DC jet helo collision

[tater]

17 minutes ago, K^2 said:

I'm not sure it was reasonable to expect that helo had a fix on the correct plane. And if they believed that they were given a fix on a plane ahead of AA5342, then they were flying exactly as vectored. In other words, they proceeded on the course they had in their plans which would bring them directly under the landing airliner, well within the wash.

My point is they were at the wrong altitude. Look at the instruments, go, "Oh, ****" and drop ~100-150 feet pronto. 200 was the max allowed altitude, this was not somethign they wait to hear from ATC about, they should have never exceeded 200ft unless they asked ATC first those corridors are on the charts, they fly this all the time.  Arguably they should have been closer to 150' to be safe. That alone makes it their fault, the pilot was not looking at the instruments. And yeah, that vertical separation gives them serious problems from the CRJ's wake turbulence. Sucks to be them, but at worst we're talking about 3 deaths in that case—and to the people in the aircraft at fault.

Edited February 3 by tater

[darthgently]

Now I’m hearing that the helo was a crew chief short and they normally have two and they take stations on port and starboard and keep eyes on those sides to assist the pilot.  So maybe they had no eyes dedicated to the left side and having trained with having eyes there the pilot could have ended up with a habitual false sense of security not appropriate to the situation

[tater]

8 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Now I’m hearing that the helo was a crew chief short and they normally have two and they take stations on port and starboard and keep eyes on those sides to assist the pilot.  So maybe they had no eyes dedicated to the left side and having trained with having eyes there the pilot could have ended up with a habitual false sense of security not appropriate to the situation

Those eyes might have noticed the problem caused by their pilot flying way too high, true. Someone needed to be looking at the instruments.

There's clearly Swiss cheese here that could have had holes filled in and prevented the accident by allowing others to correct for the failure of the Blackhawk pilot, but I'm pretty sure that altitude issue will be the primary cause. It's important to come up with systems than can deal with negligence/error, so in this case maybe it's not allowing these helicopter routes any more that are that close to DCR final.

Edited February 3 by tater

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Those eyes might have noticed the problem caused by their pilot flying way too high, true. Someone needed to be looking at the instruments.

There's clearly Swiss cheese here that could have had holes filled in and prevented the accident by allowing others to correct for the failure of the Blackhawk pilot, but I'm pretty sure that altitude issue will be the primary cause. It's important to come up with systems than can deal with negligence/error, so in this case maybe it's not allowing these helicopter routes any more that are that close to DCR final.

Looking at the vids, and estimating the size of the helo and its apparent height above the water it actually looks closer to 200’ than 325’ to me.  Not rigorous, of course.  But this combined with the qualifications the NTSB put on the altitudes, the error bars, and the incongruous ATC altitude for the jet gives me hesitation to assume the altitude of collision.   Especially with the NTSB’s emphasis that they are still evaluating the meaning of all the altitude data.  I could have misunderstood that the 325’+-25’ reading was still possibly in question.  But it doesn’t look 325’ high on collision to me so I’m leaving it open for now

Edited February 3 by darthgently
Fixed 300 to 325

[K^2]

23 minutes ago, tater said:

My point is they were at the wrong altitude. Look at the instruments, go, "Oh, ****" and drop ~100-150 feet pronto. 200 was the max allowed altitude, this was not somethign they wait to hear from ATC about, they should have never exceeded 200ft unless they asked ATC first those corridors are on the charts, they fly this all the time.  Arguably they should have been closer to 150' to be safe. That alone makes it their fault, the pilot was not looking at the instruments. And yeah, that vertical separation gives them serious problems from the CRJ's wake turbulence. Sucks to be them, but at worst we're talking about 3 deaths in that case—and to the people in the aircraft at fault.

And if the ATC gave them clean separation, they could have gone to 500' without endangering anyone. And in fact, if helo crew went to 500', everyone would be safe, including helo crew. Whereas if helo crew stuck to assigned altitude, they might have still died.

There was an error that resulted in more fatalities than there could have been in this particular incident and might not have mattered at all in another, namely exceeding the altitude, and there was an error that absolutely should never have been allowed in any air space ever and would always result in a dangerous situation - namely the overlapping of the paths.

I understand that in this case, by pure chance, the helo exceeding altitude happened to be a deadlier of the two. And I understand the natural instinct to assign blame based on that.

But the reality is that allowing the aircraft close together is the more egregious error. That one could have happened to two heavies and we'd be talking about hundreds dead. That is a more serious error. And we do not know if helo crew, ATC, or airport administration are responsible for this.

 

23 minutes ago, tater said:

Arguably they should have been closer to 150' to be safe.

That part's completely silly. Any limit must have safety margins already built in. If they "should have been closer to 150'," then the limit should have been 150'. It wasn't. It was 200', because it was expected that 200' is safe - and that includes margins of typically about 100' on each side, meaning safe separation distance plus 200' extra for safety, which simply did not exist on this particular intersection. The 200' ceiling was not to provide separation with traffic landing on 33. It was never meant for that.

[darthgently]

I just remembered another reason I’m hesitant to trust the 325’ jet altitude fully.  The first vid I watched was of an ATC screen that showed the converging craft with 3 digit altitude data next to each.  The helo showed a consistent 020 indicating something close to 200’ while the CRJ glyph numbers showed 040 decreasing to 020 at time of impact.  This is all presumably from the ATC CAB and I think radar based which apparently doesn’t resolve well at lower altitudes.   So something clearly isn’t meshing with the barometer or FDR in CRJ compared to the ATC ground radar.  And this gives me pause about conclusions

26 minutes ago, K^2 said:

But the reality is that allowing the aircraft close together is the more egregious error.

This I agree with.  Especially since it is apparently well known in the tower that the ATC radar altitude readings for those very low altitudes are sketchy it would make great sense to expand the horizontal separation as a buffer

[tater]

24 minutes ago, K^2 said:

That part's completely silly. Any limit must have safety margins already built in. If they "should have been closer to 150'," then the limit should have been 150'. It wasn't. It was 200', because it was expected that 200' is safe - and that includes margins of typically about 100' on each side, meaning safe separation distance plus 200' extra for safety, which simply did not exist on this particular intersection. The 200' ceiling was not to provide separation with traffic landing on 33. It was never meant for that.

It should be meant for that, or the route changed. Nonetheless, they were required to fly at or below 200' (bumps up to 300' several miles south) along that route (which was their flightplan, as I understand it). Better ATC might have vectored them out of the way in numerous ways, but they didn't. I have to wonder about the fidelity of their radar when not fed data from the aircraft. Did they even know where PAT25 was?

 

25 minutes ago, K^2 said:

And if the ATC gave them clean separation, they could have gone to 500' without endangering anyone. And in fact, if helo crew went to 500', everyone would be safe, including helo crew. Whereas if helo crew stuck to assigned altitude, they might have still died.

ATC in this case might not have even know where they were as far as I can tell. At least altitude wise. We have to wait for NTSB. The CRJ had ADSB, I don't think the helo did. So their ATC radar might be crap.

 

27 minutes ago, K^2 said:

But the reality is that allowing the aircraft close together is the more egregious error. That one could have happened to two heavies and we'd be talking about hundreds dead. That is a more serious error. And we do not know if helo crew, ATC, or airport administration are responsible for this.

I doubt they'd have crossing aircraft that low, seems far-fetched.

I agree that ATC needs to know where every aircraft is, but the proximal cause of a collision (vs a possible helo down alone) was the helicopter being someplace they were explicitly disallowed (>200').

10 minutes ago, darthgently said:

I just remembered another reason I’m hesitant to trust the 325’ jet altitude fully.  The first vid I watched was of an ATC screen that showed the converging craft with 3 digit altitude data next to each.  The helo showed a consistent 020 indicating something close to 200’ while the CRJ glyph numbers showed 040 decreasing to 020 at time of impact.  This is all presumably from the ATC CAB and I think radar based which apparently doesn’t resolve well at lower altitudes.   So something clearly isn’t meshing with the barometer or FDR in CRJ compared to the ATC ground radar.  And this gives me pause about conclusions

Someone posted or put in a vid a chart of the glideslope, and the tracking data shows the CRJ following it. Manley, maybe?

[tater]

 

[darthgently]

34 minutes ago, tater said:

 

I was certainly misremembering the 3 digit altitude read outs.  PAT25 definitely rises up to meet the jet in the last few seconds going by ATC radar, if that is where the 3 digit code in this vid originates.  I also misremembered the encoding of the 3 digit code as the hundreds being in the 2nd place.

I think I may have suffered a memory bias that our military couldn’t possibly change altitude by 100’, above the ceiling, straight into a jet.  In an extremely high caution area they’d flown in before.  I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around this.

[tater]

Blackhawk at 278ft, NTSB is confident in the altitude.

Some of the comms ATC made were not heard on the CVR in the Blackhawk, one of which because the mic was hot in the helicopter for a fraction of a second.

[DDE]

On 2/2/2025 at 11:06 PM, Lisias said:

On a real threat situation in the area, no airplane would be being authorized to land there anyway. They would all be ordered to proceed to the alternates and clear the local skies.

The case of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 indicates rerouting inbound traffic in time can be a very non-trivial task. Especially if, as suggested by at least one interpretation, the controllers think they can narrowly manage to get it to land in time.

[darthgently]

I’m a bit surprised that military aircraft operating consistently that close to a busy civilian airport aren’t required to have a very basic separate receiver for the freqs the civilian and commercial traffic are operating on.  Though the lack of this is apparently not a direct cause of this accident, following this investigation brought it to my mind

[Lisias]

7 hours ago, DDE said:

The case of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 indicates rerouting inbound traffic in time can be a very non-trivial task.

Being the reason we usually don't fly airplanes on warzones. This is another one of "that accidents" that I can't openly comment about without getting some moderation points (or even a lawsuit).

What will not be the case on USA's mainland for the feasible future - there, the problem will be natural disasters or even a terrorist attack. A first strike, on the other hand, would prompt the VIP to get into a bunker, not to flee the area (it would be fruitless, they would be caught by the blast).

You should take a peek into USA's emergency protocols since 911... It's essentially "proceed to your alternate, but I really don't care for anything but getting rid of you. bug out or you will be shot down.".

 

6 hours ago, darthgently said:

I’m a bit surprised that military aircraft operating consistently that close to a busy civilian airport aren’t required to have a very basic separate receiver for the freqs the civilian and commercial traffic are operating on.

Don't be. You don't want military communication overloading the already overloaded civilian channels - neither vice-versa.

 

6 hours ago, darthgently said:

Though the lack of this is apparently not a direct cause of this accident, following this investigation brought it to my mind

The root cause of the accident IMHO is allowing the crafts to get near each other at first place. How in the deepest darkness of Hell they allowed two crafts to be in a position in which they could remotely risk scratching each-other, what to say about effectively colliding to each other?

Neither the HELO neither the CRJ had big, nice and shinny RADAR fed Situation Displays, and the very few military crafts that do, have them turned off to avoid disrupting the ATC's. The only dude with complete situational awareness was the ATC.

TRAFFIC ALERT PAT 2-5 OVER HANS POINT NORTH-EAST OF DCA ADVISE YOU DESCEND TO 100 FEET IMMEDIATELY AND HOLD UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

And if by any reason the HELO would not comply in 10 seconds, immediately:

TRAFFIC ALERT BLUESTREAK 5342 APPROACHING DCA RUNWAY 33 ABORT LANDING ADVISE YOU TURN LEFT 300 CLIMB TO 1000 FEET IMMEDIATELY.

Anything else, AFAIK, is utterly imprudence. At best.

(and even that, would already configure another near-miss event with the necessary FAA investigations being triggered)

Edited Saturday at 05:09 PM by Lisias
Hit "Save" too soon

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Don't be. You don't want military communication overloading the already overloaded civilian channels - neither vice-versa.

I wrote a receive only.  So they could hear the other side of conversations from other craft.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

I wrote a receive only.  So they could hear the other side of conversations from other craft.

Well... Obviously the Military don't want the highly busy Civilian communication overloading their military pilots with useless information for them. They operate under different rules and, at least theoretically, they have people looking for them and sorting out what they need to know from what's irrelevant for the ongoing mission.

Excessive information is as good as no information at all - even the plane's warnings are prioritized, anything serious but not immediate threatening is suppressed if a immediate threat is detected by the flight computer - like a over-g warning while a close encounter with the ground is ongoing...

[darthgently]

4 hours ago, Lisias said:

Well... Obviously the Military don't want the highly busy Civilian communication overloading their military pilots with useless information for them. They operate under different rules and, at least theoretically, they have people looking for them and sorting out what they need to know from what's irrelevant for the ongoing mission.

Excessive information is as good as no information at all - even the plane's warnings are prioritized, anything serious but not immediate threatening is suppressed if a immediate threat is detected by the flight computer - like a over-g warning while a close encounter with the ground is ongoing...

I’m assuming they would only have it on when in the congested area as deemed necessary as I implied in my first response

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, darthgently said:

I’m assuming they would only have it on when in the congested area as deemed necessary as I implied in my first response

What's exactly my point. These heavily congested areas are where they should pay more attention to whatever is happening around them, instead of being forced to divide their attention between the mission goals and the civilian traffic of the whole area.

Radio are not localized transmissions, like a Mobile. You are talking with the whole area covered by the ATC.

It's the reason they have their own controllers, so someone else also authorized to know about the mission would observe the overall radio traffic and filter them from the noise.

Bear with me: in a real tactical situation in which a threat around the ATC should be targeted on a S&D mission, do you want a pair of trigger happy pilots dividing their attention from telling friends from foes with the local ATC radio traffic?

"TRAFFIC ALLERT Stealth Gunship XYZ over Hans Point north east of DCA, advise descent to 100 feet and hold position."

"Unable. Shadowing terrorist suspect bearing 165 7 miles from runway 33."

"Unidentified craft east DCA please squawk 7500 and enter HOLD pattern 0xDEADBEEF until shot down."

Jokes apart, you want to train your military the nearest it's possible to real life situations. You can't expect a military under a real situation to cope with civilian traffic the same way we don't expect firefighter vehicles to stop on traffic lights in intersections and wait for the greenlight.

 

Edited Sunday at 03:22 AM by Lisias
Couldn't resist yet an infamous joke more...

[darthgently]

5 hours ago, Lisias said:

What's exactly my point. These heavily congested areas are where they should pay more attention to whatever is happening around them, instead of being forced to divide their attention between the mission goals and the civilian traffic of the whole area.

Radio are not localized transmissions, like a Mobile. You are talking with the whole area covered by the ATC.

It's the reason they have their own controllers, so someone else also authorized to know about the mission would observe the overall radio traffic and filter them from the noise.

Bear with me: in a real tactical situation in which a threat around the ATC should be targeted on a S&D mission, do you want a pair of trigger happy pilots dividing their attention from telling friends from foes with the local ATC radio traffic?

"TRAFFIC ALLERT Stealth Gunship XYZ over Hans Point north east of DCA, advise descent to 100 feet and hold position."

"Unable. Shadowing terrorist suspect bearing 165 7 miles from runway 33."

"Unidentified craft east DCA please squawk 7500 and enter HOLD pattern 0xDEADBEEF until shot down."

Jokes apart, you want to train your military the nearest it's possible to real life situations. You can't expect a military under a real situation to cope with civilian traffic the same way we don't expect firefighter vehicles to stop on traffic lights in intersections and wait for the greenlight.

 

Ok.  You’ve worded me enough.  You win.  I’m not even slightly convinced, but you win

[DDE]

On 2/15/2025 at 7:57 PM, Lisias said:

Being the reason we usually don't fly airplanes on warzones. This is another one of "that accidents" that I can't openly comment about without getting some moderation points (or even a lawsuit).

It's a warzone less than 1% of the time, so the task of clearing the airspace on short notice isn't that dissimilar.

I do agree that the selection of the airports actually shut down in 2022 was not entirely consistently logical (e.g. Elista but not Sochi).

[Lisias]

7 hours ago, DDE said:

It's a warzone less than 1% of the time, so the task of clearing the airspace on short notice isn't that dissimilar.

I do agree that the selection of the airports actually shut down in 2022 was not entirely consistently logical (e.g. Elista but not Sochi).

So every flight is a Russian Roullette with one chance on 100 from being targeted by hostile forces.

I don't think that 1/100 is an acceptable failure ratio on any Industry, what to say about Aviation... I mean, other than a NASA Space Shuttle program with a 1/65 failure rate...

[tater]