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Anonymous wrote:On Reddit, people said the wife of one of the pilots is being treated horribly. She had asked for people to share photos of her husband, and someone replied they should share photos of CRJ victims.

My call to everyone is to do something nice for others.

Text your government friend and let them know you appreciate their work.

Hold the door for someone.

Text a friend or family member, and let them know you love them.

Hope we can preserve aspects of a healthy society where we treat each other well.

It is shockingly insensitive for families of the helicopter pilots to be seeking that kind of attention under the circumstances.

Don’t think those families are less devastated? You suck.

Of course they're probably devastated. But sometimes it is not appropriate to publicly ask others to join in your grieving.

She posted on her personal facebook page. Presumably, the only people that would be looking at it and sharing would be her friends and family. If "the public" doesn't want to share and join in her grieving, they don't need to look at her page.

NP here. Maybe this is the pilot who has a child and the wife wanted to collect photos for the child. I’m old enough now to unfortunately have a few friends die, leaving behind young children and this seems like a common request (to gather photos for the kids).

Yes, it would be understandable to ask for photos-- privately.

I don't understand how the family thought posting publicly was going to go over well. How do you think people would react if the family of someone that just T-boned a school bus at high speed posted this?

It was a public fb post?!

Yes, it was. Maybe not intentionally.

It's on her personal page, but the setting she has is public. Maybe because she thought there might be other people that she doesn't know/aren't her facebook friends, that still might want to share memories or photos of her husband. For example, some of his old friends from high school that he hadn't kept in contact with in the last several years, but they heard about this and looked at his wife's page. They may have some very special memories from decades ago that they'd love to share with is wife.

Again, how do you think people would react if someone publicly asked for photos commemorating someone that just ran a red light and t-boned a school bus? Would you be posting in their defense?

I wouldn’t waste any time thinking about it right now. I live in Alexandria where the city has to keep closing off areas because “debris” keeps floating in more and more areas (so awful and sad). It’s not productive to have that kind of energy. If you know anyone affected by this tragedy I would direct your energy to supporting them in whatever way helps but doing deep dives on family members’ social media isn’t it.

It’s so sad that people can’t just wait until the investigation is over to blame people. Everyone on both aircrafts are dead. Have some empathy.

Anonymous wrote:How many flight hours did the trainer pilot, who was overseeing and evaluating the female pilot, have? Just asking because someone posted that as a captain she outranked him, and he IS the voice on the recording saying he saw the plane they ultimately ran into. Not trying to vilify him, just looking for perspective.

He had 1000+ hours, she had 500 hours, according to what the Army said earlier this week. So even if she outranked him, he was significantly more experienced as a pilot.

Anonymous wrote:How many flight hours did the trainer pilot, who was overseeing and evaluating the female pilot, have? Just asking because someone posted that as a captain she outranked him, and he IS the voice on the recording saying he saw the plane they ultimately ran into. Not trying to vilify him, just looking for perspective.

He had 1,000 hours. She's always going to outrank him, because she's a commissioned officer, but as an older warrant officer it's normal that he had more flight experience.

Anonymous wrote:If she was such a perfect pilot let’s see her military records and all of her flight history. When was the last time she flew before the night in question? And who was the VIP they just dropped off?

It’s been 4 days. Chill the F out.

How many flight hours did the trainer pilot, who was overseeing and evaluating the female pilot, have? Just asking because someone posted that as a captain she outranked him, and he IS the voice on the recording saying he saw the plane they ultimately ran into. Not trying to vilify him, just looking for perspective.

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Anonymous wrote: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.

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?

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.

I get the west part but isn't it atypical to be that high? The pilots were not surprised about that part?

The height restriction at the DCA area is clearly there for a very good reason.

Runways are named for a very good reason. This wasn’t even a 6+ lane runway airport .

Agree. Wondering at the remark that pilots thought the helo flight was "not atypical."

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Anonymous wrote:If she was such a perfect pilot let’s see her military records and all of her flight history. When was the last time she flew before the night in question? And who was the VIP they just dropped off?

What difference does the VIP make? This question keeps getting asked but I don't get how it would matter in the sequence of events that led to the cash.

The identity doesn’t matter except in the regard to the question do BH helicopters need to be shuttling these VIPs around the dmv if it is putting the public at risk? Is it needed? Was this VIP a true VIP? Were they just getting a favor? Thats the only thing I would care about, if the flight really needed to occur or did it occur as a favor or to make someone feel important?

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Anonymous wrote:If she was such a perfect pilot let’s see her military records and all of her flight history. When was the last time she flew before the night in question? And who was the VIP they just dropped off?

What difference does the VIP make? This question keeps getting asked but I don't get how it would matter in the sequence of events that led to the cash.

I think the problem is that the military appears to be trying to hide/obscure that a VIP was dropped off. It raises the possibility that there was something improper about the flight -- that the VIP might be someone the general public would consider not worth an expensive trip in a Black Hawk (like what if it's not a military or high level government official, but instead someone's kid or spouse getting a birthday ride, or some billionaire being rewarded for financial donations, or a way to wine and dine a bigwig at a major defense contractor).

Also because there is an emerging narrative that airspace around National is overcrowded and that there is a specific problem with military helicopters causing near collisions in the recent past, it is causing people to question why this helicopter was there at all, and what decision making was involved in putting this helicopter on that flight path at that exact time (a very busy time for arrivals at National).

It's also possible that the military is obscuring the identity of the VIP for national security reasons. But trust in government is at an all-time low, so even if this is the case, people will continue to ask this question. People don't trust the military to make that call and there are too many recent examples of national security being used as a shield for government activity that endangers or harms American citizens (for example NSA spying on US citizens).

I suppose there is also some chance the military is being honest and this was purely a training mission that was given the PAT call sign because the goal of the mission was to simulate a VIP extraction under night conditions. However, if that were true, I think the military would have revealed more information to make that obvious. Like for instance stating where the flight originated (it's quite obvious it was Langley but the military won't say this) and where the helicopter was prior to this leg of the flight. How did it get to Langley? Where was it earlier in the day? These should be easy things to find out and will be part of the investigation, which will include service records on the helicopter to figure out if there might have been a mechanical failure that could have contributed to the collision. Yet the military has said nothing and instead put forth a narrative that doesn't quite sit right with people who are familiar with these sorts of flights. It is much more likely that it was a VIP flight with a training added on return, and it's weird the military won't just say that's what it is, if everything about the VIP flight is on the up and up (a justifiable transport of a high ranking official between military locations for important government purposes).

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Anonymous wrote:I do think it’s odd all of the female pilot’s social media was completely scrubbed. But also her siblings and her parents.

Why? It’s the first thing I would do.

Because the other pilots and crew involved were released immediately, either willingly or not, I don’t know. They didn’t take extreme time and measures to erase all traces of them the public could potentially judge. And when you are involved in killing a bunch of people, the public will judge. By them not allowing military to release her name and then scrubbing all traces of narrative about her except what they explicitly publish, it seems like something is being hidden she would be judged harshly for- beyond her gender alone

Rebecca as a Captain outranked the copilot, how does that factor in to decision making?

It may have.

NVGs likely were a factor.

That the plane saw the BH at the last second and tried to evade is sad.

ATC could have been more explicit.

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Anonymous wrote: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.

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?

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.

I get the west part but isn't it atypical to be that high? The pilots were not surprised about that part?

The height restriction at the DCA area is clearly there for a very good reason.

Runways are named for a very good reason. This wasn’t even a 6+ lane runway airport .

Anonymous wrote:From the time this female pilot started her training as a pilot, her education and training have been in the hands of predominantly white males. She died in a training exercise. Others died in the training exercise. The white males who want the responsibility of being in charge are accountable.

Investigate the training she had. Investigate the qualifications of the male evaluator on board. Investigate the BS just no trash virtual reality and augmented reality training she had.

They’ll run comps on all active BH pilots’ training, backgrounds, records, hours, quality of hours, abilities. And run former pilots specs too.

Absolute and relative performance matters in every job. But could be trending down everywhere.

Anonymous wrote:If she was such a perfect pilot let’s see her military records and all of her flight history. When was the last time she flew before the night in question? And who was the VIP they just dropped off?

What difference does the VIP make? This question keeps getting asked but I don't get how it would matter in the sequence of events that led to the cash.

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Anonymous wrote:Is the owner of this site deleting facts such as: Labouche was a WH aide under Biden?

WTF?

She wasn’t so that’s a false fact and should be deleted. She volunteered for ceremonial duty at the WH, likely because she thought that would be a cool experience. Like standing there in uniform when someone gets a medal. She wasn’t a WH policy aide or even a WH intern.

Liar. Laboch was a WH social aide. Easily verifiable- pick your own source.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/blackhawk-crash-why-rebecca-lobachs-name-was-withheld-and-the-controversy-surrounding-it/articleshow/117862456.cms?from=mdr

A social aide is a ceremonial military duty where you assist guests at the White House.

Yes, this is not partisan. If I was a young 20 something I’d do it- sounds fun

Non issue. She attending be evening awards event at the White House as a helper.

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Anonymous wrote:If the female pilot was the evaluator of the pilot in training, she would be responsible.

There was a male pilot who was her evaluator.

Why is everyone focused on blaming her?

It was a male who put the training plans in place.

The female pilot was training.

Whenever American service members die in a training exercise, it's a tragedy.

How much money is spent on BS Virtual reality and augmented reality training and "serious" games with Meta and Microsoft and Bezos selling cheap plastic virtual reality glasses. Millions of dollars spent on BS "training" that isn't true simulation training. A true simulator is a BH helicopter simulator not a BS video game. That costs too much.

Think people.

Dig deeper.

The ONLY person who could have had DIRECT influence on the pitch, altitude, speed and direction of the BH those last 5-7 seconds was a Pilot in Command strapped in to all four directional controls.

It' was still a training exercise. She was in training. What events led to the pilot error? What male was the training evaluator? What male set the training plans in place? What male built the Blackhawk? What male contractor and software engineer designed the simulation training?

White male pilot evaluator must have been a DEI hire. Maybe his daddy was a retired military.

Check ride. To stay current. She should have had total recall how to fly that route.

Same in padi diving, flying any jet, accounting, various industry certifications.

Anonymous wrote:If she was such a perfect pilot let’s see her military records and all of her flight history. When was the last time she flew before the night in question? And who was the VIP they just dropped off?

If it turns out she hadn't flown in a long time, that would be evidence of a military problem, not a problem with the pilot.

There is an Army flight instructor on reddit who has stated that the Army does not give pilots enough opportunities to fly and that many Army pilots are "unsafe" with rusty skills because they struggle even to meet their flight minimums. And the pilots want to fly. But they are often working 50+ hour weeks fulfilling other administrative duties that the Army has deemed more important than time in the cockpit.

This is different than a private citizen with a helicopter license taking a joyride and making bad decisions. If it turns out that she had not been properly trained or had rusty skills or too little flight time, that is 100% within the control of the Army who assigned her to that aircraft and sent her out on this flight.