Mid-Air Collision in DC

[Vetter]

24 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

 

Punishment works, as long as it's for something that should be punished. Crossing an active runway without clearance should at least get your license suspended. And if it's just because you were heads-down, sorry, that's not a good reason. 

 

The unions have taken a lot (almost all) of the punishment for bad behavior away at the company level. That's fine, the companies behave badly all the time. But the FAA has gotten lax too. 

 

Some things need harsh punishments to keep them rare.

Spot on.

[disgruntledemployee]

2 hours ago, Sua Sponte said:

 

Time to make a video game.

Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan Armada.  Get Ready.  Prepare for blastoff.

[StoleIt]

5 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

The R model tanker engines are super low to the ground, and pod-scrapes are one of the highest risks of landing it. Happened a bunch, until they started giving a Q-3 to anyone who did it (at least according to the old farts). Suddenly, pod scrapes are very, very rare. 

 

Punishment works, as long as it's for something that should be punished. Crossing an active runway without clearance should at least get your license suspended. And if it's just because you were heads-down, sorry, that's not a good reason. 

 

The unions have taken a lot (almost all) of the punishment for bad behavior away at the company level. That's fine, the companies behave badly all the time. But the FAA has gotten lax too. 

 

Some things need harsh punishments to keep them rare.

Fine, but I'd also like to Q3 the requirements branch that bought the R model engines without flat bottoms. The AF decided it was cheaper to Q3 people than add some breathing room to landing a, looks at calendar, 80 year old airplane.

So if we hold the pilots responsible than I also want everyone else in the stupidity tree to be held to the same standard.

[Clark Griswold]

On 2/28/2025 at 3:54 PM, StoleIt said:

Fine, but I'd also like to Q3 the requirements branch that bought the R model engines without flat bottoms. The AF decided it was cheaper to Q3 people than add some breathing room to landing a, looks at calendar, 80 year old airplane.

So if we hold the pilots responsible than I also want everyone else in the stupidity tree to be held to the same standard.

Side note - they bought CFM 56s with the aforementioned lower accessories drive unit because the good idea fairy thought they could quick change them on the ramp because airlines that do 20x more flying than the AF does just weren’t that smart and couldn’t see the need for that capability 

[Smokin]

On 2/28/2025 at 2:54 PM, StoleIt said:

So if we hold the pilots responsible than I also want everyone else in the stupidity tree to be held to the same standard.

This.  When a pilot screws up, he gets a violation filed.  When a controller screws up, it is almost always glossed over.  When an FAA procedure is substantially to blame, as I think is the case for the DC incident, what happens to the people that created and approved the procedure?  I'm betting absolutely nothing.  Very easy for the FAA guys to yell 'throw the book at them' and 'I have a number for you to call' when they know that they will never be held to the same standard when they make mistakes on the same level of magnitude.

I've worked on a first name basis with FAA people for years as the military point of contact for a facility and have worked on pilot deviations that that resulted in filed violations.  I've also talked with them about ATC problems that resulted in just as, if not more, dangerous of a situation as the pilot deviations and nothing happened to the controllers.  It was always a "we'll talk about it and address it in our training".

[JimNtexas]

On 2/20/2025 at 11:02 AM, Biff_T said:

You ask for specific routes or zones with tower prior to executing them.  Example: "Tower, Biff 28 Cabin John, 1, 4, 3 to Andrews". 

From what I remember, there were only military,  gov agency and police helicopters.  No tourists.   

Balt-Wash_Heli (2).pdf 63.65 MB · 16 downloads

 

   Thanks for posting the chart .  Note that all altitudes are specified as MSl.

 

To me this whole airspace design was normalized deviance .  This crash was baked right into the airspace design.

if this event had gone perfectly the airliner could have passed 125 feet over the helicopter.

That is insane and would be a reportable near miss anywhere else.

 

 

[StoleIt]

NTSB Released today:

Read the Investigation Preliminary report.

Read the NTSB's urgent recommendation report on mitigating the risk of midair collisions at DCA.

Some highlights that popped out to me:

• At 2047:40, the crew of flight 5342 received an automated traffic advisory from the airplane’s traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS) system stating, “Traffic, Traffic.” At this time, the aircraft were about 0.95 nm apart, as shown in Figure 3. 
• At 2045:30, PAT25 passed over the Memorial Bridge. CVR data revealed that the IP told the pilot that they were at 300 ft and needed to descend. The pilot said that they would descend to 200 ft.
• The PAT25 FDR indicated that the radio altitude of the helicopter at the time of the collision was 278 ft and had been steady for the previous 5 seconds.
• At 2047:58, or 1 second before impact, flight 5342 began to increase its pitch. FDR data showed the airplane’s elevators were deflected near their maximum nose up travel.
• And the airplane rolled about 450°, impacting the water in an approximate 45° nose- low attitude with a left roll about 90°. 

PAT was at least 60 feet high...not sure if those helicopter routes are supposed to be AGL or MSL, but DCA is only 14 ft field elevation but either way they were high.

The CRJ must have seen the PAT too late and applied full deflection.

How terrible that must have been for the passengers and crew before impact.
 

Edited Tuesday at 07:31 PM by StoleIt

[icohftb]

It's insane that had the Blackhawk been at 200' they would have passed 69' apart...

[GrndPndr]

Related free article:

Helicopter Restrictions to Stay in Place at Reagan National Airport, Following Crash

[Dapper Dan Man]

Data from the report for ops at DCA between Oct 2021 to Dec 2024:

15,214 occurrences where commercial airplanes and helicopters separated by less than 1 NM laterally and less than 400 ft vertically.

85 occurrences with less than 1500 ft lateral separation and less than 200 ft vertical separation. Averaged out, this happened a little over twice per month in that 3 year time frame.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[raimius]

1 hour ago, Dapper Dan Man said:

Data from the report for ops at DCA between Oct 2021 to Dec 2024:

15,214 occurrences where commercial airplanes and helicopters separated by less than 1 NM laterally and less than 400 ft vertically.

85 occurrences with less than 1500 ft lateral separation and less than 200 ft vertical separation. Averaged out, this happened a little over twice per month in that 3 year time frame.





Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah, that's pretty bad.

 

The NTSB recommendations make a lot of sense.

[Springer]

18 hours ago, raimius said:

Yeah, that's pretty bad.

 

The NTSB recommendations make a lot of sense.

I'd say most of us airline types and probably ALPA Safety never knew this marginal separation was going on until now. Only landed on Rwy 33 once in the Bus due to x-winds on Rwy 01.  Currently fly out of South St Paul airport VFR to the south and pass thru MSP Rwy 30L&R final with 1,000' separation which seems close under the Class B shelf.