helicopter / jet collision in DC

ATC audio courtesy of VASAviation

 

It'll be interesting to hear both cockpit voice recordings.

 

@Gino230

The banner towing was not thru the corridor @ 3500/4500. It was offshore about a half mile at like 200' one way and a mile offshore the other way all the way up at 300' if my memory is right. We'd call up LAX helicopters frequency and talk to them.

Normally the banners would be 500' along the beaches. When at 200-300 we'd have to go around the boats. Thats 25 yrs ago already...

 

that was a military helo...do they have to release that?

 

From what I’ve read, both aircraft had experienced crews. And, planes and helos have been flying that airspace together for a long time. So, sounds like something was just missed and shit happens took over afterwards. Terrible loss regardless of fault.

 

Can you imagine how the flight controller feels? Do they make the final calls for that?

 

A very interesting video with the best explanation I've seen so far.

 

While a landing a DCA isn’t fun, it isn’t near as scary as the U-turn around the mountain approach in Cusco Peru. I am sure adjustments will be made after this tragedy to some flight path, technology, procedure, or combination of those.

 

assuming you mean air traffic controller? the final call for the safety of the flight lies in the pilot in command. Visual separation rules exist and are used every day, all day. Once a pilot calls visual on another aircraft, standard separation rules bend... a lot. i've listened to the tapes from this incident and i've issued hundreds of similar clearances over my career. Nothing was amiss there. Once a pilot tells me they've got another aircraft in sight, i'm usually not issuing a control instruction at that point because i'm not sitting in the cockpit and if i tell you to go left when right is where you should go to miss, well then, i'm now flying the plane after you told me you had it.

We do our damnest to keep airplanes apart, but the general public would shit themselves if they knew how close aircraft get on a regular basis. I don't work a Bravo because i'm an enroute controller, but i work a ton of airspace, and that includes being an approach controller and a tower controller when those facilities close because they don't have enough controllers to work. sometimes i'm working 3-5 sectors with 6 frequencies and 15 transmitter sites that all overlap and transmit over each other. i REGULARLY have VFR pilots who i'm not talking to flying ALL over IFR procedures around busy airports. I've broken air carriers off of approaches more often than i can count over the years because targets appeared likely to merge and in my opinion, collisions could be an outcome.

I still believe we have the safest airspace in the world, but our equipment is old, you can make more money managing a wal-mart or in some cases a mcdonald's, and i've got half as many controllers in my area as when i started 16 years ago. The agency cannot figure out a way to hire enough people to replace the people we lose every year. or its just cheaper to pay 20 people to do the work of 40 than it is to employ 40 people. we work 6 day work weeks and sometimes 10hr days. during our busy months we get 4 days off a month. FOUR. we work days, and nights and over nights, holidays, weekends, 24/7, and consequences of mistakes can be deadly.

my heart goes out to everyone involved in this. human factors and human errors are real. to err is human.

 

some air traffic control towers are contracted out to third parties. recently one tower in california had their contract change from one party to another and when the new contract was written, they basically cut their pay in half. so all the controllers put in their resignation and now that tower will no longer be staffed and the airport will be uncontrolled.

this happened a day before DCA.

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area...raffic-controllers-amid-pay-dispute-with-faa/

 

I was wondering why TCAS wouldn't have kicked in here. Suppose military craft don't run them at all?

 

SMH lack of oversight cost so many lives.

Hope they change the rules...there is no reason for any aircraft to be in crossing in front of an aircraft on final.

 

from what ive read (not a pilot) TCAS is only programmed to give traffic alerts and not resolution advisories (RA's) below 1000ft AGL.

lets assume someone descended on top of the CRJ and TCAS gave advisories... now you have a plane getting an advisory to descend when they're below 1000ft AGL.

just not gonna work.

 

the helo was instructed to pass behind after he reported the CRJ in sight.

 

I'm sure you work hard, but when the helo replied that he had the plane in sight,
he obviously didn't since he flew right into it. I would contend that when asking the helo
if he saw the plane, the ATC had no way of knowing if he saw the plane he was
referring to and the better course of action would have been to instruct the helo
to change course since he can see both craft on his screen. And not alerting the plane
to the presence of the helo was also not a smart thing to do. This seems like complacency
more than anything. The results speak for themselves. There was no need for this crash
to happen.

 

Sorry, the controller failed both aircraft in conflict resolution. If he had been watching he would have seen nearly the same agl with a intercept about to happen.

 

No idea, but these things typically make their way out at some point.

 

At some point the pilots have to fly the aircraft

 

It's cool that a commercial pilot and folks with ground control experience can help us understand this even though most here are just curious.

At some point I suppose it will come out that this individual did this wrong then this happened bla bla bla.

I chatted with an air controller just a few weeks ago and after listening to him and reading this thread I think the real problem is all the margin for error has been systematically removed. Therefore when unusual things happen (night vision, poor depth perception due to conditions, high relative speeds, small separation distances etc) the possibility for catastrophic failure is too high.

It's so common to lower the safety and functional margins for prophets, competitiveness or to just keep it all running even though it should be paused. Industries do it and is sounds like maybe that's the REAL reason for this crash.

 

The risk for helis goes way up at night. They typically operate visually and just a dark night landscape can be an issue.

These guys had two engines and night vision goggles so that mitigates a lot of risk. I have no idea how much their field of vision is limited while wearing goggles, nor have I heard goggles were being used at the time of the wreck