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Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

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Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#221

Post by matheweis »

reaperman wrote: post #192
highcountess wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military flights do not fly ADB hot outside of the DC FRZ. It was also clearly exactly following flight route 4. There are a few locations in that area it could have been coming from. Anything else would have made no sense flying through the FRZ from/to Belvoir.

What is "flight route 4"?

The FAA publishes supplemental charts specifically for helicopters in areas with high concentrations of helicopter activity: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/productc...

Specifically the Baltimore-Washington route chart was relevant for these flights: https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/10-31-2024/PDFs/Balt-Wash_Hel...

If you find the DCA airport on that chart, you’ll find routes 1 and 4 which roughly correspond to the helicopter’s flight path.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#222

Post by wkat4242 »

tjohns wrote: post #105
jonathanlb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: are air traffic controllers at risk for being replaced with AI systems? My initial thought is no, there is too much complexity, but AI could help ease the load. I'm not really informed about air traffic systems, just curious.

No. We use some deterministic automation on the backend for helping with traffic management and rerouting flight paths, but the communication with aircraft is mostly done via voice. Everything happens too fast to insert a keyboard in the middle (*), and voice recognition would be too error prone for something safety critical. (* CPDLC does allow ATC to send texts to/from larger aircraft, but this is only used for thi…

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Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#223

Post by wkat4242 »

cryptonector wrote: post #50
lysace wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure? The videos of the crash that I can find on X just show a small airline light suddenly turning into a low-res explosion. (Edit: ah. yes.)

https://x.com/aletweetsnews/status/1884789306645983319 You see the helo coming from the left on the screen while the airliner appears to be descending. The helo must have gotten in the way (as opposed to catching up from behind). The airliner's lights are unmistakable, so how did the helo pilot not notice them? The airliner's pilots might not have had a chance to notice the helo. Since the helo was crossing an active…

Landing lights are very focused. They're only noticeable if they're pointed towards you (but then they're very bright). They were visible to the camera but perhaps not to the heli.

Of course the plane would have anti-collision lights as well though, those are omnidirectional.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#224

Post by jakeogh »

tjohns wrote: post #90

Radar replay: https://x.com/avgeekjake/status/1884823071611363833 UHF feed with comms from the military helicopter: https://archives.broadcastify.com/44114/20250129/20250129200... - 5:41 - AA5342 is given instructions for circling to 33 - 6:45 - PAT-25 reports Memorial - 7:06 - Tower gives PAT-25 traffic advisory, PAT-25 reports traffic in sight and requests visual separation - 8:08 - Tower asks PAT-25 if they have t…

aaand.. it's gone.

archive of the radar replay: https://dpaste.com/3DUG9YWFB

sha3-256: 539b49e57443109cb0aea06209ce142d44a5ccbee16e42e0c71026742fc56703

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#225

Post by SenHeng »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #214
jfengel wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> everyone is expecting to be fired regardless of their experience and skill. How do you know this?

Presumably because Trump just offered an 8month severance package to all fed workers.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvqe3le3z4o

> US President Donald Trump has offered federal workers the option to resign and receive pay for eight months, in a major effort to shrink and reform the US government.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#226

Post by anigbrowl »

justinspace wrote: post #219
anigbrowl wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think a recording of ATC saying 'keep an eye out for that plane coming in to land' is going to end speculation then you have no understanding of how people behave on social media. For some reason people are upset about me pointing out the reality that this will generate lots of conspiracy theories. I invite you to consider this example of a prominent public figure engaging in exactly the sort of speculation I…

Are you speaking from experience?

Yes, I research and write on extremists and have become depressingly familiar with conspiratorial narrative formation in real time, as well having read a huge number of research papers into social media dynamics. I used to spend a lot of time and effort debunking CTs but frankly it seems increasingly pointless to do so nowadays.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#227

Post by craftsman »

ty6853 wrote: post #181
stall84 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t know. this line is really upsetting people tonight.

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I think you mean civil servants. There should be nothing we all want more than to have a professional--and more importantly--apolitical civil service whose members are empowered to do their jobs.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#228

Post by craftsman »

dylan604 wrote: post #133
rayiner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone writing regulations were as rigorous as the FAA people wouldn’t be clamoring to reduce regulations.

You mean the same FAA people that allowed Boeing to self certify? The FAA is not spotless. I can only imagine how much worse air travel would be without them, but they are only run by humans trying to work in a political controlled environment.

Congress directed the FAA--by law--to delegate certain aspects of certification to non-FAA entities. This directive was issued by H.R. 302 - FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, 115th Congress.

Re: Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport

#230

Post by sfn42 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #144
stall84 wrote: post #62

In any event, unless the weather was IMC, where neither aircraft can see because of weather/cloud, which I'm deducing is not the case if they were allowed to maintain visual separation, the ultimate responsibility for maintaining separation is with the pilot(s) .. But as I posted, we should not have this happen anywhere in the United States in 2025 & much less the nation's capital. Hopefully DOT and FAA get to work,…

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