Helicopter Crash in DC
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@LuFins-Dad said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
More and more people on the right are thinking it was intentional by the Black hawk pilot.
FFS.
Also on X. This could be another rando, but what he says makes sense.
I was a Blackhawk helicopter crew chief in the Army.
I was even a Flight Instructor. This means that I trained Crew Chiefs and ensured that they completed all training annually to maintain their flight ratings.
One massive responsibility we had was to be the eyes for the pilots. We handled airspace obstacle avoidance and communicated potential risks to the pilots.
Quite often we would train as a flight of 2 or 3 birds flying in formation.
It was my job to have my head out the window and tell the pilots that the aircraft behind us was "staggered right at 3 discs". (We measured close distances in terms of the diameter of our rotor discs).
I can tell you after doing this for hundreds of hours, even when you know EXACTLY where a Blackhawk is, and you have night vision goggles on, it is EXTREMELY hard to SEE the aircraft.
These birds are designed to be hard to see at night.
The red and green lights on the side get lost in the lights of the city below. The only "lights" on top of the aircraft are called "slime lights" because they are a very very very dim green.
Incredibly difficult to see.
If you are above the helicopter, even if it has it flood light or spot light (2 different lights) on, underneath it, it is still hard to see the bird because all of that illumination is below the airframe.
Another thing people should know is just how busy things can get on the aircraft.
Pilots are talking to each other about what they are observing on the instrument panels. This means neither are looking outside the aircraft.
The crew chief might be conducting a fuel check, where we would also be looking up into the cockpit at the fuel gages and the clock.
This CAN lead to moments where all 3 people on the aircraft are all looking inside the aircraft.
It's not supposed to happen that way. We are supposed to announce when we are "coming inside" or are "back outside" the aircraft. But that doesn't always happen.
Also, in cities like DC, the radio traffic is constant and can make it hard to filter out what is important for you to listen to.
Checking instruments, doing math, reading checklists, and listening to multiple radios all at the same time is HARD. Mistakes happen.
Anyone out there telling you that they find the aircraft collision to be suspect, have NEVER been in a flight crew and they have ZERO idea what they are talking about.
Ignore them all. Better yet, mock the hell out of them.
999 times out of 1000 aircraft incidents always come down to a series of pilot and crew errors.
Humans are involved. They aren't perfect.
Tonight, my heart and mind is with the families of those involved in this tragic event.
I won't join the chorus of idiots making speculations.
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@LuFins-Dad said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
More and more people on the right are thinking it was intentional by the Black hawk pilot.
Well, if there's anybody who knows more about the intricacies of flying a helicopter near a crowded airport than right wing podcasters and culture warriors, I for one would like to meet them.
I was only joking
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Did either or both aircraft have a traffic information system?
I assume both had it - a system to warn of nearby traffic.
2 pilots in each aircraft should have heard and seen alarms. In order for a collision to occur both pilots at the controls had to ignore the warnings. Or, I guess, they might assume the other guy would fix the problem.
@Copper said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
Did either or both aircraft have a traffic information system?
I assume both had it - a system to warn of nearby traffic.
2 pilots in each aircraft should have heard and seen alarms. In order for a collision to occur both pilots at the controls had to ignore the warnings. Or, I guess, they might assume the other guy would fix the problem.
Yeah it doesn't help both turned west-ish at the same time. Maybe the pilot presumed the helicopter would continue straight (and behind) the CRJ. I still think the pilot had zero idea the helicopter was there, new videos show the chopper "below" the aircraft right before it hit it, so there's almost no chance the pilots could see it out their window. And the collision warning (TCAS) system is off below 1,000 feet during landings anyway due to the traffic, which is a little ironic but I can see why.
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@jon-nyc said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
Maybe it’s time for a DCA DMZ.
More likely, it’s time to expand and improve Dulles and shut down DCA.
@LuFins-Dad said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
@jon-nyc said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
Maybe it’s time for a DCA DMZ.
More likely, it’s time to expand and improve Dulles and shut down DCA.
I think DCA is fine, it's time to severely change where helicopters can fly. For example, they should stay at 200' and must be south of the Wilson Bridge before they can cross into Virginia.
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It seems to me that this really has the possibility of being a 3-way cluster… The AA Pilot and crew had to have not responded to proximity alarms or there was a sensor/alarm failure on the plane. The ATC needs to still have been more on the ball, even if the AA Pilot called for a visual approach, and the ATC should have given more clear instructions to the Blackhawk, and probably should have cleared them out of the area. The Blackhawk crew obviously looked at the wrong plane and weren’t aware enough of the approach they were on.
There’s things that can be improved on, here, but it’s also true that sometimes shit happens. Tragic, yes, but not something to go on a crusade over. That’s true on both sides.
@LuFins-Dad said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
It seems to me that this really has the possibility of being a 3-way cluster… The AA Pilot and crew had to have not responded to proximity alarms or there was a sensor/alarm failure on the plane. The ATC needs to still have been more on the ball, even if the AA Pilot called for a visual approach, and the ATC should have given more clear instructions to the Blackhawk, and probably should have cleared them out of the area. The Blackhawk crew obviously looked at the wrong plane and weren’t aware enough of the approach they were on.
There’s things that can be improved on, here, but it’s also true that sometimes shit happens. Tragic, yes, but not something to go on a crusade over. That’s true on both sides.
Good post. The ATC thing is definitely clear in 20/20 hindsight, even though that's how they talk (and have for 25 years) without much of an accident, that they should've been clearer about where the CRJ exactly was.
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@LuFins-Dad said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
More and more people on the right are thinking it was intentional by the Black hawk pilot.
Well, if there's anybody who knows more about the intricacies of flying a helicopter near a crowded airport than right wing podcasters and culture warriors, I for one would like to meet them.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
@LuFins-Dad said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
More and more people on the right are thinking it was intentional by the Black hawk pilot.
Well, if there's anybody who knows more about the intricacies of flying a helicopter near a crowded airport than right wing podcasters and culture warriors, I for one would like to meet them.
It's almost like someone saw Trump's response coming. This was the morning BEFORE the crash.
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What I said earlier - my experience of encouraging everybody to leave with a decent golden handshake is that you lose all the people you want to keep, and keep all the people you want to lose.
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Has it occurred to anybody that this could just be a tragic accident caused by a very challenging working environment, and that disabled black lesbians weren't in some way to blame?
I was only joking
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Has it occurred to anybody that this could just be a tragic accident caused by a very challenging working environment, and that disabled black lesbians weren't in some way to blame?
@Doctor-Phibes said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
Has it occurred to anybody that this could just be a tragic accident caused by a very challenging working environment, and that disabled black lesbians weren't in some way to blame?
I think most aviation experts and most folks here agree it was likely a tragic accident caused by the helicopter pilot not looking left (or looking at the wrong plane). Most likely all key folks here (the two pilots and ATC guy) were all white straight men, too.
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It seems the whole system depended on fluid decision making on the part of pilots to ensure there were no collisions between the helis and the planes. That's the biggest surprise about the procedures, that ATC didn't have a firmer grip on everything. But that's how it had worked for a very long time. I don't suppose it'll work like that anymore. I assume the helis got special dispensation because they're military and they could be trusted not to do anything boneheaded.
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Agreed. I'll be honest... from 2009 to 2021 I was in a high rise condo that overlooked the direction of the Pentagon, DCA, Potomac...and saw helicopters (as I mentioned before) many times a day. News, medical, many military... dozens of fly-bys per day, and I always presumed the airspace (to include the altitude near the ends of the runways) around DCA was totally off-limits. I never saw a helicopter go "over" the airport of course, and those choppers flying near the airport were always on the north side of the river (opposite from airport). You're right, this certainly will change authorized helicopter paths in the area for the better.
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Has it occurred to anybody that this could just be a tragic accident caused by a very challenging working environment, and that disabled black lesbians weren't in some way to blame?
@Doctor-Phibes said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
Has it occurred to anybody that this could just be a tragic accident caused by a very challenging working environment, and that disabled black lesbians weren't in some way to blame?
As a safety engineer, were not you taught that there is no such thing as an accident? LOL Just teasing you.
I sat in on a couple of "accident" analysis. We called them "Tap Root" or "Root Cause" analysis. Always found that there was something that could have been done to prevent the event.
Now, of course, the time and money to do so maybe did not make it worthwhile to justify that the very small chance that the event would happen.
One of the examples given was that ALL highway car "accidents" that result in death could be eliminated. Lower speed limit/lower maximum speed of cars, armor cars, requiring breath test of everyone to start a car, etc. etc. But the cost and effort were not worth it to do that and would cause too much disruption so some car "accident" deaths were "acceptable"
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
Has it occurred to anybody that this could just be a tragic accident caused by a very challenging working environment, and that disabled black lesbians weren't in some way to blame?
As a safety engineer, were not you taught that there is no such thing as an accident? LOL Just teasing you.
I sat in on a couple of "accident" analysis. We called them "Tap Root" or "Root Cause" analysis. Always found that there was something that could have been done to prevent the event.
Now, of course, the time and money to do so maybe did not make it worthwhile to justify that the very small chance that the event would happen.
One of the examples given was that ALL highway car "accidents" that result in death could be eliminated. Lower speed limit/lower maximum speed of cars, armor cars, requiring breath test of everyone to start a car, etc. etc. But the cost and effort were not worth it to do that and would cause too much disruption so some car "accident" deaths were "acceptable"
@taiwan_girl said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
One of the examples given was that ALL highway car "accidents" that result in death could be eliminated. Lower speed limit/lower maximum speed of cars, armor cars, requiring breath test of everyone to start a car, etc. etc. But the cost and effort were not worth it to do that and would cause too much disruption so some car "accident" deaths were "acceptable"
At some point, the loss of efficiency and freedom can be blamed for deaths, too. But it's interesting how much difficulty most humans seem to have with grappling with simple reasoning like that. During COVID, we saw the "even a single life is infinitely precious" crowd out in full force, even on this forum.
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My own single life is infinitely precious. Yours, not so much.
I do this for a living. There's an acceptable level of risk. With what I do, it's a pretty high bar, but there's still a bar. We also write standards to cover it. But anybody who thinks you can completely eliminate risk probably isn't worth listening to. The same thing applies to people who say the standards are all rubbish and this could never happen and we should just use a bit of common sense and everything will be ok. The second group are typically trying to make money.
