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I work about a quarter mile south of where this incident took place. These helicopters are always out and they're always following a flight path that hugs the eastern Potomac river bed. Yet based on the coordinates I can see they'd drifted off course while at the same time exceeded the 200 ft ceiling.

And the helicopter pilots were warned twice by the tower yet both times claimed they (Blackhawk pilot) were taking responsibility of the visual separation between themselves and the jet. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing these Air Traffic Controllers could have done.

Yah, that's pretty much what airfields look like at night. people like to think that everything's lit up, and the aircraft look like X-Mas trees or something, but that's just not what it looks like in reality. When you approach an airport at night, you typically are looking for the long-ish black/unlit rectangle amid a sea of lights. As you get within a few miles you can start to see the actual runway environment lighting, but from a dozen miles away it's just a black rectangle. Other aircraft, unless they're pointed at you, are fairly dark, because recog/nav/logo lighting just isn't very bright.


Also, at B-class airports, most commercial jets are flying the ILS, so the pilots aren't even looking out the windscreen; they're focused on the glideslope indicator until they're just a few hundred feet off the ground, while they're traveling 3-4 miles/minute.l

People film planes taking off and landing all the time. Go on YT and you can find many people that stream that stuff for hours.

It's not laughable at all. If there was a mistake by the BH pilot on which plane they were supposed to be focused on, they're not even looking the other way. Also, another view i saw from a CCTV camera on the side showed the plane coming down on the glide slope, so they were above the BH until a very short time before contact.

I read somewhere (it might have been here) that the ATC should have given the BH pilot a clock direction to view the plane? Like, "Monitor BH helicopter at the 9 o'clock position". There was none of this as far as I've seen.

Feelings may get hurt but this was entirely on the pilot or co-pilot of the Helicopter. They were flying 400 feet vs 200 feet, were off course and not following their flight path, and pushed back on the tower twice when they were told to course correct. And here's their track:


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That's a near criminal change in heading as far as I'm concerned.

From the ATC transcript:

"Traffic just south of the Woodrow Bridge, a CRJ, it's 1,200 feet setting up for Runway 33."

The BH responds:

"PAT 25, has the traffic in sight, request visual separation."

I suppose a heading might have helped, but they did clearly point out the direction and got an acknowledgement.

I haven't read the entire thread, so apologies if I'm just repeating someone else. I could be wrong here, but based on my 2,000 hours of military flying time I think they'll find the following:

Fault will be found with several. They will present everything that was outside of normal operating procedures as contributory to the accident. However, the lion's share of the blame for the accident will fall on the crew of the Blackhawk.

The Army crew was almost certainly far less experienced than the pilots of the civil aircraft and the Blackhawk was flying through the ARSA (Airport Radar Service Area.) Frankly, I'm surprised they allowed the conflict to exist even if the Army crew actually did have the traffic in sight.

Yeah, once you declare "traffic in sight, request(ing) visual sep" the responsibility to maintain separation is on that (helo) crew.

My question is, even though they know (or should know) how and where they're supposed to fly, why doesn't ATC (or why isn't it already a rule) tell them to hold their position until the plane passes?

I get that we're all adults and 'i shouldn't have to hold your hand all the time' is part of it, but why not remove any possibility of human error in that kind of instance?

Firstly, "holding position" even in a helo isn't as easy/automatic as a lot of people think. It's not as simple as just pushing a button for "hover."



However, we also don't know exactly what the helo's flight plan/mission/training event was. Or I don't yet. Were they supposed to be just flying at low altitude down the river? Were they supposed to be doing the rotorcraft version of "touch and gos"? Or about a dozen other types of flight plans they could've been doing.

Another factor is that ATCs are not pilots. They don't know exactly what pilots/aircraft can or can't do. I've been given instructions by ATC several times that just weren't possible, or would've been pretty risky. probably every professional pilot has at one time or another. Which is why pilots are given the authority to 'disobey' ATC's suggestions, if they aren't considered safe by the aircrew.

Another possibility is that there was other traffic behind the BH, so stopping wasn't really an option.


Like I said before, until we have all the information, from all sources, and can recreate the situation accurately both chronologically and with every aircraft's position, altitude, bearing, speed, rates of ascent/descent, etc., it's going to be near impossible to know exactly what went wrong.

The thing is, airport environments are the most complex and difficult spaces to fly in/around, and working at night greatly increases risk simply because it's harder to see any objects much less determining distance, size, type, number, angle, closure rates, etc.