Washington DC Plane/Helicopter Collision

[ThatEllie]

Is anyone awake and following this, or anyone in the States? It looks horrific. A US military Blackhawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines plane and both went down into the Potomac River.

You can see helicopters circling like mad on FlightRadar. I really hope they’re finding people.

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/29/us/plane-crash-washington-dc

There will be a report next week.

Yep, If I meant I’ll add a reminder for those that don’t follow this sort of thing that the 30’ish day report is a general brief on how things are going, not the final document with all the conclusions and recommendations.

The NTSB Chairman Jennifer Homendy plus an assistant did a very good brief to the press a couple of weeks back, I think what little was revealed there backed up general informed opinion (and that’s all this is at this stage, speculation) that the the helicopter crew failed to maintain visual separation (and that the ATC/helicopter route system is a mess)

Transcript of that brief :

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/Feb.14.2025_Briefing_Mid-air_Collision%20near%20DCA.pdf

Thanks for the transcript. Much prefer reading to YouTube!

Would the nose being 9 degrees up be normal for that decsent or does that indicate the crj might have seen the helicopter and be trying to pull up?

Nine degrees up wouldn’t be normal and it looks very much like they were trying to avoid but it was too late.

That NTSB brief states there was a big control (up elevator) input just prior to impact - that would produce the pitch up, and at a previous briefing there was mention that the cockpit voice recorder had registered a concerned comment (exactly what was said was not revealed) about a second before the collision.

For those still following, preliminary report now out:

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA25MA108%20Prelim.pdf

Also from a few days ago this, jaw dropping in places , which highlights what appears to many to be the real problem area, which isn’t DEI or pilot aircraft handling skills…..TBH it’s almost a miracle it’s taken so long for an accident like this to happen at this airport.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AIR2501.pdf

Thank you for this @notimagain . I've only skim read it .
The helicopters instruments weren't accurate in reading the height of three helicopter . Is that right ?
By 100 ft ?
And the height distance allowed between helicopters and planes was too little ?.

Yep, there was an as yet unexplained difference of at least one time 100 feet between left and right barometric altimeters ..

but…

The much much much bigger problem is where the two routes (helicopter route down river vs. approach to the runway) cross there was potential for zero height difference, even if both aircraft were flying perfectly accurately..from the second report:

”Because helicopter routes have no lateral boundaries”..”At an altitude of 200 feet a helicopter operating over the eastern shoreline of the Potomac River would have about 75 feet of vertical separation from an airplane approaching runway 33 and this distance decreases if the helicopter is operated further from the shoreline”.

For info the height keeping tolerance on an instrument check ride is generally plus/minus 100 feet and for that reason if you have two routes crossing at low altitude like this and you want to cater for the aircraft not seeing each other and both being slightly adrift on height the standard separation in the US would be at least 500 feet vertically.

However on the night in question it was clear skies, the helicopter crew asked for “visual separation”, which was allowable in those conditions and that meant height keeping was less critical/less important as long as they stayed visual with the traffic they were meant to avoid.

They didn’t..

Now why they didn’t is the first $64,000 question, the second one is why the routes and procedures continued to be used despite it appearing (second document) there has been a long history of close encounters between helicopter traffic and aircraft going into DCA.

For info the height keeping tolerance on an instrument check ride is generally plus/minus 100 feet
Aah,I didn't realise that.
Do you think the helicopter was looking at the wrong plane?
And the plane just never saw them ?
Yes , an accident waiting to happen ,I agree.

Do you think the helicopter was looking at the wrong plane?

That’s the opinion of a lot of people - they may have been looking at, and therefore thought they were avoiding, an aircraft further out from the airfield on the approach to another runway. The helicopter crew were wearing night vision googles which may have compromised peripheral vision.

At a press conference a couple of weeks back the NTSB boss Jennifer Nomendy said they were going to be carrying out some sort of visibility trials to replicate the POV of the helicopter crew.

The airliner crew will have (rightly) been concentrating on the visual approach to the runway they would have been hard pressed to have spotted the helicopter against the city lights until they did, unfortunately just before the collision.

Thank you @notimagain . What you've explained in your last paragraph seems obvious to me now, but I'd not understood that before.

Thanks for the link and the additional explanations @notimagain - I was looking yesterday but obviously too early in the day.

Wow, that second document and the graph. 😥

ETA: astonishing that this went on so long with near misses and wasn't stopped before.

Story seems to be DCA used to have a limit on destinations (based on range), but all the politicians states wide wanted to fly out of DCA to get to/from home rather than treck out to Dulles, so DCA had got busier and busier..

The military/politicians also liked/needed helicopters for reasons various.

All added up to a massive amount of traffic around the airport, automation was responsible for more and more “saves”, and nobody was actually taking notice of the incident reports ..

Looks like a an absolute classic case of normalisation of deviance.

The Sky News summary

https://news.sky.com/story/helicopter-flights-at-washingtons-reagan-airport-should-be-partially-banned-amid-intolerable-risk-of-collisions-with-planes-investigators-13326512

ETA - quote
Asked if there had been an oversight, she said "it's stronger than an oversight" as there was data between 2021 and 2024 the FAA "could've used anytime" to determine that "we have a trend here and a problem here and looked at that route".
"That didn't occur which is why we are taking action today but unfortunately people lost lives and loved ones are grieving."

This was published in NYT today, have not read all of it but very detailed and some things that were not discussed yet

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/business/dc-plane-crash-reagan-airport.html

It's not bad summary, nothing much in there that hasn't already been mentioned by the NTSB but I do have a couple of gripes,

It clings to the idea (as shown in the schematic) that the heli route had a defined width - it didn't..in reality due geometry you could actually be in the heli route below 300 feet and still have a conflict. As written that article kind of shifts a lot of the blame again onto the pilot's flying accuracy....that might be a contributory reason but the procedure and charting was crap.

Also the whole discussion about the helicopters ADS being off is ultimately almost certainly going to be regarded as largely irrelevant (as I think TBF one contributor points out). It's basic transponder was operating so the helicopter was visible to both ATC and the collision avoidance system on the airliner.

Having fully read this, I hadn’t thought of the chain-of-command issue (which was iirc a problem among pilots, especially those of East Asian ethnicity). Perhaps commercial airliners have ironed those out largely (I am think South Korea had to have culturally sensitive training on this?) but maybe the military did not. The pilot outranked the trainer and did not respond to the last set of instructions—or was the ending overly dramatic?

Having gone back and had a another look at the NYT piece I have to say the last few paras are horribly speculative,.especially the comments about medical factors.

Normally in any crew you try and share mental models.before acting,.or at least process hints or instructions begin acting on them. Certainly if Warrant Officer (WO) said something along the lines of " I think ATC want us to turn left.."..you have to allow the Lieutenant some rhinking time ("is that reasonable thing to do?)"

If OTOH if the WO had said "you must turn left now" a more prompt turn would be in order.

The NYT piece seems determined to chuck various options into the mix and almost present them as all having an equal probability of being the route cause..I think that ship sailed a few weeks afo

The thinking for weeks now seems to be that the root cause was the insane route system (now rejigged) which led to crews "threading the needle" as the NYT puts it plus the US ATC system often offering visual.separation at night...

Things like command gradients, medical issues (if there were any), night vision goggles etc might get a mention in the final report but probably as a footnote...or as contributory factors.

You are right, his instructions did not have a tone of urgency to them as you’d expect (although we didn’t hear it, but the
wording suggests this).

Then again I don’t have a military background so don’t know this is managed with them. I know in the Korean commercial pilot case the junior pilot noticed problems but did not communicate this effectively so their training programs had to change to address this.

Probably no urgency because it's likely nobody on the helicopter crew perceived there was a close range threat.

FWIW there's been a lot of recent discussion in various places about how the air traffic system and routes around the airport was allowed to become so overloaded and why no action was taken after some previous close calls.

This could get quite very political once the NTSB final report is released and whilst the helicopter crew will shoulder some of the responsibiliy for the accident it's important they don't end up being used as scapecoats.

Edit to add: having posted the above I've just opened up DM website and seen their take on the report which points the finger of blame straight at Captain Lobach...in all honesty that's absolutely outrageous.

For those still following, another foul up/conflict ,
On Thursday between two airliners and a helicopter on one of the heli routes still open for use.

This is CNN's version of what went on:

edition.cnn.com/2025/05/02/us/ntsb-investigation-dca-aborted-landings

thank you for the updates @notimagain .i'm not contributing ,but following .and agreeing with you 😀

Update: nowhere near getting the final report yet but there have been fun and games in Washington in the last few days at a hearing related to the crash and the politics behind it...and as many suspected this really is turning out to be much more about politics than the flying abilities of a couple of helicopter pilots.

I've seen some of the coverage of the hearings and The National Transportation Safety Board boss, Jennifer Homendy, as had to go into head teacher mode when dealing with some of the witnesses.

Link below should lead you around a paywall to a Seattle Times piece on events:

archive.ph/7td29

How awful (and yet not surprising!)

For those still following/interested the findings so far (what follows is not the final final AFAIK) into what caused this were presented a day or two back both in a presentation by the NTSB and now in document form..

It's a very long read, I've only skimmed it so far but eventually half way down:

"We determined that the probable cause of this accident was the FAA’s placement of a helicopter route in close proximity to a runway approach path; their failure to regularly review and evaluate helicopter routes and available data, and their failure to act on recommendations to mitigate the risk of a midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport; as well as the air traffic system’s overreliance on visual separation in order to promote efficient traffic flow without consideration for the limitations of the see-and-avoid concept."

So not DEI/ female pilot, deliberate act or whatever, but as many pointed out from early on, crap airspace design and management...so the FAA get a justified kicking.

Link to full document:

www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/DCA25MA108.aspx