helicopters on route 4 to go down the middle of the river instead of hugging the bank. They had a few reasons why they do that but none were surprised or thought this was anything out of the ordinary. My armchair assessment after reading the pilot forums is to agree with their assessment. The BH crew were running various tasks and checklists so their attention was divided. They saw the line of air traffic straight ahead and thought that was who they had visual on, not realizing there was a plane to their left turning in to cross the river. They were west and high but not in any atypical pattern given how heicopters often fly Route 4. According to the pilots, between reflections in the water, city lights, and the disorientation of night and difficulty judging distance, they didn't realize they were on a collision course. They saw the plane at the last second and tried to correct and miss but it was too late. |
Anonymous
There is nothing wrong with her credentials at all. But to say that are amazing is an exaggeration. Her active duty Army awards are very standard. No fault to her considering her short time in and that she hasn’t had the opportunity to be deployed |
Anonymous
Same. Sounds like all ATC nation wide need to also notify jets of military helos intersecting their landings. Can’t trust anyone to process info correctly. |
Anonymous
The delay was wrong but now w the release we’re back to square one: what happened to or in the helo the last 5 seconds of this checked. Mechanical? Medical? Panic? Total ignorance? |
Anonymous
Seems logical. I’m very skeptical the government will make a lasting course-correction here though. |
Anonymous
This would mean the BH pilots didn’t know the difference between the approaches for runway 33 and 1 which I really doubt. ATC specifically said runway 33. If a BH pilot think all the traffic waiting ahead in a line behind WW bridge literally in the middle of the Potomac is for runway 33 and not 1 they should not be flying there at all. I live in Alexandria and we see these planes all the time. There is a distinct difference between planes waiting to land at 33 and 1. They’re not in the same spot. Track this particular jet, who originally was going to land at 1 and then was told he had to land at 33 so he had to do a loop over MD/DC to get in the correct position. He just doesn’t come straight up the Potomac. I don’t care what you read on the pilot forum. Go over to the WW bridge and see for yourself. There is even a pedestrian bridge portion, you can literally walk across it and stand in the middle. Look up. Those planes that would have been ahead of the BH in a line ahead, are waiting for 1. Listen to the ATC tapes that have been released. They’re told to make visual on plane landing at 33 and they say got it. |
Anonymous
Big. Big rotors and blades and nose to tail was 2/3s the length of the little regional jet. |
Anonymous
Important fact is she was not there by choice. She and the others on the helicopter were just following orders from the army to conduct risky flight training in civilian airspace. That's where the dumb decision was. Also, she was not the only person in control of the plane, and not the MALE voice on the recorder saying he saw the plane. It's sick to seek out and blame this tragedy on the one female involved, especially since she was, by all metrics, eminently qualified to be where she was. |
Anonymous
I don’t entirely agree. I’d be more opt to believe that if they helicopter was doing all the right things, and still crashed. But they weren’t. There were several big errors made and they weren’t following the guidelines for that route, despite the warnings from ATC of oncoming traffic (and where it was and where it was going) and correcting altitude- which they didn’t do |