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


UnivTex34

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Yeah that absolutely jives with what that track plot showed a few pages back: hunch is the helo pilot was too high for Track 4, which notes 200’ ceiling north of the bridge.

Believe it’s happened before as a close call…are they unknowingly pulling back on the cyclic as they glance up for traffic?  

Or maybe it really was due to a brown trans epileptic dwarf in the tower.  

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1 hour ago, Longhorn94 said:

For someone who flies to DC monthly, are you suggesting it would be safer to fly out of Dulles?

Meh.. I mean.. yeah. I think Dulles is the safer option. But not so much that will always outweigh the convenience. I’ve taken my kids to DC. We flew into DCA for it.  

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I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen.  It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft?  Just tragic.

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13 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

Meh.. I mean.. yeah. I think Dulles is the safer option. But not so much that will always outweigh the convenience. I’ve taken my kids to DC. We flew into DCA for it.  

It is not the flight into Dulles that kills you. It is the drive. Old DC joke I heard living there.

2 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen.  It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft?  Just tragic.

Flying too high, saw wrong jet, missing 1 crew member. Fuck up.

My quesiton is did not ATC see he was too high?

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14 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen.  It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft?  Just tragic.

The short version of what most people suspect so far:

the helicopter was flying higher than they were supposed to, they were possibly looking at an aircraft on final for runway 1 instead of the one on final for 33, they were possibly wearing NVGs which would’ve reduced their peripheral vision.  The airplane pilots were doing a circle-to-land approach, it’s not that big a deal but it’s not something you do every week, at 300 feet they were probably pretty much only focused back and forth on airspeed and the end of the runway and not much else.  I have avoided watching the videos but they were possibly still in a left banked turn making it harder to see traffic on the right.  

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4 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

Probably would have if he wasn’t tasked with 2 people’s duties at the moment.  

I imagine that controller is going to need some pretty intense therapy. I can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like to be in his shoes right now.

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A 200 ft ceiling is pretty crazy. The UT tower is 300 ft high.

Can you imagine flying a giant helicopter at night, wearing night vision goggles, less than 200 ft off a river that looks like a dark spot below, with bridges, cables and whatnot possibly in your way?

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8 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

A 200 ft ceiling is pretty crazy. The UT tower is 300 ft high.

Can you imagine flying a giant helicopter at night, wearing night vision goggles, less than 200 ft off a river that looks like a dark spot below, with bridges, cables and whatnot possibly in your way?

It may be crazy, but those are military pilots, and presumably some of the best in the world.  Violating that ceiling seems nuts.

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1 hour ago, Homercles said:

Yeah that absolutely jives with what that track plot showed a few pages back: hunch is the helo pilot was too high for Track 4, which notes 200’ ceiling north of the bridge.

Believe it’s happened before as a close call…are they unknowingly pulling back on the cyclic as they glance up for traffic?  

Or maybe it really was due to a brown trans epileptic dwarf in the tower.  

You were doing well but then went full stupid post at the end.

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53 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

I'm not deep into this, but I don't understand how it could happen.  It seems ATC provided guidance, the helicopter pilot acknowledged the jet, the latest videos show them essentially converging on each other, maybe not head on but close enough, and yet there was no evasive action on the part of either aircraft?  Just tragic.

I don’t know shit about flying but my first thought after seeing that video was “holy shit…was he suicidal?!” How does that happen?

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23 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

A 200 ft ceiling is pretty crazy. The UT tower is 300 ft high.

Can you imagine flying a giant helicopter at night, wearing night vision goggles, less than 200 ft off a river that looks like a dark spot below, with bridges, cables and whatnot possibly in your way?

I live next to an air guard/occasional air force base, and while you get used to it, they will run stuff of varying stripes much lower overhead than I'd like. Much less cross commercial traffic though which probably helps. 

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58 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

My quesiton is did not ATC see he was too high?

On Juan Browne's video, he showed what looked like an ATC screen reconstruction.  The altitude of each aircraft was shown to the nearest 100 feet, and it looked like the helicopter was rising.  So it seems that the time between 249 ft (when it would show 200) and 251 ft (when it would show 300), is not very much.  Not enough to assess the situation and make a command to either aircraft before it's too late.  This airspace just seems liket a very tight meshing of traffic that requires anyone who enters it to do exactly what they are supposed to or people can get killed.  I would imagine this particular helicopter track (so-called track 4, I think) is done for a while. 

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41 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

A 200 ft ceiling is pretty crazy. The UT tower is 300 ft high.

Can you imagine flying a giant helicopter at night, wearing night vision goggles, less than 200 ft off a river that looks like a dark spot below, with bridges, cables and whatnot possibly in your way?

Look at the video. That was pretty clear night.

Most likely Didn't even need their NODs,  (with the newer white/gray ones are pretty damn good) plus you wear them so you can scan through the goggles and without, below. Should they have been even more vigilant because of the altitude flying at, but missing the right altitude, 200' vs 400'??? If that was the case, means they were  missing other things too. Too many heads inside (?) and not at least one or more on a swivel looking out. 

Swiss cheese unfortunately lined up.

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3 hours ago, Evil Bill Obrien said:

Was on a flight this past summer that had an aborted landing for what I suspect was this reason, was sitting window seat and got all the way over the runway threshold 50 feet maybe less off the ground when the engines spooled back up to TO/GA and we pulled up and outta there like a rocket, full on pressed into seat with G stuff. Got a nice tour around downtown Indianapolis while we got back in line to try again. Was a little frightening at first till I realized if the engines were responding with full ass thrust and pilots could perform that kind of maneuver still, we were probably ok.

We have two go around thrust settings. A soft go around selects the go around mode and then uses a more sedate thrust setting for a calmer maneuver. A 2000 ft per minute climb is commanded for aircraft with the software update. 
 

The other involves selecting the FAT detent, Full Ass Thrust, with the thrust levers for a livelier return to altitude  

 

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