What the Black Hawk pilots could see, just before the crash
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
"(According to investigators, this altitude data was rounded to the nearest 100.)"
[...]
"At over 100 miles an hour, the helicopter could have risen to 300 feet from 200 in seconds, because of winds or other factors. Such anomalies are not unusual and can be quickly corrected."
I read your comment as implying that you've concluded it's pilot error. I don't disagree, but a good system should be robust against human error. Perhaps the permitted flight paths were too close together? I'm not an expert, but a commercial jet making a landing approach 100 feet above a helicopter doesn't seem safe or normal to me.
(Never flown into that one as not an ATP. I'd never be able to get closer than College Park. Even that was a non-trivial exercise in paperwork.)
'Cuz "National Security".
End of discussion.
/s
You may laugh, but that's historically the argument in support of these practices. No one wants to go on record as questioning the practice. Maybe they will finally do something now? But it wouldn't surprise me if they don't.
My understanding is that the helicopter was military and didn't need to submit a flight plan. They get to fly where ever they want
Reminds me of the story of the Navy ship and lighthouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_ur...
Now it's easy to say, "Well, Bilbo0s, who are you to say it wasn't necessary?"
That's true, but it's an argument that's closed onto itself. We can't probe any further 'cuz "National Security". So this unimaginably dangerous practice of allowing military and government pilots to do this sort of thing "if necessary" continues.
We need to, at minimum, have a discussion about why the practice is necessary?
There's also no need to because current procedures already covers this. All the aircraft would have to do is declare an emergency and they get to go and land wherever they want.
In controlled airspace aircraft fly where they are told to fly by controllers:
I can guarantee you, if I were flying the helo, the transcript between myself and ATC would be significantly different. When you're certain military and government pilots, it's basically, "Um, sir, I don't mean to disturb you, but are you certain you have visual?".
The real issue is allowing certain military and government aircraft to essentially do whatever they like. I understand the whole "National Security" thing, but, I mean, maybe we can at least talk about the practice? It's not a practice that seems unsafe. It's a practice that is unsafe.
Here's why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Airwest_Flight_706
And they don't need priority. If Air Force One wants to land anywhere, they simply have the airport closed and the airspace cleared. And you don't need to close an entire airport. You can just mark off a place in the sky that's restricted during a certain time.
Additionally, any plane can declare an emergency and take priority over all other traffic, including anything military, including Air Force One. It would be silly if you think you are so important that an airplane currently in the middle of crashing will go around you.
You can verify all of this by listening to ATC transcripts on YouTube. They are pretty easy to find if you're looking for sources.
"US Air Force fighters intercepting an unknown aircraft near the Whitehouse" don't request anything from anyone outside their chain of command. That's not how anyone gets orders sir.
NMCC is in charge, and any idea you have to the contrary is yours alone.
Now, will NMCC, or someone in the chain, communicate with ATC as part of the response? Yes. But only for the purposes of keeping ATC apprised of the situation and informing ATC that fighters are in the area. No one is standing around waiting on the results of clearance requests in these scenarios.
Your assertions would not only be bad policy, but they're contrary to military sense.
My idea is to sit down and have the conversation about why certain helos are engaged in some of these dangerous practices? And if that reasoning be sufficiently compelling, to consider the pros and cons of closing DCA. If the reasoning be not compelling, then we need to have another discussion about different operating protocols for these aircraft.
You may not strictly need the clearance but it's a really good idea to know where it's safe to fly.
> My idea is to sit down and have the conversation about why certain helos are engaged in some of these dangerous practices?
This isn't different from planes colliding on a runway. There are bad procedures. The NTSB will investigate and make recommendations. The military will offer their opinions. And the FAA will ignore everything until it happens a couple more times. Or with see and avoid, bury their heads in the sand and hope the problem goes away.
All aircraft have separation and avoidance rules that apply at all times.
This seems like a classic normalization of deviance. Reportedly there were literally a hundred automated collision warnings between airliners and helicopters in this area over the past decade. One such warning should raise eyebrows. Two should start people thinking there's a systemic problem. More than a handful should prompt an investigation to resolve the root cause of the conflicts. Instead, they (at least the system as a whole) seem to have decided that they weren't a real problem because nothing had happened yet.
As for DCA itself, yeah, there have been people trying to close it for decades- that was originally the plan once they opened IAD in 1962. But DCA was so close and so convenient to the city and IAD (and later BWI) are so far away that no one has really wanted to pull the trigger on closing it, even as the airspace got more and more complex after the September 11th terrorist attacks.
I'm thinking you're not quite understanding the nature of the missions many of these helos undertake.
I personally don't think the practice should be allowed, but that's why we need to have a discussion. We need to determine how necessary are these practices?
That said, I can guarantee you that the ideas you put forth would be rejected by government and military planners. Those ideas would defeat the entire point of some missions. What we can do is talk about whether or not DCA is a facility that should be open? Things of that nature.
But any ideas that result in tipping off the mission will be non-starters for the guys and gals seated on the military/intelligence side of the table.
Apparently on the old avionics in the helicopter, the altimeter is calibrated by manual entry of barometric pressure to the nearest 0.1 inch Hg. So a rounding error could cause a 100 ft altitude discrepancy.
That's how it's done in all aircraft.
"The name pascal was adopted for the SI unit newton per square metre (N/m2) by the 14th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1971"
It has to be manually set because there is no way to know what the reference pressure should be for altitude while you are in the air (the reference isn't necessarily the true sea level pressure since that changes constantly, it is what the SLP was at the time the reference was set). Using a non-pressure altimeter you can normally figure out what true SLP is, but the idea is that you want all planes using the same altimeter readings, even if it is not strictly correct.
All aircraft in a given area are told the reference by the controller when they enter the control area.
The loss of separation was not primarily because of the Z axis, but because the Blackhawk was in the wrong spot on the X,Y axis.
The controller said, paraphrasing ATC speak, "Do you see that plane? You are cleared through the airspace as long as you see and avoid that plane by going behind it. You are responsible for separation if you accept this". The BH pilot responded, "I see the plane, I can and will avoid it. It is my responsibility to go behind it, and I will do that."
The collision would have been narrowly avoided if the Blackhawk was at the right altitude, but that was the last in a long line of piloting errors that caused this midair.
If they were at the correct assigned altitudes it still would have been an incident because the loss of separation wasn't about the altitudes, it was about the errors made long before then. They weren't cleared to be where they were, and no controller would allow an altitude only separation of 100ft.
Simply put, that helicopter pilot was specifically not supposed to be where they were, and the standard separation was violated before the altitude became an issue.
If you narrowly miss someone driving down the wrong side of the highway after crossing the medain, the margin of safety isn't the distance that you missed that car by, it is the median.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/05/us/dc-crash-h...
Note "unlocked" in URL above.
Try it!
So how many WERE there?!? Two, as in the first and third sentences, or just one, as in the second sentence?
Who writes this drivel and does not even proofread it??
> But that night, there was only one helicopter, and its pilot and co-pilot worked together to navigate...
The minimum crew is 3, two pilots and one crew member. While not ideal, this is a regular occurrence for operational reasons, so it's part of regular training.
One helicopter has 2 pilots