US Army helicopter / American Airlines Crash in DC | Medical plane crash in Philly
- Thread starter Sir Matt
- Start date
Traffic collision avoidance
Resolution Advisory
PAT: Just a callsign, but I think it stands for Priority Air Transport
Black Hawk
So… My uncle is one of the people investigating this for American Airlines. Working with the FAA and NTSB. He was part of the team that trained the crew of the downed plane.
ATC - Air Traffic Control, the controller on the ground regulating the aircraft in his area of responsibility, in this instance the airport tower
TCAS - Traffic Collision Avoidance System, detects and warns of possible imminent collisions with other aircraft. Can, under the right circumstances, issue a:
RA - Resolution Advisory, telling the aircraft how to avoid a crash, usually by telling one of them to climb and the other to descend. This function is inhibited at below 1000 above ground level since descending would be too dangerous then.
PAT - Priority Air Transport, the callsign of the helicopters in these two cases. The crashed helo was PAT25.
BH - Black Hawk, the type of helicopter
VIP - Very Important Person, someone with too much money and too little, if any, morals
The helicopter was following the route 4 as established by the FAA:Crazy for the helicopter to be anywhere near this plane flight path.
Feels deliberate
It has gotten too high on the route, 350 instead of the maximum 200ft allowed on that route, but that can easily have been pilot error, no need to assume malevolent intent. As was said before, the pilots were probably concentrating on the wrong aircraft and lost track of their altitude and what was directly in front of them.
Now, if you want to ask why the hell the route is going right underneath the approach to an active runway 33 with only ~200ft of vertical separation, then we're back at discussing how US airspace procedures often use very tight margins that allow for little human error and can get unsafe too easily for my personal liking.
Just in general, for those who keep assuming an intentional crash:
If those pilots really wanted to do harm, why would they do it in this way? It is outrageously hard to hit an aircraft, even on a fixed path, with a helicopter. If they were out to kill people with a suicide attack, they could make it much easier on themselves and run themselves into a building, an aircraft on the taxiway, or any other easy target.
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Jesus, anyone near this would be thinking they just got hit by a missile.
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As for the other crash, here's its flight path:
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?ica...e=2025-01-31&trackLabels×tamp=1738364825
They had just taken off seconds ago and started climbing and accelerating, then rolled over to the left and went into a steep descent. Impacted at ~250kts of ground speed, over 460km/h, and they will have been much faster than that due to the angle they were flying to the ground. Whatever it was, at least their deaths were mercifully quick. Six people aboard, two pilots, two doctors, a patient and their family member.
Another video of the incident:
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?ica...e=2025-01-31&trackLabels×tamp=1738364825
They had just taken off seconds ago and started climbing and accelerating, then rolled over to the left and went into a steep descent. Impacted at ~250kts of ground speed, over 460km/h, and they will have been much faster than that due to the angle they were flying to the ground. Whatever it was, at least their deaths were mercifully quick. Six people aboard, two pilots, two doctors, a patient and their family member.
Another video of the incident:
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So sad. Was watching CNN and they were saying it was only 2 people on the flight. Of course many casualties on the ground. Just terrible,
NBC is now reporting five people aboard: 2 pilots, 2 medical crew, 1 pediatric patient. And CBS just went back to reporting six aboard. 6, 2, 5, 6, nobody seems to have an actual clue how many were aboard.
And of course it's still unclear how many victims there were on the ground, can't forget those as well.
Also, warning to everyone trying to find out more:
Please be very careful when looking for videos of the incident.
There is some extremely gruesome stuff of the aftermath on the ground that I won't even describe here that some people have filmed. Just... don't look for it.
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Dear god what's happening? It's only January and so much shit already.
A child patient on board..
Yeah, they were apparently nose down and mistakenly identified a different aircraft as they one the controller was referencing. Also, the controller didn't give them a direction to look for the aircraft in question, so they never knew that there was one just above / front that they were climbing into.
Plus, the aircraft was apparently belly towards the helicopter, so they'd have never seen it either.
wtf its basically like a missile
The helicopter pilots were given the aircraft's location (just south the Woodrow Wilson Bridge) the first time the ATC warned them of that traffic, and the helicopter pilots then requested and got visual separation approved, making it their responsibility from that point on to make sure they stay clear of it. The ATC probably assumed that they would keep track of the aircraft after that, and felt it unneccessary to again give a direction for them to look at the second time he warned them. It might well be possible that the pilot's attention locked onto the wrong aircraft from the beginning, or that they lost track in the meantime and then looked at the wrong one. Making out relative speeds and distance at night, with nightvision gear on, above the other many lights in a city center, is extremely hard, after all.
As for the CRJ pilots, I'd say that they could have possible spotted them if they were on the lookout for them. The helo came in from about 2 o'clock and was slightly below them, which is quite possible to see from the right seat but not from the left one. But this shortly before touchdown the pilot's focus would have been ahead of them on the runway and on the instruments, not looking off to the side, so I am definitely not faulting the copilot for not spotting it.
That's what it sounds like happened.
From what I was told tonight, they believe it wasn't possible for them to see it because the plane was in a left bank, as the ATC had given a runway correction. They're thinking right now that the helicopter hit the bottom of the plane.
One of the videos posted previously showed this pretty clearly. The top of the heli impacted the bottom of the plane.
This one.
Ah, well, there you go. I didn't know there was video showing it that clearly.
The crash in Philadelphia is reminiscent of the Alaska 261 crash where the elevator jackscrew in the tail section broke & put the plane into a sudden vertical dive.
Scary to think the CRJ pilots might well not have known anything was going on at all until impact. I think it's possible neither crew had seen the other.
Yep. That's exactly what I was talking to my uncle about tonight. He's been working on recreating the incident in the flight sim for AA today & that's basically all he can come up with... both of them completely unaware until disaster hit.
Yes, the helicopter hit the aircraft's lower half, but because it was slightly below the CRJ, not because it was belly-towards it. The CRJ was already done with its turn towards RWY33 at that time, and going straight while descending. The part where that would have been true was during the turn, when their belly was indeed towards the Black Hawk. So I maintain that they could have spotted the helicopter in those last seconds leading up to the crash, but that it was very unlikely for them to spot it and not their fault that they did not.
On the last part, it's entirely possible that the co-pilot was the pilot flying, I haven't seen any details on that though of course I may have missed it
Woodrow Wilson Bridge is a landmark well known to any pilot who flies in this area, it's clear on the AT C tape that the helicopter was informed, requested and was granted visual separation, (as you say)from that point onwards the position of their helicopter in relation to the CRJ was their sole responsibility
It's seems pretty likely that they misidentified the right CRJ from the get-go or they lost it visually at some point and reaquired the wrong one, I wonder if they were aware that it was landing on 33 and not 1, if they thought it was 1 it would possibly explain why they were looking in the wrong place
Just one possibility, there is an older airworthiness directive for that aircraft type about possible fatigue damage in the flaps that could lead to breakage, uncontrolled roll and loss of aircraft control:
https://www.federalregister.gov/doc...irworthiness-directives-learjet-inc-airplanes
Definitely not saying that this is what happened, and I'd assume that an aircraft being used for medical flights would be aware of and have addressed such a known flaw, just giving an example of what could lead to such a situation.
I get that. I'm just saying that's what it reminded me of.
Sounds like they might know that for sure tomorrow.
They'll probably already know based on the ATC logs
The Philly plane appears to be on fire before it impacts (in the door camera video).
Not a single recording I've seen shows anything indicating a fire in or around the aircraft as it comes down, including any doorbell or security camera footage. Quite the opposite, some of the better footage shows the aircraft rather clearly not being on fire or otherwise visibly damaged. I'm 99.9% certain that you're just misinterpreting the landing lights as flames.
Another theory I've seen making the rounds is an aerodynamic stall. The reason people peddling that theory give is how steeply the aircraft is shooting into the ground. However, the groundspeed of the plane is counterindicative to this. It remains high and increases all through the short flight, very far above even a clean configuration stall speed. Personally, I'd rule out a stall as an option.
So having learnt a few things about the heli crew one really has to wonder how that happened. Ignoring DEI, they had an inexperienced captain being checked by people that were easily outranked by the person they are supposed to pass judgement on (and yes 500h is inexperienced, for reference you need 1500h before you can start becoming a transport pilot).
If this had been a civilian operator they would be sued out of existence.
If this had been a civilian operator they would be sued out of existence.
That's only true for a commercial pilot in the US of A though, in the rest of the world people with 500hrs have been first officers in airliners for ~250hrs already without being inherently more unsafe. This moronic rule is also the reason for lots of disinterested GA pilots just grinding hours at all cost to finally be able to apply to the airlines. It is well-meaning, but bad in effect.
Also rank doesn't matter as soon as they step into the cockpit. The trainee remains the trainee, the flight instructor remains the flight instructor, regardless of their relative rank. There's more to it than pure military rank. When I was still serving I ordered higher-ranking people around quite a few times when I had to as I, as a medic, outranked their non-medical arses on all matters medical. This is effectively the same, just with flying. The instructor is the boss between them.
Well, this happened in DC. I would disagree with the 2nd statement. Someone with a 6th of the flying hours, at the start of their career, is inherently more unsafe. I'm sure there's plenty of data to back that up but I'll just refer to the universal counting of flying hours by every aviator around the world for that exact reason (again for reference a average airline pilot flies 700 hours per year).
Airlines go through a lot of scheduling pain to manage flight deck resources for the same reasons as why rank matters. People are less likely to speak up or correct their seniors. I'm sure that effect is only amplified in a organization with a strict line of command.
Eh, complacency and normalisation of deviance are also big threats and a way more likely to affect supposedly experienced pilots. In fact, I keep reading that the latter may have also played a role in this instance, as I've seen multiple claims that military pilots keep exceeding the 200ft upper limit on that route.
Anyway, the military isn't an airline, pilots need to train under less-than-perfect conditions and be ready-to-use in shorter time than civillian pilots, they had an experienced flight instructor in the cockpit who equally, if not more so given he's supposed to catch the trainee's mistakes, failed at the task of spotting the problem. Trying to make this about rank and/or experience is nonsense.
UH-60 pilots also don't get anywhere in the area of 700hrs per year in the air, they're lucky to get somewhere in the low 100s. They usually don't even reach your desired 1500hrs in a decade, so many would finish their 10yrs service time without even being allowed to take the training wheels off, so to speak.
You don't see the possible connection?
Also we are talking flying hours. Not type flying hours. And I did not give that as a requirement, in fact I explicitly said for reference.
Know what? You do you.
Keep ignoring the second, experienced instructor in the cockpit. Ignore the reality of low numbers of flight hours per year on ANY helicopter model in the army that make your desired flight hours impossible to achieve before they're effectively through with their career. Ignore actual military pilots saying rank doesn't matter once you're in the cockpit. Yes, it's definitely that the little girl was too inexperienced and her colleagues were too scared of the big bad captain to speak up, so she killed all those people.
No point pursuing that argument further.
What's the point of you? I specifically did not mention the gender in the post you chose to fight your noble fight because it does not matter. Actually, I haven't mentioned anyone's gender at all.
If anything I criticized the organization of the flight.
"You do you"
"What's the point of you"
Threads turning into Ed Sheeren lyrics so quickly these days.
"What's the point of you"
Threads turning into Ed Sheeren lyrics so quickly these days.