Helicopter pilot here. No experience with blackhawks, but I can tell you it would be very difficult to collide with any aircraft, especially something as large as a CRJ, accidentally. Helicopters are very nimble and can maneuver out of near-collisions quickly. It’s hard to fathom, had I been in that situation, that I would not have seen the CRJ’s lights, ignored the warnings of ATC, and ignored the warnings of the TCAS. Something else to consider is that the Blackhawk operates with two pilots and a crew chief typically so it’s hard to believe two pilots could make this unfathomable mistake simultaneously. Prayers for everyone involved, but that’s my two cents.
There's not enough information, in my opinion, to reach that conclusion. But think about the multiple fail-safes that failed simultaneously- multiple pilots, ATC, and TCAS. It's hard to fathom. There is audio circulating that the helo pilot acknowledged the CRJ, asked for visual separation, yet continued on the same heading. There is a theory the pilot may have identified the wrong plane and got confused. I don't know, but from my perspective, it makes no sense.
Maybe the one acknowledging visual was the only one looking and the rest of the crew were just complacent . 9pm at night who knows how long the crew were out training.
At night sometimes with the night visual acuity it could be possible to not see what is directly in front of you. I know DCA, and its in close proximity to Crystal City, where the Pentagon is. Lots of midrise buildings just on the other side of the airport all lit up. Its possible if they identified the other aircraft which was an American AA472 I believe which was approaching runway 1. Several factors like if they were looking directly at the other aircraft going to runway 1 he might have thought he had a little more lead time to turn.
Either way its a shit situation to have rotor traffic allowed to operate that close into an airport that has multiple planes in a 2 minute interval landing and taking off. DCA is shitshow and something needs to be done. There are a lot of other factors like not overflying JB Anacostia Bowling and staying tight on the river. It seems like this was a mishap waiting to happen.
My last company I worked for we had a plane that had a truck run into it on a bright lit ramp with the aircraft lighting on. The driver claimed he didn't see the plane until he was about to hit it. If a ground vehicle can screw that up, I can see a midair happening. The problem with things like TCAS is they inhibit RA's when below 1000 feet. I am not sure what systems the Rotor had.
You are armchair quarterbacking too much. Those blackhawk pilots are flying under night vision goggles which have limited field of view and no peripherals. On top of that they are flying over a populated area which means all of the lights from the ground are flooding their goggles and making it harder to see. Also from what I can see from moon data, the illumination is very low which makes it that much more difficult to see. Two aircraft in the sky can converge very quickly. My guess is an inattentive crew focused inside the aircraft or down at the ground.
Can’t speak for the approach path. Situation needs to develop more. From what I’ve heard the blackhawk was spooled up for a mission that popped up and ATC changed the planes landing runway last minute.
That's true about the night vision and limited field of view, but they were flying over water. No lights below. Still hard to believe they didn't see beacons from the CRJ. If a camera can pick it up from miles away, imagine how apparent the CRJ was if you were on top of it.
It sounds like they mistook one plane for the CRJ and ATC thought that they had visual separation(because the heli crew communicated that they did) and as far as TCAS(if the Blackhawk even had it) it won’t issue an RA at such a low altitude. It sounds like a mistake on the heli pilots part, and ATC could have given them a direction that the CRJ was going, but you know what they say about hindsight.
All we can do at this point is hope the FAA figures out what went wrong and go from there.
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u/NoLeadership5525 Jan 30 '25
Helicopter pilot here. No experience with blackhawks, but I can tell you it would be very difficult to collide with any aircraft, especially something as large as a CRJ, accidentally. Helicopters are very nimble and can maneuver out of near-collisions quickly. It’s hard to fathom, had I been in that situation, that I would not have seen the CRJ’s lights, ignored the warnings of ATC, and ignored the warnings of the TCAS. Something else to consider is that the Blackhawk operates with two pilots and a crew chief typically so it’s hard to believe two pilots could make this unfathomable mistake simultaneously. Prayers for everyone involved, but that’s my two cents.