AA jet and Military helicopter collide over Potomac 8

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

 

[LionelHutz]

Since runway 33 is lightly used, there would be minimal problems if helicopters ALWAYS had to stop a fly-through when a plane was due through that area.

They do, the helicopter was supposed to hold and wait for the plane to pass. It waited for the wrong plane. The error was allowing the helicopter to control their location and deciding when to pass through via visual separation. If there were well defined holding points and the ATC had to co-ordinate the planes and helicopters then a crash should be much less likely.

If you mean any time a plane will be landing, then the route can never be used because planes are always due to land or take off through that airspace almost any time the airport is operating.


It would seem to me that if landing is runway 1/15 and takeoffs are runway 19/15 then the helicopters maybe go around the other side of the airport and the planes taking off hold until they pass. That would mean flying over other buildings though which wouldn't be acceptable.

 

[LittleInch]

Isn't this where you use the non flying pilot to call out / monitor whatever it is you're not looking at but is important? Like velocity, heading, altitude, talking to the ATC etc?

 

[LittleInch]

They do, the helicopter was supposed to hold and wait for the plane to pass. It waited for the wrong plane. The error was allowing the helicopter to control their location and deciding when to pass through via visual separation. If there were well defined holding points and the ATC had to co-ordinate the planes and helicopters then a crash should be much less likely.

If you mean any time a plane will be landing, then the route can never be used because planes are always due to land or take off through that airspace almost any time the airport is operating.


It would seem to me that if landing is runway 1/15 and takeoffs are runway 19/15 then the helicopters maybe go around the other side of the airport and the planes taking off hold until they pass. That would mean flying over other buildings though which wouldn't be acceptable.

I don't know about the supposed to hold bit. They have two or three mandatory reporting points and one non mandatory one at the junction of route 1/4 which they actually called in, but there was no instruction or requirement to hold, just an approval to continue using visual flight rules and operating according to the helicopter routing which said max altitude 200ft. They clearly either got the wrong aircraft or couldn't see it because they ran into it.

Allowing helicopters to keep going using VFR at night is clearly something they (ATC and the military) had got very complacent about as there are many helicopter journeys apparently in that neighbourhood. The rather vague instruction from ATC was, IMHO, close to negligent and with a CA sounding should have imposed an instruction on the helicopter to slow and turn immediate left and / or instructed the CRJ to climb immediately and do a go around. It looks pretty clear that they deferred all the responsibility over to the military / helicopter pilots and 70 people are now dead because of it.

 

[DirteJoe]

Spsalso, the 12th Aviation Battalion is priority transport for the likes of cabinet members, high ranking military officials, Vice President, and other VIPs needing transport to and from the Pentagon, White House, JBA, and where ever else they need go. I highly doubt those missions, training or transport, will let atc control where or how they fly. That's why they're so quick to request visual separation because it puts it all into their hands to not crash into something. There's a lot of V22 traffic there as well in the helicopter route for training and transport purposes.

LittleInch, their vision of the dials would be severely limited with the night vision. They'd have had no numericle readout, only a needle on the dial face. To read altitude they'd have needed to turn their head and look to the side to see past the NVG to quickly glance at the alt. It also depends on what kit if they had. Did they have hi and low settings? If so, resolution likely would have been in 100ft incriments. Had they not, resolution would have been 500ft incriments and would have. They most likely would have had 500ft incriments and the PIC would have been using perephrial vision to eyeball the needle below halfway to 500.

 

[DirteJoe]

Isn't this where you use the non flying pilot to call out / monitor whatever it is you're not looking at but is important? Like velocity, heading, altitude, talking to the ATC etc?

Exactly what they should have been doing, but seems they were not.

 

[LittleInch]

I highly doubt those missions, training or transport, will let atc control where or how they fly.

The key downside to that is that only ATC has a very good idea of other aircraft in the vicinity, their altitude and heading and there's no point in killing the passengers by just being all macho about it....

They have let the FAA and by default ATC tell them where they can fly down quite tight designated routes and maximum altitude so its not a complete free for all.

Also the cockpit picture I found had numerical in 20 ft intervals as well as dials but I don't know what that specific helicopter had. I was hoping someone could find out....

Either way, for aircraft a single sweep is 1000 ft normally so from the CVR, the fact that they seemed to know that they were at either 300 or 400 ft was still way too high and really the difference between two o'clock and four o'clock. That should be pretty easy to see the difference.

 

[DirteJoe]

Being night ops, an AAU-32/A style altimeter is the most likely they'd have. We wont know for sure until the NTSB releases images or part numbers.

 

[Garbage1]

Is it a mixture of a needle and also a number? Is the sweep of the needle one per thousand foot? Does the number only change in discrete lumps?

The way everyone seems to talkin hundreds of feet and not say Altitude 270ft or 220?

This is what I can find, but don't know if its the same as the one which crashed. If so it would seem to be quite clear the helicopter was a lot higher than 200 ft.

It appears you are correct that every sweep of needle on barometric would incrementally add 1000' to the digital readout, and there looks to be space in the digital readout area to indicate how many thousands of feet plus the less than whole thousand feet. In this case it appears helo is at 850' from digital readout.

Below the Barometric altimeter (notice 29.92 inches set point under gauge), is the Radio Altimeter. Radio Altimeter shows under 100' in 10' increments, and above 100' in 100' increments. It also has a High and Low set points noted under the guage, which in this case are set to 50 LO and 200 HI.

The video link below shows the older style discrete analog altimeters. Notice the Radar Altimeter is above the barometric in the version. At about the 25 second point in video is where he talks about altimeters.

Going between significantly different avionics versions of UH-60's would appear to be a challenge and require qualification for each version?

How to fly a UH-60L: Take an extended tour of a Black Hawk helicopter

In the days following the deadly midair collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines flight near Reagan National Airport, Col. Tim Zerbe, the State Army Aviation Officer at Pennsylvania National Guard and a graduate of the US Army War College in Carlisle, gave WGAL an...

www.wgal.com

 

[LionelHutz]

I don't know about the supposed to hold bit.

What are they supposed to be doing when they're told to keep visual separation and pass behind? Do circles? Go up and down?

 

[waross]

What are they supposed to be doing when they're told to keep visual separation and pass behind? Do circles? Go up and down?

Hover?
Has the military lost that ability?

 

[TugboatEng]

I don't know that it's so simple to transition from forward flight to a hover so quickly. A lot of energy needs to be dissipated which is generally done by climbing.

 

[Garbage1]

At what was around 120 knots plus speed, there is lots of excess energy to dissipate. Top speed of UH-60L is around 150 knots, so helo was traveling at 80% or higher of Max speed at time of collision. The list goes on and on with this Insane Helo Route, and allowing Helo's to travel at any speed they want thru this Conflict Zone on visual with night vision is beyond belief......

It is like Helo Pilot's made the decision to test their skills by shifting into warp drive, and night vision goggles to make crossing thru the Target Rich Environment as challenging of a training exercise as possible.

 

[SWComposites]

what is insane is keeping Reagan National AP open. It should have been closed long ago, and the Congress critters should have to trek out to Dulles (which is the only reason it hasn't been closed).

 

[spsalso]

If it's not simple to transition from forward flight to hover quickly, maybe that operation should be started sooner.

I also recommend a dose of humility for public servants that think that their time is incredibly important, to the point of endangering that very public they serve. Perhaps they should announce this feeling publicly, so we can deal with it properly.

About 150 years ago, railroads dealt with the problem of having two passenger vehicles occupying the same track (see the similarity?). It was called "interlocking". The "tower man" (ATC) would choose a route, and only one route, through a set of tracks. He would also set appropriate signals at the same time. Automatically. The engineers (pilots) would do what the signals said. Or, best case, just be fired immediately. Because of the interlocking, it was impossible to tell two trains to be on the same track.

The simplest version of this for our particular problem is an SPDT toggle switch. Can only be thrown to one side or the other. NEVER both. Even if the ATC gets harried and confused, the switch STILL only gives permission to one pilot. No matter what. Even if it irritates a public official.

Yup. 150 years ago. Problem solved.


spsalso

 

[TugboatEng]

I was going to make the comment that it's too bad there were no VIP's (politicians) on the helicopter or plane to help drive the changes that need to happen. I felt a bit dirty thinking that.

 

[DirteJoe]

What are they supposed to be doing when they're told to keep visual separation and pass behind? Do circles? Go up and down?

They could have held their transition from route 1 to route 4 much wider to increase separation distance especially since they are to pass behind and give themselves more distance to slow slightly, scan more, and ensure passing behind a crossing aircraft, as is standard. Even though they stepped on atc and missed the instructions, the IP knew that is what they needed to do but a little too late.

For what ever reason, the pilot was constantly off course and the Instructor never corrected or discussed correcting further. Thankfully they reported the entire CVR is crystal clear audio and complete. That will be telling to the garbage altitude data that was recorded and the attitude of the check ride.

 

[LittleInch]

What are they supposed to be doing when they're told to keep visual separation and pass behind? Do circles? Go up and down?

What they were supposed to do was identify the approaching aircraft and slow down way before the last 20 seconds and also keep at or below 200ft altitude. They did neither. My point was that you said they were "supposed to hold". No they weren't as far as I can see. They requested Visual Flight rules which means that they adjust speed, course and altitude to avoid crashing into other aircraft. Nothing about stopping and "holding".

This system was fatally flawed in that no one seemed to have right of way. If it was the helicopters, then the ATC should have said to the CRJ, "Go around and immediately climb" when the collision alert sounded instead of their vague request to the helicopter about " can you see this aircraft ( in the midst of multiple aircraft and ground lights) and if so pass behind " when it's clear from the ATC screen and audible alarms that the helicopter was absolutely motoring right on a collision course with the decending CRJ whose attention was 95% on landing. If it was the civilian aircraft then the Helicopter pilot should have been told turn immedaite left and descend or should have been told to seriously slow down at least 40 to 50 seconds beforehand.

Having it both ways was going to end with a mid air collision at some point. Probaly just pure luck that it hasn't happened before now.

 

[IRstuff]

It's insane that any aircraft, helo or otherwise, is allowed to travel at flight speed while essentially taxiing across active runways.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

It's a we know better and are gods from the military.

London city airport has similar issues with helicopter traffic along the Thames.

They have an extremely steep 3.5 glide path which needs specific aircraft types and fitted equipment. The pilots also have to do similar training regularly to remain qualified to do it.

There is a rumour the Queens husband prince Philip was involved in it's planning. He developed the helicopter routes into various palaces around London. And there is one to go past it to get to Buckingham palace. He was well known for dealing with stupidity like this.

 

[LittleInch]

It's a we know better and are gods from the military.

London city airport has similar issues with helicopter traffic along the Thames.

They have an extremely steep 3.5 glide path which needs specific aircraft types and fitted equipment. The pilots also have to do similar training regularly to remain qualified to do it.

There is a rumour the Queens husband prince Philip was involved in it's planning. He developed the helicopter routes into various palaces around London. And there is one to go past it to get to Buckingham palace. He was well known for dealing with stupidity like this.

Probably some of that. Hence why the ATC, IMHO, should have had a better duty of care to the CRJ and told them go around / climb as fast as you can.

Relying on the helicopter pilots to do the right thing and avoid a collision was too much of a leap of faith.

And city used to be 7.5 degrees and is now 5.5. I've been into a couple of times when it was 7.5 degrees and it felt like you're dive bombing the airport. Full flaps and spoilers out.