AA5342 Down DCA

[Dominator2]

biscuit74 Your quite right that this was not the environment to be using NVGs. Of course, at present it has not been confirmed that the helicopter crew were on NVGs.
I have flown many hundreds of hours on NVGs, all be it fast jet, down at 250ft. With the amount of lighting in a city centre the NVGs would have been unusable and detrimental to Flight Safety. I don't know if Black Hawk pilots fly with the same helmet as the Apache with all instrument information "Head Up". If not their workload to maintain 200ft or below would have been immense
As I have said previously, the procedures should not have allowed the helicopter to be in that airspace at that time!!!.

[vanHorck]

Now a lapsed PPL ME, whenever I needed to cross flight paths around airports, I believe I learned to cross overhead the field instead of crossing approach/departure paths. I always thought this was prudent. Asking to fly across approach/departure seems daft to me, it's just a few seconds extra and so much safer, even if the corridors change when runways change.. Now understanding that the modern TCAS is inoperable below 500 ft for understandable reasons, it makes even more sense.

[Junkflyer]

The ceiling is so the helicopters maintain clearance with aircraft, particularly in the landing phase. The Helos can easily operate below 200 feet in
VFR conditions. Their path also crosses the airplane runway traffic patterns.

[Mike Flynn]

Originally Posted by kontrolor

as European ATCO I can hardly believe the way some of my US colleagues are conducting their duties. I think the state ATC in US is today is in large part residue of Reagan firing of 10.000 ATCOS. I think you are very right. First of all, night visual approach in so densely lit environment, night VFR in very close proximity of runway...all this is just a recipe for disaster. Which unfortunately arrived in worst form.

Agreed and their ability to use the radio with clarity and stick to ICAO language is worth underlining.Speed of delivery in ATC communication adds nothing to safety.

[Nicd]

Apologies if this has already been asked, but why wasn't the helo told to do a 360 if there was the slightest chance of a conflict with the CRJ. Relying on it seeing the CRJ, with absolute certainty, apparently side on so probably at its most 'invisible', makes no sense at all to this non-flyer.

[grizzled]

Originally Posted by fdr

ASRS is a tool, but if it is left in the shed gathering cobwebs then perhaps we are living in a house of cards, and our ICAO DOC 9859, AC120-92D etc compliant system is great for showing compliance, but doesn't work, as it has introduced such a level of work that there is no completion of the PROCESS to turn data into actionable information. At the heart of any safety system there is a need for a process that is unremarkable, that of review and correction. It is in the ISO 9000, AS9100, all QMS standards and all SMS systems, and heck,is the basis of John Boyd's Zen (Sun Tzu?) inspired OODA loop."

(My bolding)

HEAR, HEAR.

In the hands of bureaucrats, SMS has drifted far from its purpose, and become another unwieldy, overly complex, set of box-ticking processes. There are some civil aviation service providers -- i.e. airports, airlines, and ANSPs -- that have functional, effective SMS's. Somewhat ironically, those are usually the smaller, more efficient organizations. The larger and more bureaucratic the entity (the FAA for example) the more likely that any collected data is not adequately assessed for risk, and acted upon.

It's SO damned sad and frustrating that, as you said, this accident was as predictable as a sunrise.

[galaxy flyer]

Look at SMS in private jet aviation. We have IS-BAO, Wyvern, ARG/US all doing audits, issuing pretty certificates, gold labels and then the operators have hideously stupid and predictable accidents. My rumor mill told me years ago, much of the FAA views SMS has some ICAO idea they don’t need. Is it any wonder their SMS is dead?

[Lake1952]

Originally Posted by Nicd

Apologies if this has already been asked, but why wasn't the helo told to do a 360 if there was the slightest chance of a conflict with the CRJ. Relying on it seeing the CRJ, with absolute certainty, apparently side on so probably at its most 'invisible', makes no sense at all to this non-flyer.

Especially good question considering that if everyone was where they were supposed to in terms of altitude , there would have been a descending CRJ7 at 350 feet just above a helicopter at 200 feet. That's acceptable?

[grizzled]

Originally Posted by W9SQD

The Federal Aviation Administration has indefinitely shut down the low-altitude helicopter corridor that was in use at the time of Wednesday night’s fatal midair collision near Reagan National Airport, an FAA official tells CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/pla...-25/index.html

As Chesty said, they shut the barn door long after the horse was gone.

The most important function of an aviation Safety Management System (SMS) is to prevent accidents by identifying hazards, assess them for associated risk, and then act to mitigate those risks, before the known hazard or incident becomes an accident. Looking at the list posted above by NIBEX2A, it is crystal clear that the hazards were well known, and reported, but no appropriate mitigations were implemented -- until 67 lives were lost.

Sadly, this accident will no doubt be used as an example in the future, of how Reason's famous cheese holes can, and will, line up -- and what can happen if those holes aren't closed.

[milesobrien]

DCA has a powerful constituency of lawmakers who love it for its convenience. The helicopters have a powerful constituency of military leaders who love them for their convenience. Elites in our government have ignored clear and present safety issues to save some time.

[Piper_Driver]

Originally Posted by paulross

Agreed. My experience too. There is a useful NASA lessons learned document that makes this exact argument (points 3, 5, 6 and maybe 10 in the link).

In my experience you need to have an engineering manager with sufficient clout to raise the objection or it gets ignored. I happened to me a lot early in my career. As I became more senior my voice was listened to more closely.

[RAFEngO74to09]

Ward Carroll video on the mid-air - with input from USCG helo pilot familiar with the area. Again, helo too high (300ft shown on ATC plot) + probably sighted wrong aircraft)

You Tube

[Jack D]

An avoidable tragedy, but as so often is the case the route and profile of both a/c was routine until it wasn’t.
Only a small error in altitude keeping, someone was either too high or too low, led to a meeting of the metal.
I have deliberately over simplified the event and the background causes, which are complex.

The investigation should reveal all, if open and honest, as I believe it is a cut and dried case as far as the collision is concerned. As for the reasons in the background … let the finger pointing commence, the lawyers are already sharpening their pencils!

[digits_]

Going through everything again, I'm wondering what would have happened if the helicopter did not ask or accept visual separation? What was the backup plan? Tell the helicopter to hold? Missed approach instructions for the CRJ?

[Tailspin Turtle]

To JFK clearance delivery, once upon a time: "You can say that three times fast or one time slowly".

[remi]

Originally Posted by Mike Flynn

Agreed and their ability to use the radio with clarity and stick to ICAO language is worth underlining.Speed of delivery in ATC communication adds nothing to safety.

Canadian ATC is even more of a "whoa this really is a different country" than a flashing green light.

[procede]

Originally Posted by fdr

You are allowed to do formation, that's in the rules, it just requres all participants to be have agreed to be part of the formation and a few other pesky things, like...

I think these are the regulations for general aviation (part 91).

Formation flying entails one aircraft following another. Definately not the case here. Also the CRJ was not informed...

On a sidenote: It is very convenient that they found an alternative description for the operations at SFO...

[mangere1957]

Originally Posted by Lascaille

Based on the videos there should have been no difficulty picking out the lights of the CRJ, the helo is approaching it not quite head-on but definitely in the right front quadrant. And the CRJ is above all the city lights.

It is genuinely odd how they flew directly into this thing which must literally have been lighting up the interior of their cockpit. Also, why were they above the 200ft route ceiling?

It is not permitted by the owners of this site to state the obvious and inescapable inference.

The owners of this site have every right to prohibit anything at all that they so choose, I do not dispute that at all and consider it right and proper. This is NOT sarcasm, it is the genuine belief of an extreme freemarketeer.

[pax britanica]

Where else does 200ft vertical get classed as separation on top of which the CRJ was obviously descending as well .as it was on final approach . On the radar shots both aircraft are head to head for several seconds again with decreasing 200ft separation but the stressed out controller either doesnt see it or as many people have pointed out asks the helo pilot if he can see something -at night! instead of ordering an immediate left turn . One of the more avoidable accidents and especially sad because of it . God knows what the tower controller is going thru at the moment both from massive regret and no doubt a degree of he will get the blame cos its going to be him or the helo pilot not anyone involved with the absurd planning of having aircraft on head on converging courses both below 500ft with one in a descending turn a mile from touchdown

[remi]

Originally Posted by pax britanica

God knows what the tower controller is going thru at the moment both from massive regret and no doubt a degree of he will get the blame cos its going to be him or the helo pilot not anyone involved with the absurd planning of having aircraft on head on converging courses both below 500ft with one in a descending turn a mile from touchdown

It will be interesting to see how the balance of fact-finding and fault-finding works out in this new regime. The one thing that people will do with complete reliability is make mistakes.