Crash at Reagan National Airport, DC. Helicopter crash into airliner.

Kelvin said:
I thought that right away. If these guys were on night vision gear as is being reported, this would further exacerbate this issue.
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NVG in the middle of the DC Metro area? That would be pretty difficult, wouldn't it. We get Blackhawks over our field at night periodically because we're nice and dark.
 
IMO being at the same altitude isn't the issue. PAT25 was instructed to fly behind the CRJ and for some reason didn't do that. I've been in traffic patterns and on visual approaches where I've been instructed to pass behind traffic at my altitude so I adjusted my course to follow instructions. PAT25 didn't hit the CRJ because they were at the same altitude they hit because PAT25 didn't adjust their course.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I have to say, the NTSB member giving the briefing, J. Todd Inman, does a really good job.
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While this viewpoint is widely supported in aviation forums and video comments, I’ll take the opposing viewpoint; i.e., the NTSB briefings in the Homendy era are mostly awful. An exception was a few weeks ago with the Fullerton briefing. That briefer (IIC) was excellent (Elliot Simpson?). Current briefings are mostly emotional fluff, NTSB horn-tooting and boilerplate, and an ever-growing list of entities to thank. The actual factual content makes up a shrinking minority of Homendy-era briefings. Let the IIC’s do the briefings and stick to an accident summary and known facts.
 
Location of RADALT position. Left seat location is slightly different. Pointer and digital with both low bugs and high bugs. 0-1500 ft.
IMG_9840.jpeg
 
luvflyin said:
The Vertical Glideslope Indicator VGSI, probably a PAPI, is 3 degrees. That is 319 feet per mile. The Threshold Crossing Height TCH is 37 feet. So it does not look to me like the plane was low.
View attachment 137726
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Keep in mind the PAPI are located 750’ down the runway in this case. Not that it makes what you said any less true, but calculate from there and add a few feet above sea level for the siting to get the MSL altitudes.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
The thing that gets me is that the CRJ crew did get a "Traffic, Traffic" alert 18 seconds before the collision, and as of right now it sounds like they didn't react to it until 1 second before the collision.

I do wonder who was PF and who was PM. If the FO was PF, it may have been that the captain looked at the display and couldn't see the helo. It will be interesting to see what else is on the transcript during that gap.

If there really was no reaction, those pilots may have simply been to DCA and gotten traffic calls like that enough times that they'd learned to ignore it. Normalization of deviance.
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18 seconds before the collision weren’t they still on somewhat diverging paths? The turn to final seemed to have commenced right about that moment.

A big part of this seems to be that situational awareness crumbled in regard to anticipating where the jet was going to make its turn to line up with the runway.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
And we all know that ADS-B is very accurate for collision avoidance. ;)
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dmspilot said:
Why would that be relevant when visual separation was issued?
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Not relevant to this particular accident. However, as an IFR pilot I always had the impression tower radar was pretty accurate, so I am somewhat surprised it can be off by 100' in either direction.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Altitude - They gave a big caveat on this because he said they have an altitude they feel very comfortable with (probably PSA CVR). They're still working on

CRJ was at 325 ±25 from ADS-B and FDR. They said they feel comfortable with this altitude being accurate.
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Others have been asking "could the CRJ have been low"? Maybe I've messed up the GS calculation, but 325' +/- 25' would put the CRJ ABOVE the 3 degree glideslope. If that's right, then no, the CRJ wasn't low.

Another topic (which I am worried is too early to bring up, but will anyway): The "organizational attitude" of the aviation battalion is surely going to get scrutiny. My experience: different organizations take on their own attitudes towards flying and standards, which can impact safety (and effectiveness, sometimes in different ways). The investigation MAY find that the aviation battalion had a history / mindset of doing what they could to expedite their particular flight - and may have not even thought about it in those terms. For example: we all know that calling traffic quickly can sometimes turn into a pecker-measuring contest, or that asking for advantage - like visual separation - can become rote. It's not hard to imagine a mindset taking hold that normalizes these things. If these attitudes are endemic to an organization, leadership isn't doing its job. I'm NOT saying that's what was going on, but I'd bet it'll be looked at closely.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Not relevant to this particular accident. However, as an IFR pilot I always had the impression tower radar was pretty accurate, so I am somewhat surprised it can be off by 100' in either direction.
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I'm assuming the 100' thing is from the encoding altimeter... it's accuracy is entirely on the transponder in the aircraft... unless the secondary radar's altitude setting was off.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Not relevant to this particular accident. However, as an IFR pilot I always had the impression tower radar was pretty accurate, so I am somewhat surprised it can be off by 100' in either direction.
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ATC radar doesn't generate an altitude, it displays the altitude reported from your transponder. And it's delayed.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Not relevant to this particular accident. However, as an IFR pilot I always had the impression tower radar was pretty accurate, so I am somewhat surprised it can be off by 100' in either direction.
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I bet it's a radar slant range thing.....and there are latent delays in ADS-B.
 
The question earlier about altimeter at the time. I was 29.93 at the time of the accident. Route altitudes in this case are MSL. With DCA being only 14 ft, the difference between AGL and MSL minor. A good technique would be to adjust the high bug on the RADALT to 200 ft. That would’ve complied with the 200 ft (max) MSL for route 4.
 
Larry in TN said:
My guess is that they're thinking of it in terms of the ADSB traffic information display typical on GA aircraft avionics.
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And obviously we can’t confirm but I’d say there’s a good chance PAT had an EFB with ADS-B in portable antenna going on. Especially in a unit that operates with that much traffic. Not allowed to use the moving map for primary nav but EFBs and portable ADS-B in antennas are authorized.
 
Flying Keys said:
Keep in mind the PAPI are located 750’ down the runway in this case. Not that it makes what you said any less true, but calculate from there and add a few feet above sea level for the siting to get the MSL altitudes.
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Yeah. I did that using the TCH to calculate. The TDZE is 13 feet.
 
High school trig to the rescue. Ratio of vertical to horizontal distance is the tangent of the descent angle. So multiply distance from touchdown point by tan(3) to get altitude of glideslope.
Horizontal deviation from route 4 was equally contributory as vertical deviation. According to a post above, impact occurred 2400 feet from runway TH. Add 750 feet from TH to PAPI. Altitude is 165 feet.
Distance from TH to east bank on runway centerline is right at a mile. Add 750. Altitude is 316 feet. So the helo lost 150 feet of vertical separation by moving away from the bank.
 
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Larry in TN said:
An inconsistency from the press conference was that he said that there was an aural TA alert AFTER the 500' call-out. The aural alert is suppressed below 500' RA and the 500' call is also based on RA. Did TCAS give an aural alert when it should have been suppressed or was he incorrect that the TA was aural vs. just displayed? I don't know.
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Is the 500' universal or does it vary by aircraft type and avionics?
Larry in TN said:
Even if the helicopter was on VHF, he would have been on the helicopter VHF frequency (134.35), not the one used for airplanes (119.1).
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Velocity173 said:
Military isn’t using UHF for their own secret purposes. Yes, it can be used exclusively for things like HAVE QUICK but it’s primarily to reduce frequency congestion. At my old facility, if the fighters were using the same VHF that the civilian aircraft were using, working approach control would be a mess. Everyone would be blocking each other’s transmissions. It would also delay important tasks such as issuing approach clearances.
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How many simultaneous voices are we expecting a controller to be able to process? I hate it when I call up on what I think is a clear frequency and I get nothing. I also will always monitor the other frequency if I can determine that a controller is working more than one and I can figure out what at least one of the others is.

For SA, maybe we should be getting a controller to put everyone on the same frequency when they're combined. If there is too much frequency congestion, maybe there needs to be another controller too.
AquaLand said:
While this viewpoint is widely supported in aviation forums and video comments, I’ll take the opposing viewpoint; i.e., the NTSB briefings in the Homendy era are mostly awful. An exception was a few weeks ago with the Fullerton briefing. That briefer (IIC) was excellent (Elliot Simpson?). Current briefings are mostly emotional fluff, NTSB horn-tooting and boilerplate, and an ever-growing list of entities to thank. The actual factual content makes up a shrinking minority of Homendy-era briefings. Let the IIC’s do the briefings and stick to an accident summary and known facts.
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That is not at all what I got from it. Frankly, I think the times I hear a government briefing of any sort that is delivered in the detached monotone you seem to want, it comes across as indifferent to their jobs, the families of the victims, and the citizenry that they're working for. I *want* people who have some emotion about their work, because they're putting more into it.

Flying Keys said:
18 seconds before the collision weren’t they still on somewhat diverging paths? The turn to final seemed to have commenced right about that moment.
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Here's the position of the RJ 18 seconds before with their track:
Screenshot 2025-02-02 at 6.20.05 PM.png
They never were all the way straight, but I'd call that halfway through a nice gentle turn, which pretty much continued until the collision.

Chip Sylverne said:
Not relevant to this particular accident. However, as an IFR pilot I always had the impression tower radar was pretty accurate, so I am somewhat surprised it can be off by 100' in either direction.
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It's only got a resolution of 100'. If you ever watch a transponder check/adjustment, you get to see how much the altitudes can vary for changing over from one hundred to the next.
TonyG said:
Another topic (which I am worried is too early to bring up, but will anyway): The "organizational attitude" of the aviation battalion is surely going to get scrutiny. My experience: different organizations take on their own attitudes towards flying and standards, which can impact safety (and effectiveness, sometimes in different ways). The investigation MAY find that the aviation battalion had a history / mindset of doing what they could to expedite their particular flight - and may have not even thought about it in those terms. For example: we all know that calling traffic quickly can sometimes turn into a pecker-measuring contest, or that asking for advantage - like visual separation - can become rote. It's not hard to imagine a mindset taking hold that normalizes these things. If these attitudes are endemic to an organization, leadership isn't doing its job. I'm NOT saying that's what was going on, but I'd bet it'll be looked at closely.
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Yes. This is something that seems to appear frequently in military aviation accident investigations, and the conclusions can be damning. I think in many areas inside and outside both the military and aviation, safety is viewed as weakness. In the military, where toughness is a virtue, this can be exacerbated. Attitudes of leaders can make or break the safety of entire units and entire careers.
 
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jayhawk74 said:
IMO being at the same altitude isn't the issue. ….
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What I think a lot are missing is both aircraft were in VMC and most folks don’t understand the inherent limitations of procedural control limitations.

The VISUAL 1 approach plate lacks any altitude references, requires RADAR, and, inside 5.9DME, simply states “Follow the Potomac River to the Airport”.

The H route 4 and 1 descriptions contain the various altitude limits and describe being “over the east bank” when north of the Wilson Bridge along with over instructions subject o some interpretation.

MMQB says its clear as day, but reading all of it literally leaves a lot open to interpretation and local procedures which may not be available to the public or even shared between agencies/departments.
 
I see very little comment, if any, about the idiocy of having a helicopter route crossing below short final of a major airport. Ever encounter wake turbulence? Would you want to be in a helicopter encountering wake turbulence close to the ground (water)?
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Is the 500' universal or does it vary by aircraft type and avionics?


How many simultaneous voices are we expecting a controller to be able to process? I hate it when I call up on what I think is a clear frequency and I get nothing. I also will always monitor the other frequency if I can determine that a controller is working more than one and I can figure out what at least one of the others is.

For SA, maybe we should be getting a controller to put everyone on the same frequency when they're combined. If there is too much frequency congestion, maybe there needs to be another controller too.

That is not at all what I got from it. Frankly, I think the times I hear a government briefing of any sort that is delivered in the detached monotone you seem to want, it comes across as indifferent to their jobs, the families of the victims, and the citizenry that they're working for. I *want* people who have some emotion about their work, because they're putting more into it.


Here's the position of the RJ 18 seconds before with their track:
View attachment 137736
They never were all the way straight, but I'd call that halfway through a nice gentle turn, which pretty much continued until the collision.


It's only got a resolution of 100'. If you ever watch a transponder check/adjustment, you get to see how much the altitudes can vary for changing over from one hundred to the next.

Yes. This is something we seem to see frequently in military aviation accident investigations, and the conclusions are usually not good. I think in many areas, safety is viewed as weakness. In the military, where toughness is a virtue, this can be exacerbated. Attitudes of leaders can make or break the safety of entire units and entire careers.
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The controller can process as many voices as they’re capable of. Some are better at it than others. There were times working approach where I probably had 7 VHF & UHF (GCA & Approach) up all at once. Yeah it’s crazy but unless you have seven different controllers, it’s the only way to do it. There’s no way to safely work multiple civilian and military aircraft in busy airspace on one freq.

I’ve give ya an example and I’ve experienced this many times. A civilian calls on VHF for an extended call up for FF or even to pick up an IFR. At that exact moment, a traffic call or a vector needs to be made to a military aircraft. You’re dropping the initial call up request for something more pressing. With two separate freqs, the controller doesn’t have to wait for the civilian call up to cease. They can transmit over them to issue instructions to the military aircraft and at the same time, log that call up,(strip board) so they’re ready to call them next..first come, first served. A lot of times every second counts and the ability to hear two aircraft at once, makes for a more efficient system.

We can debate all day whether DCA is just too crowded but until they reduce traffic (ain’t happening) allowing two separate freqs for military and civilian is the best way.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
They never were all the way straight, but I'd call that halfway through a nice gentle turn, which pretty much continued until the collision.
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From :35 to :40 (5 secs) their track changed 3.9° (0.8°/sec)

From :40 to :43 it changed 4.8° (1.6°/sec) :43 is the point indicated in your post. So their turn (course change) rate doubled somewhere in those three seconds.

From :43 to :45 it changed 4.9° (2.5°/sec), so another increase - this was their max turn rate (course change).

From :45 to :48 it changed 6.9° (2.3°/sec), so slightly less.

And from :48 to :51 5.3° (1.8°/sec)

After :51 it was less than 1°/sec until the collision

Note this is all independent of heading due to wind drift and isn’t accurate enough in fractions of seconds to get a true rate. But it’s close enough.

The question is where was the helicopter at the same points (another moving target) and at what point did the tracks actually become a collision course? Until that point, the tracks would have been considered diverging. For example, if the jet had stopped its turn at the point you posted (or any point, really), it would have missed behind the Blackhawk by a little bit - so the perspective of the Blackhawk, it would have still been diverging for a few more seconds.

The math changed in that 15 second period. If there had been better awareness of the turn and anticipation of the change to a collision course, we wouldn’t be here. That’s the main problem. How did they lose awareness of where the runway was? Did they ever have it?
 
It was supposedly a “continuity of government” training mission simulating the evacuation of senior leaders after a major attack. In such a scenario, do they anticipate normal traffic flow through Reagan mandating flying down the river amongst landing traffic? I’m guessing if such an attack happened and leaders need to be evacuated they might just re-route planes from landing in the middle of our capital…
 
eman1200 said:
last time I checked, helo's can hover, correct? why not have the equivalent of a red light for helos trying to cross final with an inbound plane?
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I'm not sure how many fling wingers we have at PoA these days, but it's not always that easy. If they can just hover, why would they need approach plates? Just stop over the airport and hover straight down! But that's not the case, likely because, I would guess, that hovering is really difficult with reduced outside visibility as well as the whole thing being slow because they have to avoid settling with power and getting into a vortex ring state. Helicopter physics are cray cray.

So, do we have any chopper folks on the board and in the thread? If so, how difficult is it to stop and hover at night a couple hundred feet over a dark river with potential false horizons due to lights on the shore? Also, same question but with NVGs? I would guess that NVGs make hovering in that situation really difficult?

And one more question for those with NVG experience: On a training mission like this, would it be normal for both pilots to have NVGs on, or would they have one leave them off similar to a safety pilot?
Flying Keys said:
The math changed in that 15 second period. If there had been better awareness of the turn and anticipation of the change to a collision course, we wouldn’t be here. That’s the main problem. How did they lose awareness of where the runway was? Did they ever have it?
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That's another thing that could be related to NVGs and the lack of peripheral vision.
 
AKiss20 said:
It was supposedly a “continuity of government” training mission simulating the evacuation of senior leaders after a major attack. In such a scenario, do they anticipate normal traffic flow through Reagan mandating flying down the river amongst landing traffic? I’m guessing if such an attack happened and leaders need to be evacuated they might just re-route planes from landing in the middle of our capital…
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A comment by Juan Browne (Bromcolirio) is that in the environment of the helicopter routing and overall air traffic situation, all training and other duties should be dropped. Everyone on board should be paying attention to the environment, traffic, etc, etc. Guess what? Survival is a higher priority than training.

From a pilot highly qualified and very experienced in IFR, but by no means a professional: Why is VFR approved and used in the first place in this environment? It seems to me that within a certain radius of DCA (5 NM?) it might be IFR only. In VMC conditions, IFR (ATC control) plus pilot visuals are in play. Probably it would cost a lot (ATC personnel, radar investments). But good grief, why not?

HHH

Screen Shot Airports Landed.png
 
Hunter Handsfield said:
From a pilot highly qualified and very experienced in IFR, but by no means a professional: Why is VFR approved and used in the first place in this environment? It seems to me that within a certain radius of DCA (5 NM?) it might be IFR only. In VMC conditions, IFR (ATC control) plus pilot visuals are in play. Probably it would cost a lot (ATC personnel, radar investments). But good grief, why not?
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What would be the point? In class B every aircraft is under control by ATC. That's why VFR limits are lower. All IFR would do is increase everyone's workload.
 
AquaLand said:
While this viewpoint is widely supported in aviation forums and video comments, I’ll take the opposing viewpoint; i.e., the NTSB briefings in the Homendy era are mostly awful. An exception was a few weeks ago with the Fullerton briefing. That briefer (IIC) was excellent (Elliot Simpson?). Current briefings are mostly emotional fluff, NTSB horn-tooting and boilerplate, and an ever-growing list of entities to thank. The actual factual content makes up a shrinking minority of Homendy-era briefings. Let the IIC’s do the briefings and stick to an accident summary and known facts.
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Ugh. I just watched Homendy's brief on the Philly crash. She spent a full three minutes listing off everyone she was thanking. And it was just government agencies, not groups of people or individual people for the most part (except mayors).

The 5342 briefing was not at all like that.
 
Hunter Handsfield said:
A comment by Juan Browne (Bromcolirio) is that in the environment of the helicopter routing and overall air traffic situation, all training and other duties should be dropped. Everyone on board should be paying attention to the environment, traffic, etc, etc. Guess what? Survival is a higher priority than training.
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Huh.

Sounds good on the face of it, but how far do you go? No captains or FOs into DCA if they haven't been before? (that's training, right?) We'll have helo crews fly the routes for the first time with a VIP on board, maybe in an emergency? He could say, "well, I didn't mean drop THAT training". Yeah, right. I've seen a few of his videos and have liked them, but that comment from him doesn't seem to hold water.
 
News outlets report the heli routes have been restricted but not suspended UFN. Article I read doesn't actually spell out the specific types of helo flights no longer allowed.

Perhaps the new status quo. The question is will they go back to old status quo, make the current restrictions the new normal, or shut things down permanently. I'm confident touching anything pertaining to limiting 121 arrivals is a non-starter, as 121 is the majoritarian overlord. I also see the security apparatus fighting hard against full closure. So by elimination I have to assume current restrictions may be the new normal in the remora swamp UFN.
 
TonyG said:
Huh.

Sounds good on the face of it, but how far do you go? No captains or FOs into DCA if they haven't been before? (that's training, right?) We'll have helo crews fly the routes for the first time with a VIP on board, maybe in an emergency? He could say, "well, I didn't mean drop THAT training". Yeah, right. I've seen a few of his videos and have liked them, but that comment from him doesn't seem to hold water.
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You mean , it is preferable to risk death and general destruction to the surrounding public rather than suspend whatever fake training mission you are on ?
 
TonyG said:
Huh.

Sounds good on the face of it, but how far do you go? No captains or FOs into DCA if they haven't been before? (that's training, right?) We'll have helo crews fly the routes for the first time with a VIP on board, maybe in an emergency? He could say, "well, I didn't mean drop THAT training". Yeah, right. I've seen a few of his videos and have liked them, but that comment from him doesn't seem to hold water.
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I took that (as posted by @Hunter Handsfield, I haven't seen the video) to mean drop training when there is a conflict. Take the NVGs off, turn away, look for traffic, etc.
 
The tower staffing and operating conditions during the unfortunate events bother me a whole lot.

There were 5 controllers present, one of whom was a trainee.

3 controllers had duties that did not include in flight planes, and performed satisfactorily.
The planes in flight controller was covering both fixed wing and helicopters, was the trainee to inexperienced to trust with just the helicopter(s)?

There was a supervisor and a supervisor trainee present.

I have been many towers as a guest, including the old DCA, IAD, BWI, ADW, Craig and Panama City, FL, and several others. When there is a shortage for any reason, the supervisor took the position until the shortage was ended, even hours later.

Why was it more important to train the supervisor than to step in to the helicopter slot, and show the training supervisor how that should be done to assure safety issues did not result from a personnel shortage?

Alternately, the supervisor could hands on train the new controller on the helicopter position, while the supervisor trainee learned how that should be done.

As an experienced training and safety supervisor, I am very happy that I am not answering these questions at DCA tower.
 
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