Posts by user "Bratchewurst" [Posts: 6 Total up-votes: 6 Page: 1 of 1]¶

Many years ago, shortly after I got my instrument rating, I flew a friend from St. Paul to St. Louis in a rented C172. Of course I filed IFR, being anxious to get more practice in the system. We were maybe 10-20 miles SW of MSP in level flight when I heard the controller tell a Northwest flight of Cessna traffic somewhere in our direction; there was another Cessna in the area as well. NW called \x93traffic in sight.\x94 Maybe 10 seconds later my passenger pointed very excitedly behind us and to our left. There was a NW 727, maybe 200-300 yards behind us and climbing through our altitude from left to right. Very fast.

I\x92ve always wondered if they really saw us or the other Cessna. It was probably the closest I\x92ve ever been to another aircraft not in the pattern. It felt way too close.

\x93See and avoid\x94 is really not the basis for safe separation of traffic in the air. Depending on it at night in airspace as busy as DC is choosing poorly.

TCAS has mostly solved the separation problem for every phase of flight except very close to the airport or on the ground. If the industry is going to short-staff ATC and keep cramming more traffic into the same airspace, the industry needs to develop and equivalent solution for those phases of flight as well.

From the audio of the previous night\x92s incident, it seems that accepting responsibility for visual separation from DCA traffic may well be standard operating procedure for military helos transiting DCA airspace. I\x92m sure there are very reasonable (or at least reasonable-sounding) reasons that might be.

My incident was long before TCAS. I was definitely IFR. I accept that my conclusion that TCAS has \x93solved separation\x94 in most cases is based on the absence of news reporting of such incidents - in marked contrast to the reporting of all the runway incursions and close calls in situations where TCAS is inhibited. Admittedly that\x92s more anecdote than data.

Couldn't the same result be achieved by landing on RWY 01 and (assuming 15/33 is not in use) simply taxiing off 01 onto 33? It wouldn't be slower, there'd be no hazard from landing or departing traffic on 01, and, as the ground track would be shorter and one engine could be shut down to taxi, quite possibly more fuel-efficient.

You\x92re assuming facts not in evidence. It\x92s possible the LC wanted to create more separation between the CRJ and traffic departing on 01, but I was responding to another explanation, apparently one given by someone who regularly flies RJs into DCA.

That\x92s the kind of information that the NTSB will discover from interviews.

The current version of TCAS II is at least a decade old and, so far as I can tell from a cursory reading of the literature available online, does not incorporate ADS-B to the extent now possible. Given the massive improvements in processing technology since the current version of TCAS was finalized, it seems entirely possible that the issues cited here could be resolved with the proper engineering, as could many others (such as the 2024 Haneda crash). Retrofitting fleets (and requiring military aircraft to participate) would be a huge political problem, but there don't appear to be any showstoppers technically.

Nuisance go-arounds caused by RAs don't seem like a high price to pay to avoid this kind of catastrophic event. And perhaps nuisance go-arounds might cause some re-considerations of poor airspace design, such as this appears to be.