Of course the recorders… and everybody else… would still be alive if that airport wasn’t built like a maximum security prison.
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…smothered in secret sauce
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One of my buddies at SWA mentioned that this aircraft was built in ‘09.
The FAA issued an Advisory Circular (AC) in ‘13 mandating FDRs built after ‘13 have mandatory backup power.
This -800’s were obviously built earlier which might explain why there was no data the last 4 minutes of the crash- a dual engine failure with power loss and not using the APU for electrical.
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I happened to be flying SWA today, and I wondered why I saw something about the “bottle to throttle” rules. Now I know.
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I have a few buddies who flew with him here.
I feel awful for him.
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Hoover weighs in.
Hoover won’t speculate but I will. The Black Hawk was on a training mission and was warned of the airliner - the pilot confirmed visual and asked for authority to maintain visual separation - which was given. Basically, the Black Hawk said “we see it, we’ll avoid it.”
There’s no way for the pilots in the airliner to see something below them to their right when they’re making a descending turn to the left. They were turning on final approach having long since been cleared to land. Looking for traffic to the right is going to be the last thing they could focus on.
Seems to me that the Black Hawk thought they saw the airliner but must’ve been looking at something else - maybe another jet landing on the other runway - and wasn’t looking high and to their left. Pilot error on the Black Hawk with tragic consequences.
From the ATC recordings played by Hoover it doesn’t seem like the controllers did anything unusual or erroneous.
As I’ve said before here, I’ve done that land runway 1 circle to land 33 approach a lot in my career, a few times in the CRJ and E-170/175 and 737.
I can tell you at night, the area around DCA is rife with traffic, and it’s an accident waiting to happen. Believe me when I tell you, flying into and out of DCA kept me on my toes with all the additive conditions/external factors contributing to a challenging area of flying.
The professional Potomac Approach/Departure controllers as well as the DCA controllers are top notch and superb, some of the best, so fuck you in the mouth, donnie, with your word salad steaming pile of shit gibberish presser today blaming Biden, DEI or whatever.
This is a fucking tragedy, and I’m beyond heartbroken for the loss of life.
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It looks like approach offered the CRJ runway 1 but the crew requested 33.
Exactly opposite. ATC asked the Captain if he would take 33. The plane before said “unable,” but the doomed pilot they could do 33. The pilot did not request it.
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As Jim said. But the move over to RWY 33 wasn’t some crazy, out of the ordinary move. The aircraft on an unusual path was the Black Hawk. It requested - and was given - authorization to keep visual separation from airport traffic on its own.
One potential contributing factor is that usually there are separate controllers for airport traffic and other traffic in the area. On this night they were short-handed, so the roles were combined. Would the Black Hawk been given authorization to keep its own visual separation if there had been a dedicated controller? Obviously I don’t know and this is something that will be part of the investigation.
It’s entirely possible that the authorization for visual separation is the standard procedure. It’s possible that it is the standard procedure when one controller is doing two jobs. It is possible that it was an in the moment workaround by a controller juggling the traffic usually handled by two people. Again, hopefully something that we learn from the investigation.
By way of background, the “rules of the air” have the following priorities regarding collision avoidance:
- The aircraft that has the other aircraft to its right is the one to yield (like a stop sign);
- Aircraft that is more maneuverable yields to less maneuverable aircraft, e.g. a Cessna would yield to a glider, a glider to a hot air ballon; and
- If both aircraft are of similar capability, the smaller is expected to yield to the larger, e.g. a Cessna can make turns easier than a 747 (and spill fewer drinks).
Now, in the controlled space around the DC airport, these rules can be usurped by the controllers instructions, but still apply when shit goes wrong like it did here. So you have conflicting rules where the airliner had the helicopter to its right - so should have been the one to yield - but it was turning on finals with clearance to land and the helicopter is far more maneuverable (as our president so eloquently explained).
Of course, the rules assume that the respective pilots can see the conflicting traffic, which clearly is not the case here. I doubt either pilot was playing chicken, having seen the other aircraft and expecting them to yield. As I said above, I can’t see how the airliner was aware of the Black Hawk and the helicopter confirmed it had visual on the airliner but clearly didn’t because it flew straight into it.
In DCA, flights are cleared for the approach to runway 1 and allowed to circle to land on 33. It’s very common and I’ve flown that numerous times. It’s not out of the ordinary in the least.
What’s troubling is the fact that the US Army helo asked for and was told to maintain visual separation (thus relieving the controllers- again, very common). They clearly failed to do so which is shocking to me.
It clearly had to have been DEI or wokism that brought this tragedy to bear.
Bigly.
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It does appear that both pilots and the controller were white dudes.
JD Vance - I shit you not - excused this away by saying that they were probably distracted because of all the DEI going on.
The Black Hawk helicopter was conducting a training flight for a female pilot who has not yet been identified.
Here’s a Reddit thread I came across this morning. Paints a pretty bleak picture of the state of aviation in the Army.
Part of the Russification of our military and nation.
And we now have another plane crash in Philly. Sounds like a smaller plane crashed into a neighborhood. Awful.
It was an air ambulance transporting a Mexican pediatric patient who had come to the US for life-saving treatment and was flying home. What a gut punch.
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It’s a fiery mess. Yikes.
I feel so bad for her family. They’re about to have their deceased loved one dragged through an ocean of shit for no good reason.