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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Great pilot analysis. He seems fairly confident the Helo simply had the wrong airplane in sight. Literally did not see the other plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfgllf1L9_4[/quote]

If true it's really hard to understand how they don't see the airplane right in front of them, both on radar and visually. Like I understand what this guy is saying and I assume he knows more than I do about what it's like in the air, but when you look at the radar and see the video footage, it's hard to make sense of because the plane is *right there.*

What is the reason they might not be looking at radar to see the closer plane? There are two pilots and a crew chief on the helicopter. Surely one of them would be in charge of checking radar especially while flying through that particular corridor knowing there will be planes taking off and landing from National. I don't get it.

It also raises the question of whether the night vision goggles they were wearing for training purposes obscured their vision to the degree that it made it more likely they would not see the closer jet and would think the area closer to them was clear. If that's the case, I'm sorry, but this is 100% on the DoD for permitting that kind of training flight near a very busy urban airport. Like completely unacceptable. I understand why an Army pilot would need training with night vision goggles but there is no reason why that should be done in an area where it could jeopardize civilian lives in that way.

So if this is the explanation, it honestly raises more questions than it answers. IMO.[/quote]

I see what you are saying. But the Helo pilot acknowledges at least twice (maybe 3 times?) that he sses the aircraft and assumes responsibility for visual separation. So he's either a terrible judge of distance and incorrectly thought he would clear the plane, OR was focuses on creating visual deparation from a completely different plane. [/quote]

It’s confirmation bias. When your brain thinks you’ve seen “the thing” it stops looking for other things, even if your eyes are on the sky/screen/whathaveyou.

We teach our residents “what do you look for after you see a fracture?” (on X-ray or CT, whatever). The answer is “the second fracture”.

I’ve seen people miss some crazy sh!t bc their eyes and brain are looking at what they think the pathology is, and they’re completely blind to the other issue that’s literally right there.

We take a lot of our error reduction education from the aviation industry, or at least try to. Pilots are better than we are at acknowledging the propensity for human error (probably bc a lot of us doctors are @ssholes).

We cleared our incoming space last night for a mass casualty event in prep for what we hoped were survivors. Awful when no one came. 
[/quote]

This might make sense if there was one pilot on the helicopter. There were two plus a crew chief. You're telling me that three people collectively assumed the CRJ they were told was there by air traffic control was the one *behind* the jet they were about to run into, and not one of them at any point looked at the radar or just out the front of the helicopter and said 'whoa actually there's a plane right in front of us'?

It strains credulity.[/quote]

Please share your alternate theory that does not "strain credulity."

This is the most likely scenario. They were wearing the goggles and the ambient lights from the surrounding city camouflaged the closer plane.

I'm having more trouble believing as you do that one or all of them saw the plane and hit it anyway. [/quote]

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