American Airlines CRJ700 crash in DC

[Ali195]

It's fascinating to see how Trump throws out a sickeningly distasteful and ridiculous red herring and it completely dominates the narrative in favour of a fact based analysis/discussion. This thread is an interesting example.

Not so long ago, the village idiot's contributions would have been quickly ignored whilst the adults continued a productive conversation.

Putin, Russia use this tactic, throw out 20 insanely ridiculous explanations for 2014 Ukraine invasion being nothing to do with Russia and as many for poisoning. It just noise to distract and it works but of nutty it sounds to normal people.

 

[Efour]

Miss replied delete plz

 

[Hades]

Why was the blackhawk near the final approach glideslope?


Was it that they were waiting for a gap in the incoming final approach glide down traffic to slot in and land ?


The black hawk was not landing at the airport right ? they were waiting for a clearance to pass through on the way to another location further south of the airport?

Seems silly tbh


If anyone has been near Heathrow the airspace gets super busy around the approach glide slopes

In the dark, if your not truely paying attention to what ATC are telling you, and not visually looking properly

disaster will happen

My opinion is that the trainee helicopter pilot mistook another aircraft for the one they crashed into. The heli was told to pass behind the plane. They confirmed they had visual contact. But there was also an American Airlines plane nearby. In the dark I think the heli pilot mistook the lights on it and didn't realise there was another plane near them.

 

[Scuzi]

I'm not sure how effective TCAS is between civil and military traffic as its based on specific aircraft performance characteristics which military aircraft could routinely exceed. It will normally operates within 45s (approx) of a collision and offers rates of climb or descent of 500-1500fpm (approx). TCAS is unlikely to able to offer an effective (or any) response to an F16 screaming up at you at 20,000fpm for example (I found this out the hard way). As a note, TCAS only ever instructs a climb or descent - never a turn.

That being said - one of the very few times I've ever had a TCAS RA was from a military helicopter vectored to pass behind me whilst I was on approach into a german airport, much like the situation here but during the day.

If like all good crew members and controllers you have read the UK AIP cover to cover ( ) you'll see that a maximum vertical speed of 8000fpm is specified for UK airspace, and I believe it is similarly stated in most other states AIPs. This is (partly) to ensure TCAS remains effective in the controlled environment. It was typically only ever an issue with the big engined bizjets though.

IIRC you are an EZY skipper? I did quite an extensive piece of work with one of your colleagues some years back about the integration of IFR and VFR traffic in CTRs which led to significant changes in how we did it and trained it, and how your crews were trained for it. The Swiss noticed the problem about the same time we did after they had some very close calls. Do you notice a difference between how the various states do it?

 

[Penfold101]

Why was the blackhawk near the final approach glideslope?


Was it that they were waiting for a gap in the incoming final approach glide down traffic to slot in and land ?


The black hawk was not landing at the airport right ? they were waiting for a clearance to pass through on the way to another location further south of the airport?

Seems silly tbh


If anyone has been near Heathrow the airspace gets super busy around the approach glide slopes

In the dark, if your not truely paying attention to what ATC are telling you, and not visually looking properly

disaster will happen

It was a published and approved route through the capitol - you maintain 200ft maximum whilst in contact with ATC and all should be fine. It doesn’t sound like Air Traffic did anything wrong, the helicopter just mistook which aircraft was which whilst using NVG’s and apparently climbed to an altitude it wasn’t supposed to.

The chances of another aircraft being in that same place at exactly the same time are astronomically small, but unfortunately not zero.

 

[DJMK4]

My opinion is that the trainee helicopter pilot mistook another aircraft for the one they crashed into. The heli was told to pass behind the plane. They confirmed they had visual contact. But there was also an American Airlines plane nearby. In the dark I think the heli pilot mistook the lights on it and didn't realise there was another plane near them.

Yeh

I was watching the analysis a pilot gave on the incident last night, he said the same thing, seems the blackhawk was maintaining visual on an incorrect aircraft, which meant they ended up crashing in to the AA aircraft. The blackhawk confirmed seperation, and said it a number of times, they also said a number of times "we have visual" albiet on the wrong aircraft though


I suspect there will be rule changes in the airspace around that airport after this incident, they will probably re-route traffic so this doesnt happen again


IMO there should be nothing close to any final approach glide slopes. with the volume of traffic coming down to land, its too risky.


They should re-route traffic wanting to go around it tbh

 

[isthistheend]

So blackhawk keeps telling tower it has visual, tower keeps warning of plane and asking to take over visual, blackhawk refuses each time and continue to confirm they have visual.

Trump then confirms DEI, biden, obama is to blame.

 

[Efour]

The pilot was a cartel gang member from Panama.... Keep up FFS.

 

[isthistheend]

The pilot was a cartel gang member from Panama.... Keep up FFS.

Biden was flying the blackhawk

 

[Murphy]

So if we go down the best person for the position and it just happens that they all turn our to be Chinese or Indian or heaven forbid white, that's just fine?

Despite not having intimate knowledge of how DEI is implemented in America i would say yes.

Is that problematic that the best Indian chefs are all Asian?

Not that i can see. That is we're measuring best (best being a subjective judgment and whatnot) on how many meals they sell or what customers prefer to eat.

If I'm honest cooking may not be the best example as it's full of subjective judgments, it's hard to say what makes something cooked by one chef better than another. Whereas in other fields of work you can point to things like higher scores in things, a better quality of work, higher productivity, etc, etc.

 

[Kyo]

It's fascinating to see how Trump throws out a sickeningly distasteful and ridiculous red herring and it completely dominates the narrative in favour of a fact based analysis/discussion. This thread is an interesting example.

Not so long ago, the village idiot's contributions would have been quickly ignored whilst the adults continued a productive conversation.

Its the same all the time, Trump opens his mouth without really engaging his brain and then labels it common sense. He immediately cast blame on the tower which with the info so far appears to be wrong. People are scrambling to look into his claims. This vod was quite good from someone who actually knows what he talking about and with the info so far it looks like it was the Helicopter pilot who was at fault rather than anyone else.

 

[isthistheend]

Its the same all the time, Trump opens his mouth without really engaging his brain and then labels it common sense. He immediately cast blame on the tower which with the info so far appears to be wrong. People are scrambling to look into his claims. This vod was quite good from someone who actually knows what he talking about and with the info so far it looks like it was the Helicopter pilot who was at fault rather than anyone else.

That one seems to fully explained what happened, the guy is an expert and know what he is talking about. However, brexit like with trump say experts should not be trusted and are fake news..

 

[DJMK4]

Yeh thats the pilot youtube video i watched last night. He seems knowledgable. Gives a good walk through analysis and pauses to explain during bits of the video.

 

[Harlequin]

Why was the blackhawk near the final approach glideslope?


Was it that they were waiting for a gap in the incoming final approach glide down traffic to slot in and land ?


The black hawk was not landing at the airport right ? they were waiting for a clearance to pass through on the way to another location further south of the airport?

Seems silly tbh


If anyone has been near Heathrow the airspace gets super busy around the approach glide slopes and the planes going out and coming in are very very frequent.

In the dark, if your not truly paying attention to what ATC are telling you, and not visually looking properly then yeh.....

disaster will happen


The black hawk by the sounds of it communicated to ATC about acknowledging seperation and looking at pilot study youtube videos it seems the blackhawk was maintaining visual on the wrong aircraft

They had the clearance to proceed - but ATC asked them twice if they could see the CRJ and they said yes. Even with the AIRPROX alarm going off they still said yes for visual separation. Given the CRJ700 is actually smaller than some private jets (Gulfstream 800 for example) , its not a huge aircraft

 

[DJMK4]

They had the clearance to proceed - but ATC asked them twice if they could see the CRJ and they said yes. Even with the AIRPROX alarm going off they still said yes for visual separation. Given the CRJ700 is actually smaller than some private jets (Gulfstream 800 for example) , its not a huge aircraft

Yes but it seems they were not looking at the CRJ, Probably either the aircraft infront of the CRJ or behind the CRJ. Kind of a bit negligent on the blackhawk really, The responsibility kind of lies with them when they confirmed visual separation

 

[Kyo]

Yes but it seems they were not looking at the CRJ, Probably either the aircraft infront of the CRJ or behind the CRJ. Kind of a bit negligent on the blackhawk really, The responsibility kind of lies with them when they confirmed visual separation

Exactly they were asked quite a few times with confirmation and as the guy in the Vod touched on must have been looking at an entirely different plane.

 

[Scuzi]

A bit of light reading for those of you interested in the technical detail of this type of interaction and how it was viewed by other states. The Swiss had been having similar events over a decade ago and published some safety recommendations. Around the same time, many other European aviation authorities and service providers were noticing and managing the risk and made some changes. Here's the Swiss recommendation.

https://www.sust.admin.ch/en/safety-recommendations/aviation/av_se_490.pdf

Also, if you want to learn more from an unbiased source, I recommend Skybrary - https://skybrary.aero although it is focused on European procedures and operations.

 

[DJMK4]

Anyone that has flown even as a passenger in a plane, looking outside is quite difficult to see. You need to rely quite heavily on instruments, communication, and if your a pilot you need a very good eye to identify those incoming and surrounding traffic combining that with whats being displayed and communicated to you.

This event will 100% have safety changes made to ensure it doesnt happen, and also this will be broadcasted across the globe to all airlines/all airports.

 

[Harlequin]

Yes but it seems they were not looking at the CRJ, Probably either the aircraft infront of the CRJ or behind the CRJ. Kind of a bit negligent on the blackhawk really, The responsibility kind of lies with them when they confirmed visual separation

As a few you tube pilots are now saying, a small aircraft in a cluttered environment makes visual separation hard. Even more so when Military frequencies dont allways align with civilian ones.

 

[DJMK4]

Also isnt the analysis videos suggesting that the blackhawk pilots may have been wearing the infrared goggles? which could restrict field of view ?