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Plane reported down in the Potomac, near KDCA

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Juan posted:

 

Matthew Kane

I'm Dyslexic, what's an error to you is not to me 

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  • A few points about this tragic, and entirely avoidable, incident: 1. ATC should have been closely monitoring these aircraft and issued appropriate warnings. Either one of the pilots screwed up, o

  • I wholeheartedly disagree with that statement. Goverment employees have the same rights as anyone, meaning they should be able to get the support of a union and strike whenever they deem it is warrant

  • Matthew Kane
    Matthew Kane

    Too early to speculate but why was a Helicopter in the approach area in the first place??? Not good 

I just saw a report that passengers on the flight were members of the US Figure Skating Team, not sure how many but I don’t think it was the entire team. 
I recall a similar event in 61 when a plane crashed in Europe had the US Figure Skating Team on board so this could be the second time this happened. 
 

RIP 

Matthew Kane

I'm Dyslexic, what's an error to you is not to me 

Right now there’s a controller who feels like there’s a rock on top of him or her. Looking back I’m glad I got away from that job after eight years. Didn’t feel that way at the time (1981) but I think it was for the best for my family and myself.

Vic green

VAS Aviation did their thing:

 

And the helo routes for the Baltimore-Washington area are available here: https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/12-26-2024/PDFs/Balt-Wash_Heli.pdf. The last page has enough info for understanding the situation, and VAS Aviation did an excellent job of overlaying the radar readings on the charts (1:20 until shortly before impact at 2:31).

I see the Blackhawk was at its correct altitude (200 ft AGL max) until shortly before impact. Why? Good question...

In the meantime, peace to their souls 🙏🏻

Edited by Luis Hernandez
Grammar

Best regards,
Luis Hernández 20px-Flag_of_Colombia.svg.png20px-Flag_of_Argentina.svg.png

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I guess my question is why would military helo conduct a training flight in the short final path of a runway to a major airfield when things were obviously busy. I don't even see what the CRJ pilots could have done in that situation. And why PAT25 confirmed visual contact... maybe visual contact with wrong aircraft? I feel so bad for everyone involved. Horrible, horrible accident. 

For those that want to go more "in-depth" on this collision there is a useful discussion ongoing on the Professional Pilots Forum.

Hope mods don't mind me posting the link to that discussion. If they do please remove!

https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/663888-aa5342-down-dca.html

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UK PPL since 2006 current on PA-28, C-152, C172, Decathlon, C-42 based at EGHP.

  • Moderator

“Hold position for landing traffic”. Helicopters can hover. It was pitch black.

I cannot understand why ATC allowed the helicopter to venture into the approach path.

Ray (Cheshire, England).

System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke, Fulcrum Throttle Quadrant.

Cheadle Hulme Weather website.

chlive.php

2 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

“Hold position for landing traffic”. Helicopters can hover. It was pitch black.

I cannot understand why ATC allowed the helicopter to venture into the approach path.

Night VFR and on a published heli route underneath the final approach path. It wouldn't happen here in the U.K but is quite common in the U.S. 

Chillblast Core i5 14600KF Liquid Cooled RTX 4070 SUPER 32GB RAM. Internet: 1 Gig Fibre. HoneyComb Throttle & Flight System.

UK PPL since 2006 current on PA-28, C-152, C172, Decathlon, C-42 based at EGHP.

  • Moderator
10 minutes ago, TrafficPilot said:

Night VFR and on a published heli route underneath the final approach path. It wouldn't happen here in the U.K but is quite common in the U.S. 

They need to look at their procedures. Reading the comments on the PPRUNE site several non-US pilots are very critical of ATC over there,

Ray (Cheshire, England).

System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke, Fulcrum Throttle Quadrant.

Cheadle Hulme Weather website.

chlive.php

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

They need to look at their procedures. Reading the comments on the PPRUNE site several non-US pilots are very critical of ATC over there,

Many pilots in the US are quite dissatisfied with ATC interactions and their attitude. 
 
In this specific case, I'm still curious as to why no traffic advisory was given to the RJ, why there was no resolution alert from ATC, and why there was no TCAS TA aural warning. This is a very sad time and a completely unacceptable situation. 

747 Captain for the last 39 years, and still learning. 

32 minutes ago, LRBS said:
Many pilots in the US are quite dissatisfied with ATC interactions and their attitude. 
 
In this specific case, I'm still curious as to why no traffic advisory was given to the RJ, why there was no resolution alert from ATC, and why there was no TCAS TA aural warning. This is a very sad time and a completely unacceptable situation. 

TCAS doesn't give alerts that close to the ground near airports. Listening to the ATC audio, ATC did have an alert come up but it seems to have been too late to do anything.

This accident makes me really angry for some reason.....

Maybe because of how seemingly preventable it was. 

A traffic call from ATC along the lines of "PAT25, traffic 11 o-clock, 1 mile at 500ft, CRJ circling for runway 33, report traffic in sight.".....might have stopped this.....or even a simple "PAT25 turn left now"....

 

DB

1 minute ago, DaviiB said:

This accident makes me really angry for some reason.....

Maybe because of how seemingly preventable it was. 

A traffic call from ATC along the lines of "PAT25, traffic 11 o-clock, 1 mile at 500ft, CRJ circling for runway 33, report traffic in sight.".....might have stopped this.....or even a simple "PAT25 turn left now"....

 

DB

They were on a heli-route and should have remained at or below 200 FT ASL as per the chart restriction. For whatever reason they climbed above 200 FT and hit the landing aircraft. 

A really quite stupid idea to have a heli corridor right underneath the final approach to a civil airport with a heli operating on another frequency and flying in Night VFR. Mad.

Chillblast Core i5 14600KF Liquid Cooled RTX 4070 SUPER 32GB RAM. Internet: 1 Gig Fibre. HoneyComb Throttle & Flight System.

UK PPL since 2006 current on PA-28, C-152, C172, Decathlon, C-42 based at EGHP.

7 minutes ago, TrafficPilot said:

They were on a heli-route and should have remained at or below 200 FT ASL as per the chart restriction. For whatever reason they climbed above 200 FT and hit the landing aircraft. 

A really quite stupid idea to have a heli corridor right underneath the final approach to a civil airport with a heli operating on another frequency and flying in Night VFR. Mad.

I understand the part about being on a heli-route, but isn't the whole point of an established route to automatically deconflict traffic?

i.e. There should be no need for ATC to say "pass behind XX aircraft". That should happen as a result of the heli being on the route.

I guess I'm making your point for you.

DB

20 minutes ago, DaviiB said:

A traffic call from ATC along the lines of "PAT25, traffic 11 o-clock, 1 mile at 500ft, CRJ circling for runway 33, report traffic in sight.".....might have stopped this.....or even a simple "PAT25 turn left now"....

ATC did ask the heli pilot if they had the CRJ in sight a couple of times, and the heli pilot confirmed they did. They very likely had the wrong aircraft in sight though.

It's also sounding like ATC was short staffed at the time too.

Quote

 

That’s according to a report by the Federal Aviation Administration that was obtained by The Associated Press.

The report says one air traffic controller was working two positions at the time of the crash.

“The position configuration was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the report says.

 

https://apnews.com/live/dc-plane-crash-reagan-updates#00000194-b8ea-d66a-a1bd-f9fa612b0000

Edited by kangoat
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