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

That’s very literal-minded. Ok. I will leave it there.

@notimagain yes that's it, I didn't hear more on it but maybe they were edited

Good to know the specifics

Here is my initial post, written roughly 15 hours ago:

There was another plane coming in to land on a different trajectory. I think the helicopter pilot focused on that one and didn't see the one in front of them. The helicopter was on a training flight. So damn sad.

Whether that was the case or there was instrument malfunction and the chopper's altitude was misreading or the NVGs impaired the view, or some combination of such events, who knows at this point.

Then came vice-president JD Vance, who claimed "we want to hire the best people" who are "actually competent enough to do the job".

Oh, the irony.

That journalist is an utter disgrace. Taking advantage of a man in terrible shock and asking to see his wife's last text. I felt cheapened by watching it. Totally unethical.

Maybe the doomsday plane was heading for the air force base anyway and had to take that diversionary route if the airspace was closed?

That size of aircraft needs a long runway and I’m not sure, without googling, if the runway at DCA is long enough.

I’d almost forgotten about that - If you are referring to the route shown way back on page One I can’t see anything particularly odd about it, it looks like a fairly standard sort of route coming off airways to join a rectangular traffic pattern with a long straight in final approach to the northerly runway at Andrews.

The main runway at DCA (01/19) looks to be just over 7000 feet long which would be tight for something 747 size (from memory doable in a 747 at a real push ) and I’d imagine the ramp/taxiways might not be up to the size and weight.

That’s one of many reasons commercial heavy stuff serving Washington goes into Dulles, which is out to the west if the city.

I agree. You can see the other plane clearly. But as an absolute drongo when it comes to anything aeronautic what happened to good old radar? Sorry if this has been asked. You know like"Yikes, there's a massive plane a mile in front of usaccording to the radar Perhaps we should divert"

Morning.

A few points on that:

The onboard radar that for example the CRJ carried, not sure about the helicopter, is designed for weather avoidance. It works at a wavelength that gives best returns from water droplets, not aircraft and in any event at low altitude the screen would be full of ground returns (known as clutter) from buildings, bridges etc, essentially in the circumstances it would be useless for collision avoidance.

Whether the ATC controller in the tower had access to and time to monitor their radar which might have shown the full picture, don’t know

The only other onboard option as far as the CRJ goes, possibly the helicopter was the collision avoidance system (TCAS). At low altitude the automated aural callouts from that are inhibited (see a few pps as to why) but it also produces a sort of a pseudo radar type picture that might have displayed the helicopter as a symbol on a screen in the CRJs cockpit.

Unfortunately the CRJ was landing, down at <400 feet and the crew would have been concentrating on the landing maneuver, looking at the runway, with the odd glance in the cockpit to maybe check speed, they wouldn’t have been scanning all the other displays.

As far as the helicopter crew goes, and this is still speculation, they also would probably have been “heads out” and not looking inside the cockpit that much. It looks increasingly possible as if they thought they were doing OK concentrating on and avoiding the traffic they thought was a factor, and never saw the traffic they actually were supposed to avoid.

@margeyoursoakinginit I am
not sure radar would be the right tool for close encounters. But anyway - it’s a crowded airspace and limited separation seems to have been common. As I am sure it is at LHR, JFK etc. So the helicopter would have been fairly close to a a number of other aircraft. The plane was descending too, and (according to the YouTube linked above) had come around RR airport to access the shorter runway. Lots of changes in minimal time.

X post with @notimagain who has more knowledge

I was really shocked by that journalist too. Awful behaviour. There are no standards or respect any more.

The transcript from tower to plane screen shot below has some important unclear responses

Not sure where it's from or if the lines will be attributed at some point

He's at it again... (from the BBC)

President Trump has taken to his own social media platform, Trump Social, to claim that the Black Hawk helicopter involved in Wednesday's deadly crash was "flying too high, by a lot".
"The Black Hawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???," Trump writes.
As a reminder, an investigation into what led to the crash is currently under way, with a preliminary report expected to be released within the next 30 days.

From some data it looks like the helo might have been maybe at 300 feet, 100 feet above the declared top of the helicopter route. Whilst objectively that’s a height keeping error TBH if 100’ is that critical to maintaining separation then the route system is completely unfit for purpose.

Juan Brown has updated his video…slightly long at 11 min but all good stuff (again) and his wrap up at the end highlights a lot of the unknowns that haven’t really got MSM attention:

How long before trump starts shouting that the whole thing was hoax?

Thank you @notimagain

There’s footage of the wreckage, I think even Trump would struggle to call this a hoax.

(Aside - @notimagain did you see that the raising of the Bayesian will be delayed another couple of months? - www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/bayesian-sailing-yacht-sinking-salvage)

No I’d missed that, thanks for the update…

That's a really helpful video and makes it clear just how tight everything is and how hard the visuals are near city lights.

Yep, I’m a bit of a fan of Juan Browne’s work. (just realised I’ve been dropping the e.)..he does a lot of post accident stuff and whilst his format never really changes it works for me.

He’s business like, he doesn’t feel the need to try and impress by sticking his pilot’s uniform on (unlike some pundits) and he generally tries to stay factual and not drift too far into speculation…

In the video posted above, Juan points out that the aeroplane is 400 feetwhen it crashes. The helicopter swiftly gains altitude in those final moments going form 200 feet to 400M in seconds.

There is a strict height limit of 200 feet where the crash happened. The helicopter seems to comply with this until it reaches the aeroplane.

I can’t fathom how this sudden increase in height right near an aeroplane and with runways and a major airport to their right, is a coincidence.

I watched the video and I think the plane was marked at 400 ft (not metres) and the helicopter at 300ft on the last data point. Of course, the plane was descending to land so would have been heading down to 300ft etc.

We don’t know - maybe the helicopter black box will shed light when it is recovered - whether perhaps something happened with the helicopter instruments or they thought they were lifting to avoid something else etc.

Yes sorry I meant feet !

The heights I’m referring to are explained at 8.15 minutes on this link.

I guess it’s possible he has the data wrong but this looks correct.

The planes altitude was 400 feet at the point of impact unless what he’s working from is wrong/not accurate. This is also the height at time of crash that many media outlets reported.

You can from 8.15 that as the plane the gets lower and closer, the black hawk gets higher.

I don’t know why this isn’t the main question - the altitude increase ? For one it’s against the rules and two it was right near an airport and three the chopper increased height at exactly the right moment in time.

Added to this we only know the names of 2 of the service men of the 3 flying the chopper and we don’t yet have a flight manifest. Trump was very cagey even asked at the press conference. I think it was a fair question - it’s a significant event with word wide public interest.