Plane crash in DC plane and chopper in Potomac River (Sadly there were NO survivors)

My sister-in-law is a Navy pilot and flies the SeaHawk (Navy's version of the same chopper).
She is stationed at the Pentagon these days.

A few years back, members of her former crew were the ones lost in the crash off the coast of San Diego.

Ironically she was also on the carrier that got quarantined in the Philippines for the Covid outbreak.

She has seen some rough situations very close up.

 

It has a lot to do with how many accidents will come down the road if you are determined to shake up the federal bureaucracy and replace them with partisan loyalists, even things like TSA or the FAA. Sacking the head of the FAA because he wasnt approving SpaceX stuff fast enough for Elon's liking? Yeah, nothing bad could come of that in the future.

 

It’s just totally wild to me it’s “normal” for them to cross. I always assumed that would be extremely controlled airspace, esp for the top airports, and that NOTHING legally crosses (not helicopters. not drones).

Obviously the helicopters fly at a certain altitude, planes are coming in for landings at a certain range of altitudes, why don’t the helicopters have a certain flight pattern they must follow to avoid intersecting? I just assumed that’s how it works. Pretty crazy it’s on the helicopter pilot to “watch out if you see that plane coming in for a landing”.

 

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/plane-crash-dca-potomac-washington-dc-01-29-25/index.html

 

As a 25+ year airline pilot it’s a sad day. This likely comes down to NVGs, runway change at last second, poor aircraft separation by ATC along with aircraft operating on separate frequencies. It’s never just one thing.

 

Multiply the death toll from last night by 2 or 3 and that's how many extra people died per week for 3 years after George Floyd's death. People overreacted, cops backed off from enforcing the law. Traffic deaths and homicides skyrocketed. Few people noticed because the deaths were spread out.

Pretty sure Congress will hold a hearing and pass reforms like they did in 2009. When something affects them and where they fly they do something

 

In part because DC/NoVa has extensive flight restrictions so there are very limited places aircraft (including helicopters) can be routed to, many of which include coming up or down the Potomac.

Here’s the current set of FAA helicopter route maps for DC/Baltimore: https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/12-26-2024/PDFs/Balt-Wash_Heli.pdf

I will admit to not being an expert in reading these, but according to someone on Reddit claiming to be a helicopter pilot in DC, typically choppers on Route 1/4 crossing in front of the DCA approach are supposed to be either much higher up or below 200 feet and directed to maintain visual separation from plane traffic so that ordinarily while it’s typical for there to be helicopter traffic around there it should be either below or well above the planes.

 

It’s not correct, is it? Please delete

 

You don’t trust an account called “TheNewsDeak” with 300 followers to be accurately reporting a claim that literally no one else is making?

 

Lots of false stuff gets posted here. That went too far. I deleted

 

There it is. Never to disappoint

 

I guess the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy is finding out (again) what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. I think Puck would be doing a better job.

 

Why do you think Trump ordered the Army to take down this plane? Who was onboard? What did they have on Trump?

 

There was as much support that Trump fired 3,000,000 air traffic controllers this week as there is that we were shipping 50,000,000 condoms to the GAZA.

 

Then let’s be better than that.

 

This was tweeted hours before the crash: 8am yesterday.

 

And it was also a pretty dumb point too.

“You don’t have to come back to in-office work if you quit instead” was not a particularly relevant offer to a group of people who were never work-from-home in the first place. (And for his “people shouldn’t blame Biden” point, relatively confident the FAA was not already short 3,000 ATC because of anything that has occurred in the past 9 days.)

 

U.S. Figure skating is reporting the plane was full of figure skaters amd their coaches and families coming back from a developmental camp following the National Championship in Wichita, KS.

No names released but one skater was refused permission to board because his dog was too big and had to drive. Follow the dots.

Figure skaters among passengers in D.C. crash



Edit: TheGator has a dedicated thread on this:
https://www.gatorcountry.com/swampg...ing-team-were-on-board-aa-flight-5342.629671/

 

It was a typical training mission they do almost daily. They were in constant contact with both aircraft but it's possible the pilot of the helicopter, the trainee, got confused and lost sight of where they were heading. It'll be an easy case to resolve once they get all of the black boxes. It was definitely avoidable and sadly 60 people lost their lives.