The news industry “experts” said flying over the river was the standard flight path for helicopters.
From the video and the air traffic control tapes, it seems like the helicopter flew into the plane/didn’t see it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the helicopter flight paths are changed after this, not just in DC but in other congested cities.
The helicopter pilot said he saw the plane on the audio exchange I heard. I don’t know if that audio is confirmed accurate, but top news outlets are carrying it. I guess the helo pilot could have been confused what plane ATC was talking about though.
It was a Blackhawk on a training exercise, I believe. I hope that new rules will be implemented that require training to take place in less congested areas. I don’t know how all of that works, though, so maybe it’s just a guess that won’t work in reality.
Looked/sounded like they lost sight of the plane, or yes, was looking at another aircraft.
I keep thinking about our local airport and all the parallel runways with flights stacked for landing, but it’s nothing like the compressed DC area with three major airports and all the helicopter traffic.
Prayers for all these families, the first responders, and all the airport/airline personnel who witnessed this tragedy.
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Please discuss the political implications of this crash in the PF. The tragedy should not be diminished by turning it into a political debate. Thank you for your understanding.
I live very close to where this happened and can confirm, it’s incredibly busy airspace. There’s lots of flights, helicopters coming in and out of the pentagon and nearby military bases and white house, a fair number of news helicopters and the coast guard helicopter somehow seems to always be up and about. Plus airspace over DC is very regulated and limited. It’s been overly congested for years. It is much more convenient to have an airport right on the edge of the city versus the rather long drives out to Dulles or BWI, but there’s too much going on there to add on more. I feel so terrible for all the families affected by this crash, it’s just awful and feels like it was so preventable.
I watched the figure skating championships this weekend, and my first thought was whether Ilia Malinin was on the flight (I know that he skates at the Washington Figure Skating Club). He posted his condolences on Instagram, though, so he wasn’t on the flight. It’s so sad to think of the people who lost their lives in the crash.
I just read that Maxim Naumov, the son of the coaching pair who were named as being in the crash, posted about how his last conversation with his parents was them telling him they are proud of him (he placed 4th in the championships). 
Apparently DCA is a bit of a misnomer compared to other major metropolitan areas.
This airport is much closer to downtown and is busier due to proximity.
It is incredibly convenient to catch the train right into town. Instead of other airports where they are situated in the far exurbs.
Logan in Boston is similar in that it is very close to downtown. The huge difference however is that Logan has the ocean bordering a good chunk of it, not inhabited land.
If this happened at 400 feet or so, the plane would have had its landing gear down and would be touching down within seconds. Planes are much less maneuverable than choppers, so I would expect the about-to-land plane would have the “right of way”??
To borrow a term from Buzz Lightyear and Toy Story, a landing plane is really a controlled drop, to be brutally honest.
We have friends that competed in pairs at the competition. Luckily they are safe but others from the Figure Skating Club of Boston (their club) did not make it. My dil is also from Wichita and many of her family friends take that flight. Such a tragedy!
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Unless you count this near miss. Chilling.
That page has a correction that Maravilla missed a different flight from the one that crashed, although other US figure skaters, family, and coaches were on the flight that crashed.
Brings back stomach churning memories of the Air Florida crash in '82. It was an awful day. I’ll never forget it with a harrowing drive home in the snowstorm and hearing that on the news. Just horrible to hear. Dh and I even remember what we had for dinner that night. There were a few survivors thanks to some total heroes going into the icy river to help.
I heard a former NTSB investigator comment that the Blackhawk has a number of blind spots and that night vision goggles would have made that worse. His hypothesis was that the helicopter pilots misidentified the plane that the tower warned them about, and was looking at the flight just ahead of it at the higher altitude that you can see in the video. He also said that the Blackhawk is highly maneuverable and that they should have easily been able to avoid the plane if they had seen it.
At the time of the Air Florida crash I worked in a building overlooking the runways at National airport and can well remember the heavy snow that totally obscured our view of the airport. I believe that a federal employee named Lenny Skutnick (?) was one of the heroes who dove into the ice clogged river that day and saved at least one life. If he’s still around, I have no doubt he’s re-living the horror of that crash.
It will be interesting what they find when they analyze the black boxes. NVGs should actually help the helicopter pilot see the plane. Also wondering what type of crash detection the helicopter had.
FWIW, from a former pilot on the service academy forums who has flown helicopters into that airport:
Due to the density of traffic there, it is common for the helicopters to call vis sep (visual separation) for landing airliners. Listening to the ATC recording, PAT25, the Blackhawk, had reported visual and vis sep.
Speculating a bit–it is possible PAT mis-identified another airliner as the landing traffic, as you would usually have several airliners visible at night, along the approach path on the Potomac. Alternatively, they may have initially seen the CRJ, but lost it in the background lights of the city. If they were using NVGs this is fairly easy to happen, as lights are all amplified and single color. That makes it hard to judge distances and foreground/background objects.
