Posts by user "Musician" [Posts: 26 Total up-votes: 19 Page: 1 of 2]ΒΆ

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Musician
July 30, 2025, 16:22:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11930758
Originally Posted by WillowRun 6-3
The NTSB hearing on the accident is being live-streamed on PBS.org.
NTSB published the animation for that investigative hearing at
. It didn't tell me anything new. The hearing itself is not on their youtube channel (yet).

Subjects NTSB

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Musician
August 02, 2025, 22:32:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11932521
NTSB Youtube channel links:
Spoiler
 

Subjects NTSB

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Musician
August 04, 2025, 05:46:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11932987
NTSB links
Originally Posted by CLUTTER
Do you have a good link?
NTSB Overview/Updates
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/...CA25MA108.aspx
The docket is linked at the bottom of that page.

NTSB Public Docket
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/?NTSBNumber=DCA25MA108
The docket contains evidence related to the investigation. Many NTSB investigations have public dockets; often they're released with the final report.

In the docket:
10-HELO-A FLIGHT DATA RECORDER - HELICOPTER - GROUP CHAIRMAN'S FACTUAL REPORT
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Documen...0L_FDR-Rel.pdf

Subjects Final Report  NTSB  NTSB Docket

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Musician
August 08, 2025, 06:37:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11935035
Originally Posted by DIBO
I've wondered a couple of times, what if.... the CRJ crew had failed to spot the UH60 all together. Now a left-banking evasive manoeuver was started, and only the left wing was substantially shredded by the rotor.
If they would has kept wings level, maybe both wings would have narrowly escaped major damage, only MLG and belly at risk of the main rotor.
But it all doesn't matter, really. 'Fate is the hunter' and they got caught.
From 10-AIR-A FLIGHT DATA RECORDER - AIRPLANE - GROUP CHAIRMAN'S FACTUAL REPORT :

You can see that the pitch-up reduced the airspeed, and the vertical speed was mostly unaffected. This would have had a net effect of making the descent steeper (as the Radio Alt suggests).

If the CRJ crew had remained unaware, we would've learned how the downwash of a helicopter affects the wings of a jet.

The ultimate point is that a situation where a helicopter scrapes by the underside of a jet is not supposed to occur. At this point, all bets are off anyway, and rather than pondering what to do in such a situation, the focus should be on how to prevent it in the first place.

Subjects CRJ

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Musician
August 11, 2025, 09:41:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11936588
What was the rationale behind putting the helicopter route that low anyway?
Shouldn't aircraft have 1000 ft ground/obstacle clearance in built-up areas, in general? and 500 ft. otherwise?
That route forced helicopters below 200 ft., how can that not be unsafe?

Subjects: None

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Musician
August 12, 2025, 15:40:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11937327
Originally Posted by ignorantAndroid
I may be mistaken, but my understanding is that the controller doesn't really have the option to deny visual separation. The regulations don't mention any response except 'approved.' The word 'approved' does seem to imply that it could also be denied, but there's no mention of how, when, or why that would be done. Even if they do have the option to deny, as far as I can tell there's no guidance on how to make that decision. Obviously there's no way for a controller to know whether a pilot truly has the correct aircraft in sight.
The system works on trust, a lot of things in aviation require trust.
Here, the helicopter pilots had obviously routinely been lying to LC (and getting away with it!), so the system broke down.

Subjects ATC  Separation (ALL)  Visual Separation

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Musician
August 12, 2025, 16:04:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11937346
thank you for your reply!
Originally Posted by DIBO
not intending to be cynical, but it makes the helos blend in nicely with the background, sort of out of the way for rwy 01/19 traffic (=95% of total)
I wonder how many pilots on rwy 01/19 really perceived this section of the routing as unsafe (when flown correctly = hugging the shoreline at max 200ft).
It looks safe if the jet crews can't see the helicopters?
taking the nearby airport out of the equation, I wonder if any of the professional operators on this route 4 section, ever felt that this low-level flying was (unnecessarily) unsafe
Good thing they let only professional operators use heli route 4, then.

I take your point that the route was legal (if unsafe).

My impression is that the 500/1000 ft clearance rule exists so when a pilot gets disoriented, or suffers a flight control problem, they don't immediately smash into things; and that they have a chance to find a suitable place to crash land, should the need arise. The latter is obviously solved when the river is right there.

If you don't have that altitude, you're missing a slice of cheese; and of course you won't feel it missing unless you need it, which is often the case with safety.

If the heli route had been higher up, then letting helicopters fly it on visual separation while runway 33 was in use wouldn't be "normalising deviance", it'd be normalising insanity, i.e. the illusion of "safety" that the 200 ft restriction provided would have been absent. The fact that someone at the FAA thought, "it'll be ok if we force the helicopters down to an unsafe altitude routinely" speaks of eroded safety standards to me. There are some disasters (and at least one impressive Space Shuttle fireball) that resulted from eroded safety standards, where managers convinced themselves it would still be ok--until it wasn't.

Subjects FAA  Route 4  Separation (ALL)  Visual Separation

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Musician
August 14, 2025, 08:04:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11938210
Originally Posted by andihce
That would perhaps be a standard definition of "normalization of deviance". But I think there is a possible extension of that definition, which allows for the procedure to be flawed or open to interpretation, and considers "deviance" as departure from safe operation , even while the procedure is technically observed. It could also be the case that the procedure was initially valid, but became marginal as a result of changes in its area of application since its inception.
The procedure calls for the heli pilot to report "traffic in sight", which they did. The unsafe part is that likely they hadn't actually seen the traffic.
In the present case (without knowing exactly what procedures were in effect), I could argue that permitting visual separation at night in this particular environment was a key procedural flaw. But it was accepted as there had been no accidents as a result, even as perhaps traffic density, etc. increased risk over time.
Visual separation at night is less of a problem if you follow the procedure as intended and don't report "traffic in sight" until you have correctly identified which traffic you're supposed to see.
We don't know if the heli crew thought they had seen that traffic (but picked the wrong one) or not, though the CVR conveys the impression they didn't, because they didn't talk about it (like they did about other traffic earlier in the flight).

It's also difficult to judge distance if all you see is a light, in your night vision goggles.
And it's especially difficult if you fail to predict the other aircraft's maneouver. The CRJ rolled out on final only 7 seconds before the collision. Until then, from a purely visual standpoint, everything would've looked fine. It required the heli crew to be aware of where the runway 33 extended centerline was (and where they were) to avoid being where the CRJ was going.

Subjects CRJ  Separation (ALL)  Traffic in Sight  Visual Separation

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Musician
August 14, 2025, 14:00:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11938382
Originally Posted by ATC Watcher
@ Musician :
Yes but that is only the visual separation procedure .
When we talk about un safe " procedures" (plural) it is mostly the airspace design and the actions written and put in place which have to be performed to keep that design safe . That part : "conflicting paths used simultaneously with only 100 or 200ft separation " is the basic " unsafe " part of the procedures. For me at least .
75 feet separation between the heli route and the 33 glide path, if I remember the preliminary report correctly.
"Visual separation" is the procedure that's supposed to make this safe, i.e. ensure that the actual separation is never that low.

Did DCA actually schedule conflicting flights without visual separation procedures?

Subjects ATC  DCA  Preliminary Report  Separation (ALL)  Visual Separation

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Musician
August 15, 2025, 07:31:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11938800
Originally Posted by BFSGrad
Only the PSA CRJ was scheduled. The PAT flight was an ad hoc VFR Class B transition.
Yeah, "scheduled" was probably the wrong word. I meant that DCA ATC "instructed to fly that segment of the route", with ATC responsible for separation.
Note that the apparently informal procedure of holding helicopters at Hains Pt or golf balls was an effective method of deconflicting Route 4 and 15/33 traffic. However it appears that the use of this \x93procedure\x94 was left to the discretion of the individual controller.
It occurs to me that this procedure creates extra work for air traffic control. DCA organisation accounted for it by having a controller position dedicated to controlling helicopters, but they did not have the staffing level to fill that seat at all times when it was needed. A process that may have been safe with adequate staffing stopped being safe when staffing levels fell. At that time, management needed to recognize this (the data was there!) and restructure the airspace to require less work, possibly at the cost of reducing the capacity of the airport/airspace.

Subjects ATC  CRJ  DCA  Route 4  Separation (ALL)  VFR

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Musician
September 27, 2025, 17:25:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11960678
Originally Posted by RatherBeFlying
The airline lawyers will point to the many ignored near miss reports in arguing that this accident was waiting to happen and that it was just luck that this accident didn't happen sooner.

The plaintiff lawyers would have a better argument against the airline if they had deviated from the approach.​​​
​​​
I understand the plaintiff's argument to be, if this was "an accident waiting to happen", it was negligent/reckless of the airline to expose passengers to that risk .

Subjects Accident Waiting to Happen  Close Calls

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Musician
September 28, 2025, 06:33:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11960869
Originally Posted by RatherBeFlying
​​​​​​The argument would rely upon the defendant knowing or ought to have known that the accident was waiting to happen. The FAA had the database, but failed to act upon the accumulation of near miss reports.

It's more difficult to argue that the airlines should have been doing FAA's job for them.
How many of these near miss reports were filed by American Airlines crews?

Subjects Accident Waiting to Happen  Close Calls  FAA

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Musician
September 29, 2025, 09:41:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11961394
Originally Posted by layman54
I guess the question is what is the alternative world. The pilots could also have followed PSA procedures by briefing both approaches. Which seems to be the correct thing to do if they were willing to accept the alternative approach. In which case it seems likely that the crash would still have occurred in just about the same way. The legal complaint does make some (unconvincing in my view) suggestions that the delayed briefing could have distracted the pilots just enough so that they didn't recognize the danger from the helicopter in time.
I think it's not unreasonable to assume that words being exchanged in the cockpit/the extra workload prevented the pilots from noticing the ATC transmissions to the helicopter, and that would have impaired their situational awareness. Situational awareness is required for safe flight, especially in congested airspace.

If the SOP requirement was instituted by the airline out of a safety concern, to reduce the workload on the pilots during that critical phase of flight, then that has a bearing on how responsibility is apportioned.

Subjects ATC  PSA Procedures  Situational Awareness

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Musician
September 29, 2025, 11:23:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11961446
Originally Posted by artee
Weren't the jet and helo on different frequencies?
yes, but the local controller transmitted on both, e.g. the message where the controller told the Blackhawk to pass behind the CRJ.

Subjects ATC  Blackhawk (H-60)  CRJ  Pass Behind  Pass Behind (All)

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Musician
September 29, 2025, 15:28:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11961563
Originally Posted by Capn Bloggs
Clearly not a pilot, again. Pilots, especially of multi-crew aircraft should NOT have to listen every transmission to every other aircraft to "maintain situational awareness".

This is the problem with enthusiastic amateurs and blood-thirsty lawyers: all these peripheral issues take centre-stage and the real causes are not addressed. Easier to spear the pilots of the CRJ for not doing a unneeded briefing or missing a TCAS alerts than get the FAA and army boffins that approved that sh1tshow in the first place...
I did not use the words "maintain situational awareness". I'd be hard pressed to pin down when SA is "maintained" and when it is not. To my understanding, SA is something you can have more or less of, and having more is safer, and has prevented some accidents in the past.

I also don't advocate for that issue taking center stage, but to taboo it and to say we can't talk about it ever doesn't seem right, either. The central issue in this accident is ATC's decision to routinely leave separation in the hands of a heli crew with night vision goggles and less than 75 feet of procedural separation. But we all know this by now if we've watched the NTSB presentation, so please excuse me for not repeating this with every post.

The central issue of the lawsuit is whether the level of safety provided by FAA rules, FAA/ATC procedures, Airline decisions and SOPs, Army decisions and SOPs, and pilot performance on the day are sufficient to legal standards. It's a complex interplay of factors, and even though it's clearly far from the deciding factor, I'm not going to say that a late approach briefing did not matter at all.

Subjects CRJ  FAA  NTSB  Separation (ALL)  Situational Awareness  TCAS (All)

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Musician
September 30, 2025, 18:35:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11962172
Big bus for the Concorde accident WillowRun 6-3 :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Fr..._investigation
In March 2008, Bernard Farret, a deputy prosecutor in Pontoise, outside Paris, asked judges to bring manslaughter charges against Continental Airlines and two of its employees – John Taylor, the mechanic who replaced the wear strip on the DC-10, and his manager Stanley Ford – alleging negligence in the way the repair was carried out.[...] The convictions were overturned by a French appeals court in November 2012, thereby clearing Continental (which had merged with United Airlines by then) and Taylor of criminal responsibility.
Continental still retained the civil liability.

Subjects Accountability/Liability

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Musician
October 17, 2025, 14:59:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11971572
" The Army Inspector General has declined to voluntarily review the Army's aviation safety practices ."
Originally Posted by Hot 'n' High
Here, assuming the original quote is accurate (and nothing suggests it's not!), I suspect my bold highlighting above is key. Given the IG decided not to conduct a review of safety practices himself it looks like someone has just told the IG in no uncertain terms "So you don't want to voluntarily review things? Fine - so now we're ordering you to! Run along now like a good little chap and, by the way, when you report back, we'll be paying very close attention to your conclusions - so don't even think of a white-wash!".

I suspect that this the unwritten message to the IG given they are even highlighting why they are having to order him to do it!
Not knowing why the Army IG declined, my guess is "we're understaffed and overworked, this isn't our job", and putting that job on a bill means extra funding can be assigned to it. If the IG did it voluntarily, that'd come out of the existing budget. Or it provides justification for dropping some of the other tasks and doing this instead.
Maybe the IG thinks the DoD should provide that report.
We don't really know because the refusal isn't public, so we only know one side of the issue.
And I for one am reluctant to trust a politician over a (inspector) general in this.

Subjects: None

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Musician
October 21, 2025, 19:09:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11973814
Originally Posted by Easy Street
Besides, "plus zero" is an impossible tolerance to achieve when maintaining an altitude or height. The only way of flying that route not above 200 feet on a "IFR-esque" procedural basis with an achievable tolerance would be to fly 150 feet plus or minus 50 feet, which would demand total focus on height keeping via radalt (it would be hopelessly unsafe to attempt to fly that low on barometric instruments).
I'vd argued before that any route that does not achieve 500ft above terrain is unsafe by the FAA's own standards, for much the same reasons.

Subjects FAA

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Musician
October 21, 2025, 22:54:00 GMT
permalink Post: 11973923
Originally Posted by ignorantAndroid
Yes.
I know it's legal.
But I'm reading (c) as the "standard" level of safety, and (d) as the exception.

Subjects: None

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Musician
December 12, 2025, 10:14:00 GMT
permalink Post: 12004038
Originally Posted by Winemaker
NTSB Chairwoman speaks out about legislation to again allow uncontrolled military helicopter flights through Washington D.C.

This clip does not include the Q&A part of the briefing.

Subjects NTSB

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