Plane down in DC
- Thread starter bigredfish
- Start date
NoloC
Getting comfortable
- Nov 24, 2014
- 683
- 460
That flight path tracking is MLAT and will not be very accurate. It is typical for MLAT aircraft paths to appear jagged like that. I spend too much time on ADSBx...
Sybertiger
Known around here
You can imagine with NVG how all the lights around the city would have been intensified. They must have been seeing a hell of a lot of lit up objects. Sensory overload? Object further or closer may not have been as distinctive with NVG? Thought I heard a reporter familiar with the helicopter flight patterns down the Potomac say the "normal" altitude would have been closer to 200ft not 400ft.
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Which if one controller was handling traffic on two different frequencies normally handled by two, he may have not used the correct frequency to contact the UH60
I'm pretty sure I heard him contact the CH-60 and ask him if he had visual on the plane and the helo replied yes?
Sybertiger
Known around here
Sybertiger
Known around here
Apparently the day before a plane at Reagan National had to go around one loop because of a helicopter.
There were 15 Class A mishaps in the Army in fiscal year 2024, the highest number since fiscal year 2014, when there were 16 mishaps
www.yahoo.com
Army Black Hawk crew involved in DC crash made up of 'top pilots' with thousands of hours of experience
The three soldiers of the Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a jetliner on Wednesday night just off of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were all very experienced and not only had thousands of hours of flight time between them but were very familiar with the flight...
What I don't understand is that the CA was given to ATC in plenty of time to avoid this. When the helo did not respond to ATC when it was told to go behind, the ATC should have told the plane to go around and climb like hell. I mean the helo is less that 30 feet in height. It would not have taken much of a climb to miss it.
the other thing is that I bet the plane did not see the helo. It was banking left to line up with the runway and was a little higher than the helo but was descending. But the helo should have seen the plane even if it was below the plane.
Less than 8 minute video than answers a lot of the questions. He explains how flying this approach correctly requires total concentration by the jet's crew, and and how the helo pilot was 100% responsible to avoid the jet. On the CA, I'm guessing they see those regularly with all of the helos flying across the approach ends of the runways. I'm thinking there's a root cause here, that having the helos regularly fly across the approaches is insane.