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

I'm watching Sky News, I'm disgusted at the interviewing of people whose family were on the plane. A poor man, clearly in shock, sitting at the airport has just had his last texts from his wife aired all over the news. Absolutely vile. They actually angled the camera to film the texts.

I’m not sure the helicopter had the speed to fly into the back of the airliner TBH.

We’re back to the problem that it’s very very hard to judge range/distance/geometry at night, and it’s even harder to do it from CCTV footage.

The NTSB will have radar plots, probably before long CVR/FDR data and some ADS data (to higher resolution than the public sites provide) that’ll nail down the flight paths.

https://x.com/MayorBowser/status/1884943060934500554

Live briefing. Incredibly sad situation.

@samarrange

For conspiracy-free analysis of any plane crash, I recommend PPrune, a forum frequented mostly by current or retired air crew.

Sadly I’m afraid you’ve got to be careful even on that site..lots of people are not who they claim to be and unless you know the business it’s hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Sadly it’s become increasingly clobbered by amateur crash investigators and some tin foil hat wearers in recent years, so worth a look but treat with caution.

Only yesterday from here in the middle of NI I was watching two large planes criss cross each other, one moving south right down the middle of Ireland from its origin in Norway, and another moving north-west to cross the Atlantic having come from continental Europe. Seen them both outside my window whilst also looking at them on flight radar, and while on the latter they were in direct alignment with each other, looking out the window I could see the one crossing the Atlantic was way higher, 2000 feet (or whatever the minimum distance these planes must be away from each other).

Found it fascinating how well orchestrated the traffic is controlled from the ground so had a discussion with my dad minutes after seeing this wondering how it works, how much sooner the planes are told where to go, like is it five minutes and then the screen flashes so the traffic controller then tells one of them to ascend or descend. Had maybe a 10 minute conversation on this and also thought my brother being a pilot of smaller aircraft would know (never got to talk to him though). And then wake up to hear this happen. Apparently the pilot on the helicopter got less than 5 seconds of a warning ('can you see the plane', and 'get behind it'). That's shocking.

Also the thought of a helicopter hovering around an airport also leaves me queasy. It's not like wild birds, but still they are not as predictable as airplanes in that they operate at different attitudes and also weave about. Don't think they should be anywhere near airports. And then you hear they got instructions from a different frequency to those of airplanes. Complete shambles.

Awful for all those poor souls who have died. Those on the plane coming into land would have been preparing themselves for getting off. May they all RIP.

So the conclusion from the briefing is that it was absolutely preventable.

@ChessorBuckaroo

Found it fascinating how well orchestrated the traffic is controlled from the ground so had a discussion with my dad minutes after seeing this wondering how it works, how much sooner the planes are told where to go, like is it five minutes and then the screen flashes so the traffic controller then tells one of them to ascend or descend.

At high level there’s a logic to levels used verses direction of flight - same rough direction, same altitude sort of thing, so once you are in the cruise it’s not that common to have to change levels quickly just to avoid somebody coming the other way.

The situation around airports is a lot different but again there’s usually a “flow” so you shouldn’t be ducking and diving.

Problem with the States around airports (as I mentioned upthread and as is increasingly being discussed elsewhere) is the mix of different types of traffic using slightly different rules and then on top of that ATC’s keenness to make folks “go visual”, which allows them to tighten up spacing and can often absolve them of any responsibility for traffic separation. It’s actually not too bad daytime, good weather at an airport you know, but at night, not a good idea.

no survivors

This is just so sad and distressing and seems to have been something that should never have been allowed to happen. It seems full of confusion.

I woke up to messages from my children as one is in Washington and their sibling was watching it on the news. I saw the end of the messages first so knew my child was potentially involved or in the area so was a horrible moment.

I am relieved for me but so so sad for the families of those who have lost loved ones. I don't think the interviewer should have asked the husband to show his wife's text messages.

Trump has fired important people at the already short staffed FAA. Staff are exhausted and over stretched. ATC's got the offer letter to resign. Don't be surprised if crashes become more common.

Jeeez! America is no place to be right now.

Sean Duffy:

“We’re going to wait for all the information to come in from this vantage point but to back up what the president said and what I’ve seen so far, do I think this was preventable? Absolutely.”

It exists and it has incredibly tragic circumstances. Now it's clear that something happened within the helicopter. Is it absolutely preventable? Not so sure about the absolutely. I'm not going to speculate further.

With trump holding absolute power we will see a lot more of this kind of thing.
Anyone who is knowledgeable capable or competent will be perceived as a threat and will be defenestrated.
As in North Korea with one fat man surrounded by undenourished minions, trump will need to position himself as the wealthiest genius in the USA.
Mark my words ☹️.

Just because you hate Trump doesn’t mean he caused all bad things.

It’s been well established that FAA faced certain challenges I’ll not go into here. But you can Google NTSB and ‘near misses’ and get an idea of it

Very much agree, I think we need to be cautious of somehow blaming this on Trump or the new administration.

There has been increasing concern for quite some time now about the quality of some controlling and staffing levels in US ATC and there have been some err..interesting incidents in the last few years at some US airports, almost always down to controller overload or competence.

The system has needed fixing for some time,,whether Trump is the one to fix it…I have my doubts.

To clarify, Sean Duffy is the newly sworn in Transportation Secretary. He is also a climate change denier.

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

Or not infantilising adults who are capable to using the internet.
plus it wouldn’t matter if someone put up a link as has been seen on this thread…a link is on and posters are still asking!

But if you give a link, there's always someone who says 'I don't click on random links'.

It's a MN weirdness. Someone asks a question and you get half a dozen contradictory answers because apparently people can't be expected to google for themselves nor is anyone interested in a simple way of finding out the right answer and would rather guess which one it is amongst posts from people who just make things up.

You're bang on.

ATC recording here from about 17 mins in - https://archive.liveatc.net/kdca/KDCA1-Twr-Jan-30-2025-0130Z.mp3

Here for @notimagain 's ever-wise counsel on such matters.

Separately:

Also the thought of a helicopter hovering around an airport also leaves me queasy. It's not like wild birds, but still they are not as predictable as airplanes in that they operate at different attitudes and also weave about. Don't think they should be anywhere near airports.
@ChessorBuckaroo airports and military bases being near the country's capital makes sense though, doesn't it?

And then you hear they got instructions from a different frequency to those of airplanes. Complete shambles.

Not a shambles if the ATC is well aware and used to switching frequencies, which I am sure they are, and have been for years/decades.

*And then you hear they got instructions from a different frequency to those of airplanes. Complete shambles.

Not a shambles if the ATC is well aware and used to switching frequencies, which I am sure they are, and have been for years/decades.*

Agree with @SheilaFentiman on this, it’s that not uncommon even in the UK for one controller to be operating two frequencies (I think called bandboxing), so in an aircraft you only hear the ATCers calls on “your” frequency. It’s certainly going to be an issue with a controller doing joint civil and military controlling because civvies use VHF for communications the mil are usually using UHF.

However it is fair to say that there can be a drawback because it can mean you lose some situational awareness, which may have happened here.

FWIW Juan Brown (777 pilot in the States) over on YouTube is usually a safe pair of hands for doing non speculative reports on this sort of thing..he must have clobbered together this effort quite quickly earlier today:

This is what I heard from American friends today.

Of course there will be blame b/c that is what this administration does rather than look at the root issues. Vance is now saying at the press conference this is what happens when you don't hire the best people and diversity hire instead. I feel very sad that people will be blamed as part of a right wing political agenda.

To answer the "training flight" points:

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth: Helicopter crew was 'fairly experienced'
In a video address on Thursday, defense secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Army helicopter crew involved in the plane-helicopter collision was “fairly experienced.”
Describing the flight as an “annual proficiency training flight,” Hegseth said:
“It was a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation. They did have night vision goggles.”