Let's Filter Through What's Come Out About The DC Crash

So far, I think the best single source on the Washington, DC collision of a regional jet and an Army helicopter is the YouTube updates by longtime pilot Juan Browne on his blancolirio channel. I linked his first one in yesterday's post. Embedded above is an update from yesterday afternoon. I'll refer to several other sources that tend to confirm or expand his views in this post as well.

It's worth noting that American Airlines CEO Robert Isom iossued a preliminary statement at a press conference yesterday,

“At this time, we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the PSA aircraft,” Isom said at a Thursday morning press conference.

Isom said in a staff note Thursday that the National Transportation Safety Board would be the “sole source of truth going forward, and accuracy is of the utmost importance.”

PSA Airlines is an American Airlines subsidiary and one of its regional carriers. American Eagle is how American Airlines brands its regional flights.

This corporate position is non-controversial -- every indication is that the PSA flight was on an approved path to land at Runway 33, while the helicopter ran into it after telling the controller that it saw the flight and would avoid it. The highly respected "Miracle on the Hudson" pilot Sully Sullenberger told ABC News yesterday morning at 0:51,

What seems apparent from the Air Traffic Control communications is that the airplanes were able to see each other, at least one was able to see the other, and the air traffic controller was able to relieve himself of the requirement to have him separate the airplanes, and the pilots would have to separate from each other visually by identifying the other airecraft and stgayng a safe distance away.

In other words, there seems to be general agreement that for whatever reason, the Army helicopter was responsible for the collision. One credible explanation for why this happened is given by another experienced pilot YouTuber below. He notes that there were two regional flights in line to land right after each other, the PSA flight, JTA 5342, and an American flight, 3130, which was second in line. He explains at 2:11:

This is not the final word on it, but I think what happened was, it was at night, there's several airplanes lined up, there is that Blue Streak [JTA] 5342, which is the CRJ that they ran into, right behind them just a few miles is American 3130. Everybody has their lights on as they're coming in, I believe the helicopter looked at the American 3130 and said, "I've got the traffic in sight," and they never saw the airplane, the CRJ, that was right next to them. That's my conjecture on what happens.

Juan Browne in the video embedded at the top of this post goes into more detail on the overall problem. At 2:59:

The problem is going beak to beak at night, the lights of the RJ tend to blend in with the city lights behind you. even tbhough the RJ is a little bit above the helicopter. Another problem when you're going head to head with each other if there's no lateral movement in the windscreen, that light is very hard to detect. Now eventually, the RJ has to make the left hand turn to land on Runway 33, and this puts the helicopter onto the right side of the RJ. Now very late into this transition, the tower controller here at the airport asks the helicopter, "Do you have the RJ jet in sight?" to which the helicopter responds, "Yes, we have the RJ in sight, request visual separation." That hands off the responsibility of the separation of these two aircraft to that of the helicopter pilot. The ATC then asks the helicpter pilot to pass behind the RJ, to which the helicopoter loilot responds, "affirmative", but instead, he runs right into the RJ.

Browne then goes into the separate question of night vision goggles and other subjects, but at 8:53, he returns to the question of American 3130, the flight landing behind the collision RJ:

There's another aircraft behind the RJ that was involved in the collision, another American Airlines jet 3130 . . . . this second aircraft behind the RJ may have been the aircraft the helicopter mistakenly picked up on, or it could have been one of the aircraft that were taking off. It's more likely than not that the crew of the helicopter picked up on the wrong target to see and avoid.

Browne mentions in passing another question that's raised by the radar data leading up to the collision: the maximum altitude for helicopters in this area is 200 feet above the Potomac. However, the helicopter collided with the RJ at the RJ's authorized altitude of 400 feet. The data shows that the helicopter rose from its authorized 200 feet -- which, if it had stayed at that altitude, would have avoided any collision -- to hit the RJ at 400 feet over a period of seconds just before the collision.

Although Browne notes this, he doesn't say anything else about it in this video, but it may be a very important additional data point. So far, I haven't seen any other commnentator mention it. A Fox News report does mention it here. Trump also commented earlier today:

President Trump took to his Truth Social platform Friday morning with a "not really too complicated" potential reason for the tragic DC plane-helicopter crash: The Army chopper was flying too high.

"The Blackhawk [sic] helicopter was flying too high, by a lot," he wrote. "It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???"

There are several other possible contributing factors, including understaffing at the Reagan National control tower and the generally crowded airspace over Washington, so that there had been a close call with another helicopter the previous day:

Another plane heading to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport almost crashed into a helicopter on Tuesday night, the night before an American Airlines flight collided with a military helicopter and plunged into the Potomac River.

Republic Airways Flight 4514 was forced to abort its first landing attempt at the airport on Tuesday after Air Traffic Control warned that a helicopter was in its vicinity. The Embraer E-175 executed a go-around maneuver, and safely landed a few minutes later, CNN reported.

Nevertheless, understaffing and crowded airspace over Washington were conditions that had existed for years before the accident, while the information that's coming out suggests that the helicopter crew made critical errors that other crews seem not to have made, over the same period of years. This would also apply to the question of night vision goggles -- even if they had some effect on visibilty, crews had been able to compensate for them over the same period of years. This suggests that questions of individual judgment, competence, and training are in play.

Regular viewers of the Smithsonian Channel series Air Disasters know that investigations often go into the personnel and training records of the crews involved in accidents, and inadequate training and performance do sometimes factor in as causes. The problem that needs to be ruled out is whether the chain of command should have been aware that the crew involved, based on available records and other information, was not qualified to fly that mission.