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American Airlines flight 5342 (CRJ) collides with Army UH-60 at DCA.


UnivTex34

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As a non-pilot who knows nothing about flying, how hard is it to track other aircraft from the cockpit visually? (My Grandmas brother who was a retired Navy pilot was killed in a mid-air collision by Caddo Mills in December 95, and it’s my understanding that a student and instructor just flew right into him) 

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3 minutes ago, bolverk said:

I haven't verified it but just read that this will likely be the deadliest aviation accident in the US since 9/11.

Wasn’t the November 2001 crash into a New York neighborhood pretty large? ETA that was 265 people 

Edited by Royalfan5
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3 minutes ago, FORTY NINE TO ZERO said:

bbc radio just said a high ranking CIA person was on the blackhawk.  Wonder if the BBC is misinformed or the army just means high ranking army officials in their statement 

Internet rumors:

image.png.c1c11c9ee369fe9be8568afbff992184.png

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26 minutes ago, DaysOff said:


We'll find out soon enough.

This. I’m done watching the news, reading the threads, responding to a shit ton of text messages cause none of us have any idea what the hell happened. Time to go to bed and hope there’s a glimmer of good news regarding survivors tomorrow morning.

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DC plane crash: The military helicopter that collided with the plane was an Army-piloted Black Hawk on a "routine training flight," Joint Task Force-National Capitol Region media chief Heather Chairez tells me. It belonged to B Company, 12th Aviation Battalion.

 

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As a non-pilot who knows nothing about flying, how hard is it to track other aircraft from the cockpit visually? (My Grandmas brother who was a retired Navy pilot was killed in a mid-air collision by Caddo Mills in December 95, and it’s my understanding that a student and instructor just flew right into him) 

Probably 100 degrees left and right, 60 up and 10 down. But other shit sees 360 which makes this avoidable.
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I sometimes hope for no survivors, I can’t imagine the pain and suffering of someone who survives something like this, I find myself hoping it was quick and painless for the victims. I might be wrong, it just sounds horrific.

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13 minutes ago, Royalfan5 said:

Wasn’t the November 2001 crash into a New York neighborhood pretty large? ETA that was 265 people 

Good catch.

image.png.4b0e84d7f4387ecc25fc0ff1fe2ac6d7.png

 

 

Edit:
Different source and different stat.

Edited by bolverk
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Wasn’t the November 2001 crash into a New York neighborhood pretty large? ETA that was 265 people 

Yes, media gets a little berserk with tragedies like this. It’s definitely worse than Colgan Air in 2009 or the Delta commuter crash in KY in 2006.

Just awful.
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20 minutes ago, Royalfan5 said:

As a non-pilot who knows nothing about flying, how hard is it to track other aircraft from the cockpit visually? (My Grandmas brother who was a retired Navy pilot was killed in a mid-air collision by Caddo Mills in December 95, and it’s my understanding that a student and instructor just flew right into him) 

I wonder if the Helo crew thought Tower was talking about the plane taking off?  

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Just now, Leeroy Jenkins said:

I wonder if the Helo crew thought Tower was talking about the plane taking off?  

I listened to a good chunk of that air traffic audio recording, and I couldn't understand hardly anything anyone said. I sure hope ATC & pilots have better audio than what I heard. Of course, they've got a shitload more experience listening to the radio chatter than I do. 

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1 minute ago, bolverk said:

Talking heads on TV are reporting the military says the Blackhawk was on a routine training flight out of Davison AAF. 

i imagine no matter the real explanation, this was always going to be the official explanation. "routine, training OOPS"

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39 minutes ago, FORTY NINE TO ZERO said:

bbc radio just said a high ranking CIA person was on the blackhawk.  Wonder if the BBC is misinformed or the army just means high ranking army officials in their statement 

Radcliffe? Or Gabbard? Please oh please be Gabbard and the BBC just mixed up the info

Edited by Hermanator
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Very discouraging..

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CNN confirms fatalities “rescuers have not pulled any survivors from the water”

Quote

At least 19 Bodies have so far been recovered from the Potomac, following the Mid-Air Collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport; with an Emergency Official stating that No Survivors have been found yet by Search-and-Rescue Teams.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.: Divers accessed the wreckage of the aircraft in the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport and reported numerous bodies of passengers still strapped in their seats underwater, according to scanner.

 

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Apparently the new sec of transportation is some slapdick from the real world Boston. Jesus 

Also only time I flew into that airport we circled and circled, accelerated and went into a steep bank and then all of a sudden were on the ground. Several people blew chunks 

Edited by Sawbonz
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1 hour ago, TexArcher said:

So how does this happen?  Air traffic control doesn't know about the Blackhawk and it's too low for radar on the Blackhawk to know about the plane?

Could be, although all of those controllers at the various airports/bases do talk to one another when traffic is handed off.  Those helicopters are not just up and flying whatever flight plans they please.

1 hour ago, Laxtonto said:

Transportation Secretary was sworn in this afternoon.... Holy shit first day...

Yeah, definitely going to be something, but I don't know how much he or she really does - this will be left up to the FAA, National Transportation Safety Board, the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, the manufacturers of both aircraft, and the Department of Defense.  The Coast Guard will probably be involved since it's water and given the location.

2 minutes ago, Laxtonto said:

Divers accessed the wreckage of the aircraft in the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport and reported numerous bodies of passengers still strapped in their seats underwater, according to scanner.

Holy fuck, nightmare material.

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14 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Apparently the new sec of transportation is some slapdick from the real world Boston. Jesus 

Also only time I flew into that airport we circled and circled, accelerated and went into a steep bank and then all of a sudden were on the ground. Several people blew chunks 

I saw him on tv the other day and I kept thinking he looks really familiar.  Now I’ve connected the dots.  

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7 minutes ago, Modessit said:
12 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:
Fuck you this is news. We should know what govt officials have to say about it. That’s their job dumbfuck
 
Also I guess you completely avoided  the la fire thread lol

Yes, we should hear what govt officials have to say about it. But we shouldn't have to hear what you or anyone else has to say about govt officials in this thread except when directly commenting on their direct comments or actions in relation to this event. Spew your hate for either side in CR where it belongs.

Ridicule is not hate. Don't be a pussy

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Air traffic controllers asked pilot to readjust to land on a shorter runway right before the crash is what the news is saying? I don’t know I am just listening and typing which is rare for me, Damn. I try to avoid the news mostly but it’s been weeks of shit. This sucks. 

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18 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Christ the CR freaks can’t help themselves. 

Sometimes you reap what you sow. 
 

I’ve fought the fight to keep DT free from political hot takes for years but I finally have given up.  Tired of Ana and others bitching about me being a hall monitor. 
 

Feel free to fling whatever shit against the wall you want!

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3 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

Air traffic controllers asked pilot to readjust to land on a shorter runway right before the crash is what the news is saying? I don’t know I am just listening and typing which is rare for me, Damn. I try to avoid the news mostly but it’s been weeks of shit. This sucks. 

That’s a pretty typical procedure at DCA.  

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Mary Schiavo — former Dept. of Transportation inspector general — with a reality check on CNN: “Air traffic controllers do not come and go with the change of an administration … The politics of the situation should have had no impact whatsoever on air traffic controllers”

 

1884827909954621502

 

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our airspace control is a joke and has been for decades

we've been faafo for 10 years and had 15 near-misses in the past 2 years

3 were DCA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_aircraft_near-miss_incidents_since_2023

the canadians got religion 10 years ago and fixed their shit

clinton, shrub and obama had 2 terms and this is on them

https://reason.org/aviation-policy-news/faa-needs-more-than-funding-to-fix-aging-systems/#a

this is comedy gold:

Spoiler

FAA Needs More Than Funding to Fix Aging Systems

Last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a blistering report titled “FAA Actions Are Urgently Needed to Modernize Aging Systems.” (GAO-24-107001) At the request of leading members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, GAO looked into the problem of aging, outdated systems still being used in the air traffic control system. GAO researchers identified 138 air traffic control (ATC) systems, and its assessment found that 37% are unsustainable (i.e., need to be replaced) and 39% are potentially unsustainable. And 58 of those systems “have critical operational impacts on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace.”

That’s bad news, but it gets worse. GAO found that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has 64 ongoing efforts aimed at modernizing 90 of the unsustainable and potentially unsustainable systems. But current FAA plans show that many of these systems will still be in operation for between 6 and 13 more years before being either replaced or modernized. And four of these critical systems don’t even have a plan for replacement or upgrading.

Table 1 in the report lists 17 of the “most-critical and at-risk systems,” all of which are “unsustainable” and shows that 13 of them are not projected to be replaced until some time between 2030 and 2035—and that four of them don’t even have the beginning of a planned investment. They are not identified by name, “due to sensitivity concerns.”

Appendix III, Table 8 lists all air traffic control systems for which FAA believes new investments are required, and insiders will likely to be able to figure out which of these are the “most-critical and at-risk systems” listed in Table 1.

GAO’s report makes reference to last year’s scathing review by the independent National Airspace Safety Review Team, which highlighted some of the critically important aging systems, which hints that these are some of the unidentified systems GAO highlighted:

    ASDE-X, deployed in the early 2000s to track surface movements and alert controllers to potential conflicts. It’s no longer in production and spare parts are “extremely limited.”
    Beacons used for en-route surveillance, with 20-year-old transponders and no available replacement antennas.
    Instrument landing systems (ILSs), most of which are at least 25 years old and for which manufacturer support is no longer available.

GAO also reports that FAA budget requests for facilities and equipment “have remained relatively constant at about $1 billion annually.” What this omits is that FAA cannot request what proper analysis suggests because (1) its budget request must be approved by the Department of Transportation (DOT) secretary, and (2) that the Office of Management and Budget has the last word on how much DOT (and hence FAA) can request. That’s not how critically important public utilities operate, whether government-owned or investor-owned. Their modus operandi is to plan their capital spending needs and request/obtain approval to increase their rates to provide the needed revenue streams to pay off bonds used to finance large facility and equipment investments. That is true of federal government utilities like the Tennessee Valley Authority, but nothing like that process exists for FAA’s air traffic control system. It has no bonding authority and depends solely on inadequate annual appropriations from Congress.

Rather than suggesting that kind of change, GAO focuses on FAA’s “Acquisition Management System” and the six phases that any proposed capital expenditure must go through. GAO is very big on proper bureaucratic processes and goes into great detail on how each of these steps should be carried out. It notes that the reason four at-risk systems have no modernization plans is because the 2023 operational risk assessment was not completed in time for those four to be included. And the report notes comments from the Safety Review Team and from both controllers’ union NATCA and technicians’ union PASS that FAA should be timelier in identifying unsustainable systems “given the length of time it takes to move through the [six-phase] acquisition process.” And once a system has been identified as a candidate, Table 4 shows that it can take between two and nearly nine years “to establish an acquisition program baseline.” And that means the time frame to get from the start of program planning for a modernized or replacement system can range from 5.5 years to as much as 19.5 years (by which time many technology improvements will be obsolete).

Instead of concluding that this whole process is a bureaucratic nightmare, GAO critiques various aspects of the process, according to its principles for how federal bureaucracies should operate. Its well-meaning but toothless recommendations strike me as unlikely to address the real problem.

For that I turned to an aviation expert I’ve known for several decades. Gary Church is a long-time aviation consultant who began his career as a private pilot and air traffic controller. After working for the Air Transport Association, he launched an aviation consulting firm in 1984, and did many aviation studies, including for FAA, on air traffic modernization. Gary wrote me the following assessment:

    “The problem with FAA procurement is that initial failures lead to more and more convoluted processes that contribute nothing but add layers of procurement complexity. A big one is a cost-benefit analysis that wants not an 80% solution but a 99% solution, which takes more and more time to acquire data and analyze. While doing this, your 18 months to make a relevant decision becomes three, four, or five years. In that time, all the technology and assumptions change. If you can’t make a cost/benefit procurement decision within 18 months, you have lost the window and any opportunity of making a good decision. Second, based on analyzing FAA’s process, I conclude that you will never get to a successful procurement following the details prescribed in the FAA documentation…Every notable FAA procurement failure over the years has just added complexity and delay to cost analysis and systems engineering processes, until today they are virtually unworkable: you just can’t get a product out the door.”

I’ll close with a suggestion for GAO, the DOT Inspector General, and FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker: Why not investigate how existing air traffic control utilities such as DFS, NATS, and Nav Canada analyze and develop improved ATC technology? I think that would be more productive than trying to perfect the current FAA Acquisition Management System.

https://reason.org/aviation-policy-news/faa-needs-more-than-funding-to-fix-aging-systems/#a

 

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Question for any first responders….is there a functional reason that every emergency vehicle still has their lights blazing while stationary and no indication that anyone survived?  Not trying to diminish the tragedy, just curious watching the live shots on TV.

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