Helicopter Crash in DC
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@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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@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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@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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@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?
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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?
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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@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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@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.
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@jon-nyc said in Helicopter Crash in DC:
I can’t see them closing DCA. The secret service didn’t want to reopen it after 9/11 and Bush ordered them to.
I wonder what his reason was. It's not like the airport is a convenience to the President as it is closer to the Oval Office than Dulles, by the mere fact that Air Force 1 uses neither, but Andrews AFB instead down the road a ways in Camp Springs, MD, (where my daughter was born!)
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In 2001, IAD was too inconvenient to service DC by itself. There was no mass transit system in place and the express road was more limited. DCA was necessary.
Since that time, a metro line has been installed directly tying the airport to DC and the express lanes have been expanded. 66 going into DC has also seen a reduction in traffic thanks to the dynamic tolling and HOV Toll Free policies. IAD is much more easily accessible than it was, and the airport still has tremendous amounts of space available to expand and modernize.
They may not shut down DCA, but it is not nearly as necessary as it was.
