Plane crash DCA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The contributing factors to this crash will never be fully addressed. The fundamental problem is the orientation of Runway 33 vis-a-vis military traffic on the east side of the Potomac. It’s past time that Runway 33 is closed. If that means DCA has to shed a few slots so be it. Plenty of capacity at IAD.

That was also the opinion of a guest (aviation expert?) on nbc4 this morning. Planes have to swing out to the east side of the river to land on that runway, which brings them into the same space as the helicopters that fly low and the helicopters have to maintain visual distance. Too much can go wrong.

I know nothing about airplanes. But I cannot understand how in 2025, planes aren’t equipped with technology that gives them exact location and screen visualization of other close airplanes in the air. I can understand how the naked eye could miss a nearby plane when traveling from above or below, plus night, and fast moving. But surely helicopters and commercial planes have better onboard technology than purely relying on the pilot looking out the window.

It wouldn’t have made a difference. Imagine when you’re driving - would you want to be staring at a screen that shows where the cars are, or looking directly outside? The screen adds a distraction and a delay.

They do have technology similar to a car’s collision avoidance system but when they are that close to multiple other aircraft, it’s turned off because it would go off constantly. Or even if it was on, it would go off constantly and pilot would become essentially blind to it.

That makes sense, thank you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The ATC did everything right. How about some concern for those doing a highly stressful job? Yes, there are staffing shortages that everyone on this board should be concerned about. We take it for granted that flights take off and land safely every day ("safer than driving on the beltway") but do we really stop to consider how that happens and the people in the tower who make that happen? We'd all benefit from more ATCs who are well supported, materially and emotionally. I'd like to know why a training flight had to happen at night in that particular airspace.

Plus we don’t know if she’s saying that 2 seconds to impact or 1 or 2 minutes lead time.
Big difference.

For whatever reason, the helicopter cut to the west side of the river whilst adjacent DCA.
The ATCs aren't magic. They can repeatedly tell a helicopter to avoid collision but they can't actually change how they're flying. You also know the ATC who was talking to the helicopter A) is dealing with a mandatory investigation B) is likely devastated by what happened and C) is going to face blame from the media even if totally cleared and could potentially face harassment.

But why wouldn’t ATC tell the helicopter the exact location of the plane they are referring to that they are closest to colliding with? Maybe they did? But my interruption was that the call to the helicopter was vague considering at least 2-3 other planes were close by and descending

I think that’s the problem—the helo pilots were watching the wrong plane and thought they were okay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have any experience with how this type of wreckage impacts use of the river in the near future? Thank god the river was mostly frozen and not being used by recreational boaters.

Mostly frozen? Temps have been above freezing for several days.

I work at the Wharf and the river freezes and unfreezes when it's in the 40s 50s during the day.

I work in old town and am from Wisconsin. Rivers here don’t freeze beyond a thin surface layer for a day or two.

Average depth of the Potomac is 24 feet and in some places it is waist deep. We have had pancake ice in the north part of the river. You can see the chunks of ice in the footage from last night. Less so this morning, but the responders are dealing with ice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fundamental problem is that the approach from upriver violates every FAA best practice for safety in order to follow the sharp curve of the river around Georgetown Landing, in order to reduce noise over residential areas and avoid protected airspace (VP mansion etc.). This removes the safety that comes from having a long-straight approach to the runway, which gives the landing pilots plenty of chance to see anything flying near them and gives helicopters relief from having a plane come whipping around the corner.

The sick irony is this all happens within site of FAA HQ.

That wasn't the approach the plane used here. It came from the south.

So is the southern approach long-straight, or does it also involve dangerous/late turns? And if so, why does it need these dangerous turns?

Long and straight from the south.

Come on. We all live here. No commercial jets are doing hairpin turns over a 200m wide river to instantly land. You fly way south over Maryland, get in the queue, then land. It’s the less “pretty” landing.

I just saw the ATC video — shows a sharp late curve to the left for the plane (as it switches from runway 1 to 33?).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fundamental problem is that the approach from upriver violates every FAA best practice for safety in order to follow the sharp curve of the river around Georgetown Landing, in order to reduce noise over residential areas and avoid protected airspace (VP mansion etc.). This removes the safety that comes from having a long-straight approach to the runway, which gives the landing pilots plenty of chance to see anything flying near them and gives helicopters relief from having a plane come whipping around the corner.

The sick irony is this all happens within site of FAA HQ.

That wasn't the approach the plane used here. It came from the south.

So is the southern approach long-straight, or does it also involve dangerous/late turns? And if so, why does it need these dangerous turns?

Long and straight from the south.

Come on. We all live here. No commercial jets are doing hairpin turns over a 200m wide river to instantly land. You fly way south over Maryland, get in the queue, then land. It’s the less “pretty” landing.

I just saw the ATC video — shows a sharp late curve to the left for the plane (as it switches from runway 1 to 33?).

It’s sounding suspicious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bowser is speaking very painful and unpolished

Trump is a million times worse.

His tweet with all caps was so Presidential.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Too many helicopters flying along the Potomac when Republicans come into power. They love their VIP rides and the pilots love to hot dog up & down the river for the VIPs. No consequences for anyone, good times back again.

No one likes dour Democrats who put the kibosh on expensive helicopter flights.

Oh FFS, it was a training flight. It had nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats.

Look at the flight history. It was coming from Langley, where it likely dropped off VIPs. “Training flight” means they let the young, more inexperienced pilot fly the helo back to Belvoir so he could get his hours and build familiarity with the route/traffic patterns.

The issue is that there’s too many helo flights over the Potomac. And the issue gets worse during Republican administrations because too many of them consider themselves “VIPs”. The military loves it because they get more flight hours, more justification for budgets with VIPs.

Someone will scrap the historical air traffic data on PAT helo flights, comparing Biden and Trump admins. It won’t even be close. Anyone with a set of eyes & ears knows that the number of helo flights have surged since Jan 20.

Republicans love their VIP flights.

Citation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s chaos in every single branch of the government right now. But sure blame the airport.

This is human error, not the government’s fault. But how can you not put some blame on the airport? It’s literally their job to manage planes landing. Saying to the helicopter “do you see the plane” when there are multiple close by planes, including one close enough to crash into them, seems like mismanagement of air traffic to me

The flight patterns necessarily take planes and helicopters close to each other. This only works if you can trust the helicopter flying under visual rules to see approaching aircraft. Maybe that's an unfair and unrealistic expectation, but expecting ATC to handle this any other way than they did is wholly impractical.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The ATC did everything right. How about some concern for those doing a highly stressful job? Yes, there are staffing shortages that everyone on this board should be concerned about. We take it for granted that flights take off and land safely every day ("safer than driving on the beltway") but do we really stop to consider how that happens and the people in the tower who make that happen? We'd all benefit from more ATCs who are well supported, materially and emotionally. I'd like to know why a training flight had to happen at night in that particular airspace.

Plus we don’t know if she’s saying that 2 seconds to impact or 1 or 2 minutes lead time.
Big difference.

For whatever reason, the helicopter cut to the west side of the river whilst adjacent DCA.
The ATCs aren't magic. They can repeatedly tell a helicopter to avoid collision but they can't actually change how they're flying. You also know the ATC who was talking to the helicopter A) is dealing with a mandatory investigation B) is likely devastated by what happened and C) is going to face blame from the media even if totally cleared and could potentially face harassment.

But why wouldn’t ATC tell the helicopter the exact location of the plane they are referring to that they are closest to colliding with? Maybe they did? But my interruption was that the call to the helicopter was vague considering at least 2-3 other planes were close by and descending

I think that’s the problem—the helo pilots were watching the wrong plane and thought they were okay.

Yes exactly. Which is why I do think ATC is partially at fault. It’s their job to make sure they are clearly communicating and managing all the landings and they didn’t. They did not make it clear to the helicopter which airplane and where it was that was about to cross into their path. Since the planes have to turn off their anti collision technology for landing, they are relying on ATC to guide them, especially when a plane is out of their line of sight as in from above or below.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s chaos in every single branch of the government right now. But sure blame the airport.

This is human error, not the government’s fault. But how can you not put some blame on the airport? It’s literally their job to manage planes landing. Saying to the helicopter “do you see the plane” when there are multiple close by planes, including one close enough to crash into them, seems like mismanagement of air traffic to me

Looks like miscommunication was the biggest factor. The helicopter pilots appear to be focused on air traffic from runway 1. Looks like they waited for an airplane to take off and then crossed. This is a very common route for military helicopters coming up from Ft. Belvoir. But unbeknownst to them, minutes earlier the flight from Wichita had been directed to use the much less frequently used runway 33 instead of runway 1. So it looks like the Army pilots were focused on the wrong plane since their attention was on runway 1.

Clearly, there will need to be new procedures for Reagan, particularly at night. Too much air traffic and too many blinking lights in the night sky to be relying on visual confirmation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the best breakdowns follow Juan Browne on YouTube. Posts under blanco lirio. He’s a 777 pilot and former Air Force and also GA. Great analysis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouDAnO8eMf8

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s chaos in every single branch of the government right now. But sure blame the airport.

This is human error, not the government’s fault. But how can you not put some blame on the airport? It’s literally their job to manage planes landing. Saying to the helicopter “do you see the plane” when there are multiple close by planes, including one close enough to crash into them, seems like mismanagement of air traffic to me

Actually, the federal government regulates air traffic and recently decided to throw those regulatory bodies into chaos, naming these functions wasteful spending. The government oversees everything that happened last night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fundamental problem is that the approach from upriver violates every FAA best practice for safety in order to follow the sharp curve of the river around Georgetown Landing, in order to reduce noise over residential areas and avoid protected airspace (VP mansion etc.). This removes the safety that comes from having a long-straight approach to the runway, which gives the landing pilots plenty of chance to see anything flying near them and gives helicopters relief from having a plane come whipping around the corner.

The sick irony is this all happens within site of FAA HQ.

That wasn't the approach the plane used here. It came from the south.

So is the southern approach long-straight, or does it also involve dangerous/late turns? And if so, why does it need these dangerous turns?

Long and straight from the south.

Come on. We all live here. No commercial jets are doing hairpin turns over a 200m wide river to instantly land. You fly way south over Maryland, get in the queue, then land. It’s the less “pretty” landing.

I just saw the ATC video — shows a sharp late curve to the left for the plane (as it switches from runway 1 to 33?).

It’s sounding suspicious.

Normal for that approach. You fly the runway 1 approach up the Potomac and dogleg to runway 33.

Don't want to fly over those home in Maryland or SW/SE.

[Anonymous]

It’s not a sharp curve. Commercial planes don’t make sharp turns. If a jet banks more than about 20 degrees all sorts of alarms go off (different for different aircraft). It feels steep because we’re not used to it.

That said a circle to land approach at a major airport with the restricted areas is stupid. Adding a military route that crosses is borderline criminal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The ATC did everything right. How about some concern for those doing a highly stressful job? Yes, there are staffing shortages that everyone on this board should be concerned about. We take it for granted that flights take off and land safely every day ("safer than driving on the beltway") but do we really stop to consider how that happens and the people in the tower who make that happen? We'd all benefit from more ATCs who are well supported, materially and emotionally. I'd like to know why a training flight had to happen at night in that particular airspace.

Plus we don’t know if she’s saying that 2 seconds to impact or 1 or 2 minutes lead time.
Big difference.

For whatever reason, the helicopter cut to the west side of the river whilst adjacent DCA.
The ATCs aren't magic. They can repeatedly tell a helicopter to avoid collision but they can't actually change how they're flying. You also know the ATC who was talking to the helicopter A) is dealing with a mandatory investigation B) is likely devastated by what happened and C) is going to face blame from the media even if totally cleared and could potentially face harassment.

But why wouldn’t ATC tell the helicopter the exact location of the plane they are referring to that they are closest to colliding with? Maybe they did? But my interruption was that the call to the helicopter was vague considering at least 2-3 other planes were close by and descending

I think that’s the problem—the helo pilots were watching the wrong plane and thought they were okay.

Doesn’t it show how overloaded DCA is? Sometimes I can see a few planes at once coming from DCA, short distance one from another.