The January 29 airline collision and fatal crash this week is a genuine mystery to virtually everybody that is covering it online and in the news. Nobody can explain why it happened although everybody is reporting that the airport involved, Reagan International, is in congested airspace.
As near as anybody can tell, the airline pilots were doing their job. The military helicopter was flying outside of it's assigned airspace, too high and too wide, and nobody yet seems to have a clue why that was happening.
Yesterday I saw some new video that debunked any theories I might have had about the helicopter taking action to avoid the crash.
Here is a YouTube video made by an airline pilot who has not only flown this route but has trained other pilots on how it is done. It's a short video and in my opinion is worth watching. This is strictly from the perspective of the pilots and shows the approach from the cockpit during daytime identical to the nighttime approach of the doomed airliner - a bird's-eye view of the situation:
Update Saturday Evening
I just watched a short NTSB news conference that presented information from the control tower and the airliner but data from the Blackhawk helicopter was not yet available.
The airliner data showed the altitude of the airliner at the time of the accident was reading 325 feet plus or minus 25 feet - in other words it was in a range of from 300 to 350 feet.
However the control tower radar showed the altitude of the helicopter was 200 feet. that puts the Blackhawk within its acceptable altitude, not above it as so many have been claiming.
At this point it seems too early to determine why this difference exists.
Here is a video from a Blackhawk night flight training instructor. It shows data from online sources showing the Blackhawk at an altitude of 200 feet an instant before the collision.
This video does dispel many of the myths. But I am beginning to wonder if perhaps the airliner altitude instruments were in error. When the helicopter flight data recorder data becomes available there might be some more clarity. At this point it seems like which came first, the chicken or the egg. Which one was flying in the other guy's airspace? Was the airliner too low or was the helicopter too high as it has been rumored? Too early to tell. But my own opinion is going through a paradigm shift this evening. I suppose it all depends on a person's point of view. Airliner advocates blame the helicopter. Military helicopter advocates are beginning to wonder just how much claim the airliner had to the air it was flying in.
Could this have been avoided? Certainly.
Was it avoided? No.
Which pilot had the responsibility to avoid the other? Both! They don't pay for two pilots on airliners just to sit there and not look outside the airplane for danger. They are paid to look out and spot danger.
Of course then there's the complication that neither pilot could hear the other pilot's radio communications. That is confirmed by the NTSB. Both pilots could hear air traffic control and air traffic control could hear both pilots but neither pilot could hear the other pilot.
Should the helicopter have dropped to a lower altitude? Yes, for sure.
Could the airliner have tried to go above the helicopter? Preliminary data shows it may have attempted to do that but way too late in the game.
Was it suicide by Blackhawk? It sure was looking like it as of last night, but now? It's time for a paradigm shift.
Update 2/2/25
This morning I have watched several more excellent videos analyzing this collision. This first one covers concerns about the altimeter setting on the Blackhawk. I believe he is suggesting that an incorrect altimeter setting could reflect in both the helicopter data and the control tower data.
This next video uses Microsoft Flight Simulator to fly both the route of the helicopter and the route of the airliner. He uses the airport's visual glide slope indicator to conclude that at the point of impact, the glide slope would have the airliner even below the 200 foot maximum "safe" altitude for the helicopter. The official altitude of the airliner taken from the airplane's flight data recorder at the time of impact or just prior was 325 feet plus or minus 25 feet. More data should help clarify this disparity, but everything seems to indicate that the helicopter was too close to the airport and flying within the glideslope of the runway - something that absolutely never should have happened.
But this next video puts the blame where it really belongs - Air Traffic Control at the airport, understaffed, overworked, and negligent because of that. There seems to be a lot of misinformation floating around about this but it appears to me that there were five people in the control room, only one controller working and four others no doubt distracting him although nobody has mentioned that obvious possibility.
It seems at this point that everybody involved could have prevented this collision, but nobody did. There was simply too much danger designed into the system. That's the rational conclusion. Too much was expected by the powers that be from everybody involved.
Update February 3:
It is still unclear who was piloting the helicopter, but the only officer onboard was a pilot, the young woman in this video from the White House on January 4 of this year:
It does seem odd to me that before the military was willing to give out her name to the public her entire social media profile was scrubbed. Unfortunately, they didn't scrub this video. I would imagine she was crushed by Trump's victory but hey, that's just me.
