We have @busdriver11 as the true authority here, but my understanding is that planes on final approach have been given right of way by ATC.
It’s not quite a controlled drop as pilots have the authority and ability to perform a go around for any reason. But a plane won’t be able to avoid a helicopter that enters its flight path, even if they were able to see it, which I doubt was the case here.
Granted, pilots can use their engines and flaps, etc., to control the speed, angle, etc., of the descent, but gravity does do a lot of the work, n’est pas?
I don’t understand why a training mission would take a Black Hawk into air space used by commercial aircraft landing at Reagan.
Just having been on a plane, this just hits home. When I’m on it, my mind goes to what it would be like sitting right now and something like this happening. The shock, the horror and then I have to force myself not to think of it anymore, anyway I can.
I imagine many of those people thought that too, then it happened. It’s so awful, it makes me cry.
Just read that the helicopter was flying at around 300 ft, and should have been below 200. Lots of speculation about why, could have made a mistaken maneuver to avoid the plane, but of course no one knows yet. The black boxes should verify all these types of details.
Same. Plane incidents are triggering for me. Three classmates in HS were killed in a small plane crash.
Over the holidays, we were flying to an island, where there was a bad storm. Pilot aborted the landing at about 800 or so feet. The speed of the acceleration and slope of upward movement was frightening. We circled for about 20 minutes, in the storm, over nothing but water. Landed safely. On the way out of the plane, DH asked the pilot what happened (there had been total silence the whole time we were circling.) He said he couldn’t see the runway. Seemed shaken. Then, just said ‘bad’.
Oh my, I bet that was so scary. I was on a plane about 30 years ago that turned back right after take off. You could just feel the plane nit having that power when it takes off. I was shaken, but got on the next flight out. You could really feel the difference.
I dream of air crashes about 7-8 years. I watch them crash, I’m not on it. And then that gives me goosebumps.
I’ve had two close calls - a flight that lost flight stabilizers and partial flight control immediately after take off and was shaking so violently people were screaming. We immediately turned around and got clear for an emergency landing. The second was an aborted take off after an alarm sounded in the cockpit. We came very close to going off the end of the runway and we had to sit there surrounded by fire trucks until the brakes cooled down.
I’m flying again tomorrow. Keep reminding myself that it’s safer to fly than drive but I’m shaken.
According to another forum I was reading anything that is not specifically a military mission is called a training session. A pilot could have a 1000 hours of flight time and still be on a training session. It doesn’t mean the pilot was new.
I didn’t mean to imply the pilot was new - I have no idea. I just don’t understand any military training in a landing path to a major airport.
There are two paths at the airport. Airplanes and helicoptors. Helicoptors are supposed to stay below 200ft but routinely will fly below landing planes.
When I was in college, there was a terrible plane crash from JFK. The plane was carrying, among others, a group of high school students going on a trip to France. This flight: TWA Flight 800 - Wikipedia
I have been terrified of flying ever since. That completely traumatized me.
I have had two close calls. One the plane began to stall after takeoff. We were going down pretty fast and sort of bucking. At first I wasn’t sure if it was a problem or just some kind of weird turbulence we were trying to get out of, so I looked at the flight attendants strapped into their seats. Their faces were white. That’s when I knew something was very wrong. Fortunately, the pilot pulled out of the stall.
Another time, I was on a plane with some problem with it’s landing gear - it wouldn’t release or something? We had a rough landing, but the pilot managed it.
I hate flying. But I love seeing places that I can realistically only see by taking a plane to them.
As for this tragedy - D is a skater so I belong to a lot of skating-related groups and they have been posting bios and pictures and videos of the young skaters who perished. It is heartbreaking. And reminds all a bit of this tragedy: Sabena Flight 548 - Wikipedia
The helicopter was supposed to keep an eye on the plane and then fly behind it after it passed.
Only the accident investigation will show what really happened, I am no authority. But things can be complicated as you get close to the ground, and I think people have no idea of how incredibly busy it can get on final approach, particularly with too much traffic in the airspace. It doesn’t really matter who has “right of way”, if you crash into each other, you’re both dead. Sometimes ATC will tell one aircraft to follow another, or asks if the other aircraft is in sight and pass behind, to the left or right. It can be bedlam sometimes. If one aircraft was supposed to avoid another aircraft identifies the wrong airplane to follow, obviously that’s a huge problem. It can be very hard to identify which aircraft is being specified, particularly at night. You see an airplane and you think it’s the right one, so you fixate on that, and nope, that’s not the right airplane. I believe the CRJ likely had TCAS, but they would have gotten a “traffic” warning call, but not a resolution advisory that would have told them to climb, climb now, at such a low altitude. If the helicopter was right underneath them as they were descending, they would have never seen them at all. A plane would be able to avoid a helicopter if they saw them, and the CRJ could have likely climbed quickly away from the helicopter. The black boxes should show everything that happened.
I just heard an interview with Elizabeth McCormick (retired Black Hawk pilot) on CNN. It was the clearest explanation of possible issues I’ve heard yet.
I haven’t found a video of the CNN interview, but this article shares the basics of her interview.
ETA: I replied to busdriver, as our CC expert on this topic so she can evaluate the veracity of these public statements and interpret them for us.
I grew up with this tragedy. My parents were from a small town and my father best friends with the brother/son of a skater and his mother who were killed in the crash. Whenever we went to the cemetery (and we went often) we’d visit the graves and hear the story. My mother wasn’t a big sports person, but always watch figure skating and would talk about Dick Button and Tinley Albright (who was on TV crying earlier today), about Peggy Flemming being just a little girl who was advanced early because of the crash.
It was the first thing I thought of when I heard of the skaters on today’s plane.
Sad to say, he just passed away. Bad day for skating.
I’m no expert, but with as little information as we have, it sounds like she nails it. If ATC didn’t give the position of the traffic, that is odd, because they always tell you where to look. If they didn’t, even if I had another airplane in sight, I would question them to make sure I’d locked on the right one.
I was just going to link that. It was a great explanation and added that there were 2 planes near the helicopter and the pilot and tower may not have been talking about the same one.
Yes, in a perfect world, the locations of both planes would have been called out, as both were near the helicopter.
