Posts about: "Route Altitude" [Posts: 8 Page: 1 of 1]¶

This explanation above to me can be the only logical explanation because nothing else apart from intentional makes sense.

Akin to allowing a car to drive across a motorway/highway should just never be permissible ever. Overpass or underpass only unless emergency.

Some other observations

• DCA operates within Class B airspace , requiring explicit ATC clearance for any aircraft, including helicopters, to enter.
• Helicopters can operate in controlled airspace, but they must follow a predefined route and altitude assignment.
• Military flights, even Black Hawks, must coordinate with ATC unless responding to an emergency.

A Black Hawk could only legally cross a major approach path if:

1. It was explicitly cleared by ATC , or
2. It was conducting an authorized emergency or security operation , with ATC aware.

If neither of these happened, this should not have been permissible .
Condolences to all involved, and their families, and the teams that will be involved in the recovery.

According to the simulation by VAS, the collision happened between the center and the east bank of the river, approximately at 38.84298, -77.02531, which is 4200 ft from the threshold, so at 3 degree glide slope the correct height for an ILS approach would have been 220 ft AGL. But there was no ILS procedure.

In any case there could not have been any reasonable horizontal separation even if the helo flew within the helo route altitude restrictions. TWR gave instructions for lateral separation with this call:

60 knots, but slowing down would not be a bad idea. The SH-60 and UH-60 fly smoother at 60 than 50 IME, due in part to how and when the horizontal stab changes pitch based on the FBW set up for that flight control surface.
Their penalty was a bit more severe than that: they died, and sadly took a bunch of other people with them. I also am puzzled at the delta between their altitude requirement on that route and the altitude at impact. As John Dixson had noted, UH-60's have a rad alt.
So it wasn't just me.

From NTSB interim report on DCA aircraft / helicopter collision.

"Near Midair Collision Events at DCA
Review of information gathered from voluntary safety reporting programs along with FAA data regarding encounters between helicopters and commercial aircraft near DCA from 2011 through 2024 indicated that a vast majority of the reported events occurred on approach to landing. Initial analysis found that at least one TCAS resolution advisory (RA) was triggered per month due to proximity to a helicopter. In over half of these instances, the helicopter may have been above the route altitude restriction. Two-thirds of the events occurred at night.

A review of commercial operations (instrument flight rules departures or arrivals) at DCA between October 2021 and December 2024 indicated a total of 944,179 operations. During that time, there were 15,214 occurrences between commercial airplanes and helicopters in which there was a lateral separation distance of less than 1 nm and vertical separation of less than 400 ft. There were 85 recorded events that involved a lateral separation less than 1,500 ft and vertical separation less than 200 ft."



What is seen - reported; and what is dismissed … diminishes the value of reporting.
A system broken: a broken safety management system at the national level.

Normalization of deviance?

It won't be the last time I'll think it compulsory to say this about this accident - I'm not trying to provoke the inevitable lawsuits into higher intensity (despite status as simple SLF/attorney).

Almost invariably lawyers as well as law students and professors, when asked to comment about what is taught in law school, recite the truism that "law school teaches you how to think like a lawyer." Problem is, even quite modest experience in and with the realities and pressures of representing clients - i.e., practicing law - dulls the thinking part and intensifies the hustler mentalities, of which there are many variations. I'm noting this because law school actually trains you how to spot the issues. It sometimes is the case that the standard things lawyers think about a given set of issues are not the most relevant and meaningful things.

With that hopefully not grossly pedantic context out of the way..... in previous comments on this thread I've noted that the federal defendants would be expected to assert sovereign immunity.... more technically, that although the Federal Tort Claims Act waives sovereign immunity in general terms, the statute also contains various exceptions - in other words, the exceptions where they apply keep sovereign immunity in place. The exception relevant here is the "discretionary function" exception, which (pardon the attempt at over-simplifying it) keeps the immunity in place if the allegedly negligent act (or omission) resulted from a federal entity's policy decision or choice.

I previously viewed the discretionary function exception is likely imposing a pretty strong barrier against liability of the (probable) federal defendants. However.

However. However, as I write this somewhere in an aviation law practice a mid-level or even junior associate is pounding their computer keyboard, amassing BASED ON THE ISSUES NOW REVEALED an analysis of how the discretionary function exception has never, never ever ever, been imposed to bar liability for alleged negligence roughly and/or reasonably comparable to the record of "encounters" now documented by NTSB Prelim Report. And that record goes back several years . . . but presumably discovery in United States District Court under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure could easily reach back to even more past years.

Of course, it will be said that ignoring these many encounters was indeed a policy choice, and so the exception does apply, a forum post like this notwithstanding. But that's just the point. The ISSUE here is that there never was a conscious policy directive which the alleged negligence stemmed from. Or stated another way, if I were in the aviation practice imagined above, I'd be running associates ragged to amass the above-mentioned analysis which establishes, among other things, that GROSS NEGLIGENCE by the FAA can never be, and is not as a matter of law, a predicate for applying the discretionary function exception. (For lawyers out there, somewhat akin to prima facie tort.)

By the way, for all the discovery sports fans out there, just think how much fun it will be to run discovery to amass the facts of what actions - meaning by the aircraft in which the RAs were annunciated - were taken as a result of all the RAs as noted by NTSB's Prelim Report.

Probable Cause Statement:

They did say this