Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The female pilot is believed to have been commanding the helicopter, her name is being intentionally withheld

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281246/pentagon-jet-military-helicopter-collision

I hope this wasn’t part of it:

"Initial indications suggest this may have been a checkride, or periodic evaluation by an experienced instructor pilot of a less experienced pilot," said Brad Bowman, a military analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Black Hawk pilot.

"A checkride, as opposed to a normal training flight, creates some unique dynamics in the cockpit. In a checkride, the less experienced pilot can be nervous and eager to not make mistakes, while the instructor pilot is watching to see how the other pilot responds to different developments," Bowman explained. "Sometimes an instructor pilot will test the less experienced aviator to see how they respond, but such a technique would have been unusual and inadvisable in that location given the reduced margin for error."

I'm assuming the black box and data recorders would have captured all this, right? Including any conversation.

Spoiler alert: we are never finding out any of the information on the helicopters black box.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That POS president has taken away her family, her friends, the public's right to mourn her. Shame on him! He needs to go back to h#ll where he came from.

I'm no trump supporter but he hasn't done that. Her family chose to hide this information from the public who have a right to know. More importantly, the families of those killed because of her error (if it was actually unintentional), deserve to know who caused them to lose their family member. Her mistake cost lives and saying it would affect her family doesn't cut it.

We do not know it was her mistake alone - there were 3 people who were not paying attention to their surroundings, according to control tower communications. Let the investigation go through. Your assumptions and anger are a cover for something else.

That she supports the felon despite her protests. People want her name so they can tar and feather her reputation and tell her family what trash she is. Just wait.

By not releasing her name they are making it worse because people are already angry that this shouldn't have happened and now it looks like a cover up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The female pilot is believed to have been commanding the helicopter, her name is being intentionally withheld

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281246/pentagon-jet-military-helicopter-collision

Per family request.

They are no doubt worried about death threats and other violence.

I'm a female pilot. Given the tone from our government leaders and the witch hunts taking place online ... if I were involved in an accident, knowing I'd likely be the only female crew member from either airplane, I would want my family protected from the media as long as possible. I don't blame them for trying to shield her memory and reputation until more is known about the actual events of the crash.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does it mean that the help requested visual separation. What other options were available?

Hover and do nothing??

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The female pilot is believed to have been commanding the helicopter, her name is being intentionally withheld

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281246/pentagon-jet-military-helicopter-collision

I hope this wasn’t part of it:

"Initial indications suggest this may have been a checkride, or periodic evaluation by an experienced instructor pilot of a less experienced pilot," said Brad Bowman, a military analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Black Hawk pilot.

"A checkride, as opposed to a normal training flight, creates some unique dynamics in the cockpit. In a checkride, the less experienced pilot can be nervous and eager to not make mistakes, while the instructor pilot is watching to see how the other pilot responds to different developments," Bowman explained. "Sometimes an instructor pilot will test the less experienced aviator to see how they respond, but such a technique would have been unusual and inadvisable in that location given the reduced margin for error."

I'm assuming the black box and data recorders would have captured all this, right? Including any conversation.

Spoiler alert: we are never finding out any of the information on the helicopters black box.

Agree with you. They will not release everything to the public. Maybe bits and pieces or nothing at all. I'm sure there will be lawsuits soon and they will cover up as much as they can.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't blame the family for wanting privacy, but it is clearly not only her fault. I do believe the BH was solely at fault but there were three people on board. Who knows what happened or should have happened. It's obvious though that more than one person screwed up.

This.

It seems like a 3-person failure. Not one of them saw the correct plane, despite verbal acknowledgement? That's not a one-person error.

That was the only plane south of the bridge in their line of sight. The JAZZ 789 had not taken off when they first gave visual confirmation of the CRJ. Something else definitely happened and I am waiting for the black box recordings to be released (but knowing how army covers up everything I doubt we will here it all).

Wasn't there another plane coming in? I live in Alexandria, and can see the line of planes coming from the south. I thought some were saying the BH had eyes on the plane behind the one they were about to hit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That POS president has taken away her family, her friends, the public's right to mourn her. Shame on him! He needs to go back to h#ll where he came from.

I'm no trump supporter but he hasn't done that. Her family chose to hide this information from the public who have a right to know. More importantly, the families of those killed because of her error (if it was actually unintentional), deserve to know who caused them to lose their family member. Her mistake cost lives and saying it would affect her family doesn't cut it.

We do not know it was her mistake alone - there were 3 people who were not paying attention to their surroundings, according to control tower communications. Let the investigation go through. Your assumptions and anger are a cover for something else.

That she supports the felon despite her protests. People want her name so they can tar and feather her reputation and tell her family what trash she is. Just wait.

Anonymous wrote:What does it mean that the help requested visual separation. What other options were available?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump is belligerent even with the easiest questions:

“Trump said he would meet with some of the families affected by the crash. Asked by reporters whether he would visit the collision site, Trump responded: “What’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming? I don’t have a plan to do that, but I will be meeting with some people that were very badly hurt — with their family member, obviously.””

—WaPo

Can’t believe someone was dumb enough to actually ask him to visit the collision site. He should’ve said oh You mean in the middle of the sky?

Don't be obtuse. What do you think people mean when they talk about any accident site? How about for the Twin Towers? Are you going to crack a joke about how you can't because the building isn't there anymore? Your'e about as funny as Trump.

It’s not obtuse. If reporters want to be treated as professionals, they need to not ask stupid questions. I was called out for asking a similarly stupid question when I was taking a journalism class in college right after 9/11. I’m grateful I learned that lesson at age 20. Clearly this reporter didn’t.

That’s right, you’re an expert because you took a journalism class 25 years ago! Has the White House press secretary reached out yet to have you screen questions?

I didn’t mean to imply I’m an expert—sorry if I did. I have never worked as a journalist. I am in no way affiliated with the White House. No, I have not been contacted by the current or any former White House press secretaries on any matter—I apologize for giving that impression. I meant to say that I was taught to consider my questions before asking them. I thought that was a valid lesson in a college journalism course, not something that needed to wait to be taught until a journalist is questioning the president.

Will you be going to the crash site to pay your respects: how is that not a completely ordinary, expected, and even softball question. The answer should have been: yes, I will be going to the crash site to console the families and to thank the first responders as soon as doing so will not impede the recovery efforts. Had he said that, no one would be talking about his actual response. I’ve never taken a journalism class and have no political training but can easily determine this is the right Q&A. Stop defending him. Stop gaslighting that the reporter’s question was the problem.

I am defending his response. I’m not gaslighting anything—I am stating clearly I think the reporter’s question was stupid.

It is a very standard question, asked of every president during every catastrophe. It's even more common to answer unequivocally "yes, I will be there." I'm not surprised that you're unfamiliar and uninformed about this basic journalism practice. Nothing stupid about the question.

It actually would have been fine for him to say "no there are no plans for me to visit the site -- we need to give them space to do their work." Asking that question doesn't mean he has to say yes.

He just needs to not be a snotty jerk about it. This is the kind of response you get from a 12 year old and then you say "let's try that again without the attitude, okay?"

It is fine if he doesn't visit the site. There are no survivors and it's a spread out site and there may not be a good reason for him to go. But is he incapable of answering that question without sarcasm and rudeness? Apparently, yes.

His second administration is just going to lead to more deterioration of social norms that help underpin our society. People watch him do this stuff and defend it and applaud it, and that normalizes it for everyone else to start acting that way. If everyone acts like Trump, though, we don't even have a society. We just have a bunch of petulant a$$holes competing over resources and lying and cheating and being aggressive about it.

Sounds great.

While I don't agree that it's fine for him to not go (it's 10 min from the WH) I agree with everything else you said.

Even if he has no intention of going, the easiest thing to say would be “We are looking into that and working with recovery teams on issues like that.” Then at some point in the future he sends Vance and Usha to lay a wreath or dedicate a memorial. That’s how a normal adult would handle that. He’s definitely worse than he was 8 years ago and I don’t see how everyone doesn’t recognize that he is acting like your elderly relative with dementia with their weird slightly off-topic aggressive responses.

Here's the thing - there's visiting the crash site and then there's the airport, where presumably many family members of the people on board were waiting to pick them up. It's one thing not to go visit a site where there are no survivors and is an ongoing recovery situation. But what about the families who were at the airport? I can't even imagine the chaos there as the news started to unfold and people began frantically texting their friends and family to see if that was their plane. Just awful. And instead of going there he asked if he should be swimming.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The female pilot is believed to have been commanding the helicopter, her name is being intentionally withheld

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281246/pentagon-jet-military-helicopter-collision

I hope this wasn’t part of it:

"Initial indications suggest this may have been a checkride, or periodic evaluation by an experienced instructor pilot of a less experienced pilot," said Brad Bowman, a military analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Black Hawk pilot.

"A checkride, as opposed to a normal training flight, creates some unique dynamics in the cockpit. In a checkride, the less experienced pilot can be nervous and eager to not make mistakes, while the instructor pilot is watching to see how the other pilot responds to different developments," Bowman explained. "Sometimes an instructor pilot will test the less experienced aviator to see how they respond, but such a technique would have been unusual and inadvisable in that location given the reduced margin for error."

I'm assuming the black box and data recorders would have captured all this, right? Including any conversation.

Spoiler alert: we are never finding out any of the information on the helicopters black box.

Anonymous wrote:There’s absolutely no way they did not see this plane. Goggles or not. Look at this angle. The light from the plane is illuminating strongly enough to be captured in this manner.

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/security-footage-shows-new-angles-of-d-c-crash-230772805611

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The female pilot is believed to have been commanding the helicopter, her name is being intentionally withheld

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/30/nx-s1-5281246/pentagon-jet-military-helicopter-collision

I hope this wasn’t part of it:

"Initial indications suggest this may have been a checkride, or periodic evaluation by an experienced instructor pilot of a less experienced pilot," said Brad Bowman, a military analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Black Hawk pilot.

"A checkride, as opposed to a normal training flight, creates some unique dynamics in the cockpit. In a checkride, the less experienced pilot can be nervous and eager to not make mistakes, while the instructor pilot is watching to see how the other pilot responds to different developments," Bowman explained. "Sometimes an instructor pilot will test the less experienced aviator to see how they respond, but such a technique would have been unusual and inadvisable in that location given the reduced margin for error."

I'm assuming the black box and data recorders would have captured all this, right? Including any conversation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s absolutely no way they did not see this plane. Goggles or not. Look at this angle. The light from the plane is illuminating strongly enough to be captured in this manner.

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/security-footage-shows-new-angles-of-d-c-crash-230772805611

The planes stack up and they form line. The helicopter pilot was most likely looking down the river not to their left. The plane came from the left to land at 33. I guess they did not acknowledge the plane was landing on runway 33 as opposed to to the main runway.