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

Not at all strange, there’s a military base that operates helicopters 24/7 fairly adjacent to DCA.

In response to other comments:

Yes hard to see other aircraft at night against a lot environment (e.g. city) and FWIW some of the electronic collision avoidance devices operate in a alightkybdegraded at very low level.

Can’t see how all the discussion about “Doomsday plane” is relevant to this at all.

Awful tragedy

I just don’t understand why a helicopter was allowed to take off in such close proximity to a final approach path

Ummm…not sure that’s quite correct TBH, certainly surface tension doesn’t really enter into it.

The big problem with the Potomac ATM will be water temperature.

Sky news reporting

There has been one landing of a commercial aircraft on water and nothing had crashed into it meaning the pilot had an opportunity to control things. This is very different.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

Agree. Helicopters crash a lot, relatively. Often completely accidental, only in the last few days, the crash that killed the owner of Leicester City Football Club a few years ago was ruled to be an accident.

It also could be the case that the air disturbance caused by a jet coming into land could be enough to affect the flight stability of a nearby helicopter, although obviously these things should never get anywhere close enough to crash into each other.

Plus if the water is freezing the time you survive if you can't get out is short.

Absolutely this. People on a website unable to go to another website and type in “what is a doomsday plane?”🙄

In my defence, I thought it was a metaphor rather than a type of aircraft. What website do yo7 t3commend to explore what I should make of it landing 45 m from the airport?

Wouldn’t it be more useful to have the definition on here rather than everyone having to google individually, though?

@MrsElijahMikaelson1 maybe posters also wanted to know why someone thought the domesday plane was significant in this scenario

I dont understand how / why the helicopter just carried on after being told by air traffic control there was a plane nearby? And the helicopter seemingly didn't respond? I think that will need to be an area of focus - what was going on in that helicopter?

There were two planes coming in. One further away, and the one the copter hit.

ATC, lookout etc will be of many many things the investigation will look at, you won’t get a credible answer to those sort of questions for months.

Well immediately after the crash the local airport was closed, and that was probably the next closest one.

I don't know about the 'doomsday plane' but having Googled, I see that it's nothing more than a mobile emergency response centre so no more remarkable than a hospital or fire engine.

For info there have been several, e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GarudaIndonesiaFlight421

Sully wasn’t the first, but as you rightly mention you need an intact’ish aircraft to start with.

According to the blog of an experienced helicopter pilot, military aircraft communicate via UHF, so on available recordings we would hear the tower talking to the helicopter, but not the helicopter talking to the tower.

I thought that. From the cctv footage of the collision it looks like the helicopter followed then flew in to it

That appears to be confirmed. I skate and am in some online skating groups and people there pretty much knew immediately. They initially hoped the were wrong about which flight it was but it's since been confirmed behind the scenes as families have been contacted.

I’d caution trying to guesstimate flight paths at night especially from CCTV.

I see Trump is helpfully blaming the control tower on social media. Never misses an opportunity to dish out blame and stir up hatred. No need to wait for the facts.

According to a professional forum, Helicopter Low Level Routes are standardized throughout the DC area. It even provides a map of them.

And the plane's path was also standard.

From a comms/ recordings POV that’s credible..

No he isn't. He's saying that the plane was exactly where it was supposed to be, which is true. And that there is a question around why the helicopter was where it shouldn't have been. Also true.

Your post literally does what it's accusing him of.

Should Trump be commenting on social media apart from condolences until all the facts are known