ATC is least accurate and most delayed, still shows firmer 200’. Radar one showed 200’ then went to 350’ cRJ one was deemed working, was on belly of plane, and has collision alt made public by nTSB. Was higher than 250’. Helo altimeter at time of impact has not been cited yet. |
How was the helicopter behaving around other airplanes waiting to land that evening? (If this was not the first plane it encountered/needed to pass around in some manner) Was it acting irrationally? Approaching too close to other planes as well? Showing signs of hesitation?
Would any data capture this? |
Because of so many errors made, yet confirmed with ATC so close to collision, I have to think nothing bad actually happened, it is just a case of lack of training or just poor training. I hope someone of combing through what these pilots are being taught |
Agree. Comparing army BH training hours or intensity over time cohorts plus versus Air Force and navy black hawk pilots. |
So not the helo changing its altitude and river portioning from the requirements to fatality zone? But just the sheer use of a second runway at an airport. Got it, with brains like that, we’re sure glad you work in the air traffic and safety industry. |
DP. The more I think about this, the angrier I get. The blithe, automatic, almost reflexive requesting of visual separation when they should have known better and had more situational awareness, getting sloppy as they're flitting around in the landing path of a major airport, the arrogant assumptions by the military overall in ever requesting or allowing such helicopter routes in the first place and resting on their laurels that their "exceptional" training and piloting skills would never allow something like this to happen. And now 67 people are dead and it seems like pure luck that it didn't happen earlier. There had better be a transparent exposure of failures here and they better pay through the nose to compensate the families of the victims and American Airlines and the crews that had the horrible job of extracting wreckage and bodies from the Potomac. |
The FAA was aware of the problem. Federal agencies don't seem to care until someone dies. Same thing with the broken USDA. They didn't shut down the plant until people died of food poisoning. I have to remind myself that these are the adults. The wise bureaucrats looking out for my welfare.
https://dailycaller.com/2025/02/10/faa-dca-plane-crash-helicopter-warnings-near-misses/ |
This should not be a training route. DCA has enough well documented challenges and already has too many close calls. I place blame squarely on the Army. If DC evacuates, there won’t be inbound planes landing there, so there’s no reason to train for that. Plus the even more obvious reason: too much risk to civilians. |
I do not work in the industry, but I have 4 pilots in my family who have flown that route, commercial airliners and black hawks, and they have given me their educated opinions. Previously I gave an entire list of unfortunate events that lined up that resulted in this tragedy, the changed path being one of them (which yes, happens occasionally when a smaller jet gets re-assigned to a shorter runway to make room for a larger jet on R1) but you seemed intent on arguing and placing blame solely on the individuals when this is clearly a system failure, and safety rules need to be adjusted. Thankfully the NLRB typically does a great job in these situations and focuses on safety redundancies rather than assigning individual blame, as they understand human error and/or mechanical errors occur. |
Then you also know the difference between black hawk pilot training from the Air Force, navy or marines versus a NoVA Army base. |
+1 |
The Nova army base is a duty station. It isn’t flight school. But you should know that |
This has brought to light some huge failures in pilot training. I think it’s fair to consider is this is related to intentionally filling more women into these roles that were previously closed. Did that alter training standards? Or is it something else that has caused this massive training failure? Is it that they were trained properly but the culture has changed pilots go off script and don’t follow standards because they feel over confident- and that’s become acceptable?
But the pilots of Vietnam could fly their bullet ridden low tech helicopters through gun fire, landing with ease between close trees, where staying on the ground for seconds longer than absolutely necessary means low survival. I think it’s care training standards have changed as well as acceptable practices when out of flight school |
What is your point? And how do you reconcile this event with the numerous near collisions at the same airport? Do you consider multiple near collisions an acceptable risk for civilians on commercial flights? |
So it crashed bc there are female pilots? And you are aware that there were helicopter crashes during the Vietnam war, right? |