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

GLMS_NC said:
What do safety pilots do? Just what you said above for the IP - calling out traffic and obstacles. Don't call them safety pilots; OK - role is exactly the same. You just confirmed it. Both copter pilots failed at see and avoid. a helicopter flew broadside into a commercial airliner in VFR conditions!

And yes, a 1,000 hour IP should know when to use what on any given training flight. 100% agree with you. Are these training and evaluation exercises handled the same way when the IP is of lower rank than the pilot being evaluated? Oh..... gets complicated now, doesn't it.

Everyone....PLEASE exercise good ADM. As PIC we ALL have a responsibility and leave any ego you may have on the ramp.
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I was just referring to the FAA definition for pilots operating using a vision restricting device and the person off the controls being a safety pilot. NVGs don’t fall under that definition. As a broad title yes, the IP was acting as a safety pilot but then again, so was the CPT.

Rank shouldn’t have any influence on pass or fail. I think some are putting more importance on the rank thing than necessary. An Army Captain is nothing. Especially since she wasn't in his CoC. An IP wouldn’t face any repercussions if he were to fail some POL CPT who’s barely maintaining currency anyway.

Now, there might be some bias in wanting to push her along but that has nothing to do with rank. Her position as a staff aviator and no longer in a line platoon could come into play. On a checkride with a staff aviator, you’re not expecting a solid performance. Not saying she would’ve passed this ride but there’s a chance the IP doesn’t want to fail her and reschedule another ride in an already busy flight schedule. It’s like pulling teeth to try and schedule some staffers for check rides / currency / training when they have so many non flying tasks taking up their time. Plus, odds of her being assigned as a PC in the future were slim.
 
flyingron said:
FAA suspends class B/C visual separation:

Here's the actual notice without the press release hype:


Contact is Crystal Ball @ the FAA (if that's a real person).
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That transportation summary was strong on the feels. Thanks for including the FAA.gov version. The main point that is clear in the FAA link is that this applies only to separation of rotor wing and powered lift aircraft. My first reaction was, visual separation suspension between two planes on 5 mile final would be a disaster at most class B airports. Glad it is plane to chopper only.
 
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Wow, that is; A: so obvious. And B: weak sauce. C: open to interpretation. I wonder what provenance Crystal L Ball holds.
 
tlglenn said:
www.army.mil

Army Releases Findings from Administrative Investigation into January 29, 2025, Midair Collision

The U.S. Army honors the memory of the lives lost in the tragic midair collision on January 29, 2025. The U.S. Army extends its deepest condolences to t...
www.army.mil www.army.mil

There's a link to their docket, which is a huge download.
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Administrative investigation is different than Safety investigation. Military does multiple concurrent investigations. You’ll never see what the other found and concluded. This one, like the naval services’ JAGMANs is merely to see if criminal culpability exists. Don’t take it as being the Army’s line. We don’t know and will never know what is the Army’s view here.
 
Haven’t read this yet though here is another look at the incident:

www.linkedin.com

Application of System-Oriented Analysis Methods | William Bramble

Here is the paper about analysis methods used in the DCA midair report that I recently wrote with my colleagues Brice Banning and Allison Diaz and presented at the annual meeting of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators. It may be of interest to other safety investigators...
www.linkedin.com www.linkedin.com

Regarding this collision, I think we can also tie Truman north of Suez, McCain and Fitzgerald collisions entering Malacca and near Japan respectively, as having certain similar aspects in terms of ADS-B and AIS and “operating tactically” dumbness considering environments would be different in tactical situations. They all had the same sort of thinking underlying them.
 
One reason why vessels under my command operate in "the clear" during normal operations...even during routine law enforcement patrols. Now, if we're targeting something where some stealth is required, sure I'll have my boats go encrypted. I just wouldn't be able to sleep at night if one of my boats was involved in a mishap that could've been prevented with a little more situational awareness from using AIS.
 
KE5BM said:
One reason why vessels under my command operate in "the clear" during normal operations...even during routine law enforcement patrols. Now, if we're targeting something where some stealth is required, sure I'll have my boats go encrypted. I just wouldn't be able to sleep at night if one of my boats was involved in a mishap that could've been prevented with a little more situational awareness from using AIS.
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I don't miss the pull-tape secure comms. I used to smoke so I had to burn them during the flight.
 
We used the pull tapes all the way up to 2011 or so when I was on CGC Brant. I often wondered how much money the government spent on those tapes and the books we had to burn every month. Using fancy palm-sized computers nowadays probably all equals out.
 
Fffflats said:
Haven’t read this yet though here is another look at the incident:

www.linkedin.com

Application of System-Oriented Analysis Methods | William Bramble

Here is the paper about analysis methods used in the DCA midair report that I recently wrote with my colleagues Brice Banning and Allison Diaz and presented at the annual meeting of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators. It may be of interest to other safety investigators...
www.linkedin.com www.linkedin.com

Regarding this collision, I think we can also tie Truman north of Suez, McCain and Fitzgerald collisions entering Malacca and near Japan respectively, as having certain similar aspects in terms of ADS-B and AIS and “operating tactically” dumbness considering environments would be different in tactical situations. They all had the same sort of thinking underlying them.
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In the UH-60/CRJ accident, the PAT 25 flight crew was not “operating tactically; i.e., the flight crew intended for their transponder to be transmitting ADS-B out but due to faulty equipment settings, their UH-60 was not transmitting ADS-B out. This was a nearly fleet-wide problem for the 12th AB UH-60Ls.

Furthermore, the NTSB stated that PAT 25 transmitting ADS-B out would have had no significant positive impact on either the CRJs TCAS or ATCs radar display.
 
KE5BM said:
We used the pull tapes all the way up to 2011 or so when I was on CGC Brant. I often wondered how much money the government spent on those tapes and the books we had to burn every month. Using fancy palm-sized computers nowadays probably all equals out.
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The helo had a safe installed where it had multi-combo locks on it. My only job was to run the tapes at a pre-set time and burn them after the co-pilot and the avionicsman unlocked the safe. I think we went away from that in 1991.

Couldn't have the Soviets listening to our FishPat patrol chatter
 
AquaLand said:
In the UH-60/CRJ accident, the PAT 25 flight crew was not “operating tactically; i.e., the flight crew intended for their transponder to be transmitting ADS-B out but due to faulty equipment settings, their UH-60 was not transmitting ADS-B out. This was a nearly fleet-wide problem for the 12th AB UH-60Ls.

Furthermore, the NTSB stated that PAT 25 transmitting ADS-B out would have had no significant positive impact on either the CRJs TCAS or ATCs radar display.
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Yeah. This.

I don’t understand why so much time has been wasted talking about the ads-b status. It had nothing to do with the accident. About as relevant as the color of their underwear.
 
It boils down to a garbage pilot not listening to her instructor and zero situational awareness.
 
This post is wildly off topic. I'm retired now, but building large data centers was the main focus of my technology construction firm for years. In 1989, I met my soon to be wife at a data center in Reston, VA, that my firm had just finished building and commissioning. Pulling tapes was still an everyday task. As the overall manager of the site, she was involved in that job every day, and disliked it mightily. She referred to the crew as her "tape apes." There were other workplace issues, and she was considering resignation.

I changed the situation six weeks later by somehow convincing her to move to Texas and live with me. We had known each other about five weeks and gone out together four or five times. The move included a stop in her hometown of St Louis, where I was not so jokingly accused of being a kidnapper by her friends and relatives. :biggrin:

We got married in 1993. In December, we'll celebrate 37 years together.
 
3393RP said:
This post is wildly off topic. I'm retired now, but building large data centers was the main focus of my technology construction firm for years. In 1989, I met my soon to be wife at a data center in Reston, VA, that my firm had just finished building and commissioning. Pulling tapes was still an everyday task. As the overall manager of the site, she was involved in that job every day, and disliked it mightily. She referred to the crew as her "tape apes." There were other workplace issues, and she was considering resignation.

I changed the situation six weeks later by somehow convincing her to move to Texas and live with me. We had known each other about five weeks and gone out together four or five times. The move included a stop in her hometown of St Louis, where I was not so jokingly accused of being a kidnapper by her friends and relatives. :biggrin:

We got married in 1993. In December, we'll celebrate 37 years together.
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WHAT!? Data centers in the 80s!!!
 
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