AA jet and Military helicopter collide over Potomac 4

Reagan National Airport crash: Military Black Hawk helicopter collides midair with American Airlines jet

An Army Black Hawk helicopter collided midair with an American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday.

www.foxnews.com

 

[LittleInch]

From recordings and data supplied to date, ATC failed multiple times.

1. ATC supv allowed One person to leave early, so one person was handling planes plus helo's. And there was a line of planes to keep separated.

2. ATC Radar would have shown helo at 400 feet elevation, or double the ceiling height of 200'. Thus ATC should have directed helo to correct their altitude rather than allowing them visual control. But being short handed meant perhaps radar altitude not verified?

3. ATC did not specific which CRJ the helo was supposed to fly behind. Landing or taking off.

4. An experienced helo pilot should be able to judge 200' vs 400' altitude.

5. Bad decision if night vision employeed in that environment.

6. ATC diverted CRJ at last minute, and saw collision path per audio but gave poor guidance to helo.

I think the key mistake is in not commanding the helicopter to turn immediate left when it was clear from the radar trace circulating that the two were on a direct collision course. The minimal supposed elevation difference was way too small for both aircraft. Hence the pass behind command. Now maybe the army boys don't like being told to do things, but if not they need to.

But your points
1) I'd not heard that before now. Got a reliable source?
2) From the trace I saw it only showed alt in single digit number in hundreds of feet and did show 003 for the helicopter. Much better to avoid passing directly under IMHO and should have directed a change in course or told the AA plane to go around.
3) Agree. Wording was very vague and how you can figure out which plane was which in the dark I don't know
4) Depends what their instruments said and how it was displayed. HUD??
5) Might have restricted vision. Some almost black out direct lights to avoid dazzling the vision.
6) Diversion to 33 was quite a time before the incident but agree the instructions to helicopter was rather vague at times and passed over responsibility for avoiding a collision to the helicopter pilot.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

They have some rules which pass the buck onto the pilots for separation.

European ATC do the same things at times.

Unfortunately pilots don't understand sometimes that they have just given away a vast lump of their protection by just saying "affirm"

ATC is way harder than flying the aircraft in my opinion.

I suspect the NTSB will give a load of recommendations. And absolutely none of them will be done.

 

[Sym P. le]

FWIW, an overlay of the radar sweep with Google Maps. Contrary to ADS-B plots showing a scatter shot flight route, the radar sweep indicates PAT25 being on course with Routes 1/4 and gaining elevation as it transitioned into Route 4. It's possible there was some confusion with the Route ceilings.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

There was another post earlier with some not above 400ft in that area but in brownish colour instead of blue.

 

[waross]

They're flying VIPs.

On training flights?

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

What the unit does day to day. Very expensive taxi service using government hardware

 

[Garbage1]

Collision inquiry still ascertaining altitude of impact between CRJ and Black Hawk

US investigators are still trying to determine precisely the altitude at which the Washington mid-air collision occurred, although early indications put the PSA Airlines CRJ700 at 325ft at the time it was struck by a Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter. This figure, drawn from the aircraft's...

www.flightglobal.com

 

[Garbage1]

Collision inquiry still ascertaining altitude of impact between CRJ and Black Hawk

US investigators are still trying to determine precisely the altitude at which the Washington mid-air collision occurred, although early indications put the PSA Airlines CRJ700 at 325ft at the time it was struck by a Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter. This figure, drawn from the aircraft's...

www.flightglobal.com

If radar refresh rate is 4-5 seconds, then helicopter may have been at 200' at last tower non-cooperative radar refresh, then climbed 100-150 feet into target before next refresh? Thus disparity between data sources. Apparently 325' plus or minus was based upon plane black box. It sounds like tower radar and blackbox on CRJ agree on plane altitude?

 

[Garbage1]

Climb Rate of BlackHawk listed in Data Sheet.

100' climb in 3 seconds is doable, especially with light load.

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/rms/documents/black-hawk/9221_S-70_Brochure_2024_web.pdf

 

[TugboatEng]

Waross,.they're going to be flying VIP's. These pilots typically are not fresh out of the academy. The unusual part here is that the pilot took a 2 year hiatus from flying to apparently participate in the Biden admin. That explains the delay in identification, they needed time to scrub her presence from social media.

 

[FacEngrPE]

NTSB Media Briefing 3 - PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 & Sikorsky H-60 military helicopter collision​

February 1, 2025: NTSB briefs the media on the investigation of the January 29 mid-air collision involving a PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 airplane and a Sikorsky H-60 military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

NTSB indicates that the altitudes are preliminary, they expect to tighten up the altitude data in the next few days.

 

[TugboatEng]

Considering the rate of ascent, is it possible that wake turbulence from the prior aircraft lifted the helicopter into the path of the incident aircraft? It seems like both would be affected but maybe a helicopter is more sensitive to the uplift?

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Waross,.they're going to be flying VIP's. These pilots typically are not fresh out of the academy. The unusual part here is that the pilot took a 2 year hiatus from flying to apparently participate in the Biden admin. That explains the delay in identification, they needed time to scrub her presence from social media.

Staff appointments to learn how deal with politicians are normal in an officers career. All the people I know that went to staff levels in the military did it at approximately the same point be it army, navy or air force.

They sort of get a choice in the matter and what they do but not much.

There is also NATO attachments and training posts to cover I think.

 

[LittleInch]

Considering the rate of ascent, is it possible that wake turbulence from the prior aircraft lifted the helicopter into the path of the incident aircraft? It seems like both would be affected but maybe a helicopter is more sensitive to the uplift?

Tug,,

There wasn't a prior airplane going into runway 33.

It looks from known data that this plane was asked to divert from runway 01 because there were too many planes on finals too close together on runway 01 and they wanted to create a bit more space to avoid wake turbulence, so this plane veered off to the east before turning to line up with runway 33. whether the helicopter pilot realised that one aircraft had peeled off from the ones visible to her coming into the other runway is no doubt going to be looked at.

Sliding doors - the aircraft in front of this one was also asked if they could take RW 33 and they declined / too close to runway 01, but this plane said yes.

 

[LittleInch]

If radar refresh rate is 4-5 seconds, then helicopter may have been at 200' at last tower non-cooperative radar refresh, then climbed 100-150 feet into target before next refresh? Thus disparity between data sources. Apparently 325' plus or minus was based upon plane black box. It sounds like tower radar and blackbox on CRJ agree on plane altitude?

If you back to post 5 and 8 you'll see that the reported altitude is in hundreds of feet and seems to flick between 2 and 3 for the helicopter. Accuracy of instruments using air pressure are rarely accurate enough for something like this.

 

[Garbage1]

If you back to post 5 and 8 you'll see that the reported altitude is in hundreds of feet and seems to flick between 2 and 3 for the helicopter. Accuracy of instruments using air pressure are rarely accurate enough for something like this.

The non-cooperative ATC Surveillance Radar is not using air pressure to determine altitude of helo. This radar would have shown both the CRJ and the helo. NTSB said they felt good about the plane sensor data and other data (likely tower survellance radar, if equipped, or GPS or other data) as far as CRJ. However there is no transponder for the secondary ATC co-operative radar beacon to receive data from the helo, thus they only have the surveillance radar data at this point and that data could be 4-5 seconds old, therefore not reflective of collision altitude of helo.

Primary ATC surveillance radar is true radar return. Secondary beacon radar is just a two way communication link between beacon and transponder on aircraft, thus receiving aircraft sensor data and not true radar returns.

 

[Garbage1]

The non-cooperative ATC Surveillance Radar is not using air pressure to determine altitude of helo. This radar would have shown both the CRJ and the helo. NTSB said they felt good about the plane sensor data and other data (likely tower survellance radar) as far as CRJ. However there is no beacon for the secondary ATC co-operative radar to receive data from the helo, thus they only have the surveillance radar data at this point and that data could be 4-5 seconds old, therefore not reflective of collision altitude of helo.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asr-11

 

[Garbage1]

Just Noticed Web Site software failure. If you edit a post, the subsequent reply quote of that post does not get updated to match edited post.

 

[LittleInch]

It seems that the jet had ADS-B as do most commercial aircraft. The helicopter it seems does not and was using something called Mode S which is in part why on some maps the path looks very jerky, whereas it was actually really quite shifting along and flying a smooth path. It's not clear if the tower had actual "primary" radar or not.

Any system is going to struggle to get 100 ft ( 30m) accuracy.

I'm also finding it difficult to believe the AA flight wasn't on a ILS approach / glid slope so knowing the distance from end of runway will give you a pretty accurqate height.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Sorry to be a bit anal it's not meant to be point scoring.

The transponder data is barometric. They have a 1013.5 mb pressure reference and it's own icing protected port if IFR certified aircraft. The crew can't adjust anything. The data is converted into a local altitude in reference to other aircraft around it by software in the radar display system.

Problems occured close in to radar heads because the antenna can be masked by the aircraft airframe.

It's an extremely good system as is the TCAS.

From memory it's a WW2 British bomber invention. Where the aviation term strangle your parrot comes from. SYP in morse or QSP. Haven't used Q codes in 20 years