Suddenly There Are Federal Layoffs

Just this morning:

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has reportedly extended a buyout offer to its entire workforce.

This follows President Trump’s proposal to encourage millions of federal workers to resign by February 6 in exchange for pay and benefits lasting until September 30.

Trump is offering the buyouts to make sure all federal workers are “on board with the new administration’s plan to have federal employees in office,” CNBC reported.

Only 6% of all federal workers actually work full-time in the office!

This follows:

After going offline over the weekend as part of Trump’s goal to streamline federal operations and slash government spending, the official website of USAID is back online—but not for the reasons anyone expected.

The agency’s website now serves as a digital pink slip for its global workforce.

All USAID direct hire personnel are to be placed on administrative leave globally, with mandates for many to return to the U.S. This directive excludes only those deemed essential for “mission-critical functions.”

But the cuts won't stop with just the direct hires at USAID:

Last month, the State Department ordered an immediate pause on U.S. foreign aid for 90 days and issued “stop-work orders” on nearly all existing foreign assistance awards. This swift decision has effectively left many government contractors and global aid providers — including groups that supply HIV/AIDS care, provide child health services, set up education programs, fight food insecurity and counter disinformation in developing nations — struggling to operate or pay their workers.

Eight U.S.-based individuals who work in the foreign aid sector, all granted anonymity due to concerns about retaliation from the administration, told POLITICO that the foreign aid freeze had undermined their ability to carry out global aid efforts. Some predict that thousands of foreign aid professionals across the industry may soon be out of work.

“I can’t even begin to describe how cataclysmic it is, everyone is furloughing or laying off staff,” said one person. “It’s almost 5,000 people, and it’s just starting.”

And it's not just foreign aid:

The Trump administration has sent shockwaves through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by notifying over 1,000 employees that they are on the chopping block, marking a decisive step in dismantling bloated government agencies notorious for regulatory overreach.

EPA employees who have been with the agency for less than a year received an email last week notifying them that they could be dismissed immediately, according to NBC News citing sources familiar with the matter.

These employees, who are still on their “probationary” status, were bluntly informed that their tenure could end without delay at the administration’s discretion.

“As a probationary/ trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you,” the email reads. “The process for probationary removal is that you receive a notice of termination, and your employment is ended immediately.”

At the FBI:

On Saturday, the FBI Agents Association issued a statement expressing concern about what it said are further efforts to force FBI agents to quit.

“There are several amongst our ranks who are extremely fearful of being removed — and some of those have started to pack up their desks,” it said in a bulletin to members.

The message gave agents advice about what to do if they believe they are at risk of being fired. “Do NOT resign or offer to resign,” the message said. “While we would never advocate for physical non-compliance, you need to be clear your removal is not voluntary.”

“Stay calm and refrain from making any statements that could be deemed to violate the Hatch Act," it added, referring to law that bars federal civil servants from engaging in political activities. "If you are told you will be terminated, make sure you get the termination notice in writing and forward it to us ASAP.”

After I left graduate school, I spent my whole career in tech. Part of that was in disaster recovery and contingency planning, where the running joke was "a good contingency planner has a current backup copy of his resume off site at all times". In fact, this was pretty much the mindset throughout tech. Every few years, no matter where I worked, my employer was acquired, which meant layoffs, or went bankrupt, which meant layoffs, or waas spun off, which meant layoffs, or downsized, which meant layoffs. Even if I wasn't caught in that particular wave of cuts, the handwriting was always on the wall, and as a good contingency planner, I always more or less had to have my resume out, which meant I also had to have good situational awareness about the job market.

It's hard to avoid thinking federal workers have been in never-never land for quite some time.

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee found Wednesday [January 15] that vast numbers of federal employees telework from home, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars spent on office space, and the Biden administration has enabled such accommodations to continue during President-elect Donald Trump’s next administration.

“The Biden-Harris administration has ceded too much authority to the federal union bosses, allowing their preference to work from home to take precedence over fulfilling agencies’ missions and serving the American people,” the committee declared in a report decrying the continued widespread use of telework since the COVID-19 pandemic ended.

"Working from home" was a dodge that I began to see only late in my own career, and it was mostly a perk for the bosses. If the boss didn't feel like coming to work that day, fine, he or she would "work from home", which meant you called in for the staff meeting via conference call, and the boss would be in the family van ferrying the kids to soccer practice while on the call. Given all the potential distractions, even less would get done than in the usual staff meetings. I don't have too much sympathy for those who get laid off:

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” This famous observation was made by Herb Stein, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. It became famous largely because it was just that, obvious. Yet, what is no less obvious is that public policy is commonly based on a wholly contrary assumption, that the future will be like the past, more or less. This is deeply unfortunate since many of the most important systems on which the future of mankind depends are evolving in an unsustainable way.

Silence Descends On The Washington Air Crash

' After the NTSB press conference Saturday afternoon, in which it was announced that the regional jet's altitude was 325 feet at the time of the collision when the helicopter should have been no higher than 200 feet -- and a faction of the NTSB investigators didn't want this released -- while the Army revealed the identity of the pilot almost concurrently, we've learned nothing more. Somewhat belatedly, Juan Browne posted an update late yesterday that does little other than summarize what we knew Saturdday afternoon.

At 2:20, he estasblishes that this was a check flight for Cpt Lobach, and the check pilot was Chief Warrant Officer 2 Eaves. The point neither he nor anyone else has made on this is that Cpt Lobach inarguably failed her check flight. He establishes that a total flight time for an Army helicopter pilot at this stage of her career of 450 hours is "about normal", although this would be very low for a fixed-wing pilot. He says, "the Army has been doing more with less for years."

He establishes that the male voice talking to the tower on the radio messages is CWO Eaves, which is normal. But at 9:50, he shifts to the last exchange between CWO Eaves and the tower:

So just within some 16 or so seconds of the collision, once again, PAT25 confirms that he still has the CRJ in sight. requesting visual separation. They're just saying this automatically, "request visual separation have him in sight", as if it's a normalization of deviance, it's like this is the way they've been doing it all the time, and he's convinced that he's got tthe correct aircraft in sight, when in fact he does not.

Browne then moves to another issue that hasn't been clarified since the craxh:

Another thing that needs to be verified is exactly which model of Blackhawk were these guys flying at the time of the accident. It's more likely than not that they were flying one of these old UH60 Lima models, the L models, steam powered gauges, no autopilot, without all the flat screen technology of the later Victor models, or I believe even Mike models.

I noticed a comment on an X thread from a helicopter pilot who said that the autopilot has an ALT HOLD feature that can automatically keep the helicopter at a particular altitude like, say, 200 feet. If the helicopter had this feature, it would have been a major problem for the pilot not to use it. If the helicpter didn't have the feature in that very complicated and busy airspace, it would be a major problem for the Army command. So far, this information isn't being released.

At 13:00, he moves to another key, as yet undisclosed, issue:

Part of this analysis is going to be to determine what was the altimeter setting at the time of the accident, and how was that information passed on to the helicopter pilots. Do they pick it up on the ADIS recording, or do they get it from the controller prior to entering the airspace? . . . I have not heard anyhbody mention what the altimeter setting is, and the altimeter setting is critical, because you set it right here in your altimeter, and it makes sure everybody is on the same sheet of music. . . . [E]very tenth of an inch of mercury that you're off in your altimeter setting, you are introducing an altimeter error of 100 feet, and that's why setting your local altimeter setting is so important on these approaches[.]

So Browne identifies saeveral lines of inqui9ry that the NTSB is likely to follow:

• The apparent automatic assumption by the helicopter check pilot that he had the jet in sight, and the automatic acceptance of this by the tower controller, who was clearly overworked
• Whether the Blackhawk in question had an autopilot and key features like ALT HOLD
• Whether the helicopter's altimeter had been properly set.

The biggest issue of the Washington crash is that this is the first fatal air accident in 15 yers, and it comes in the wake of increasing concern about the FAA's regulation of the air traffic control system, which as I noted in Sunday's post Browne himself has expressed. The reaction of legacy media has been to discount these concerns, especially as Trump has expressed them:

President Donald Trump wasted little time this week trying to assign blame for the nation’s deadliest air disaster in more than two decades. Among his chief targets: An FAA diversity hiring initiative he suggested had undermined the agency’s effectiveness. /p>

“But certainly for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, the smartest, the sharpest. We want somebody that’s psychologically superior,” Trump said at a news conference Thursday. /p>

No evidence has emerged that rules seeking to diversify the FAA played any role in the collision Wednesday between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people.

But the evidence actually seems to support Trump. It is non-controversial that the fAA has a shortage of controllers. It is gernerally alleged that the shortage results in large part from the FAA hiring to racial quota, and if they can't find enough qualified minority applicants, this places an artificial limit on the number of white applicants they can hire. Thus, as Browne points out here, one controller was doing the work of two, and he was clearly rushed in approving the helicopter's request for visual separation.

There's also a strong suggestion that at least in this case, the Army has developed a culture that normalizes deviance. It looks as though every new revelation from the NTSB investigtion is likely to prove embarrassing to both the Army and the fAA. and it looks like there's already pressure on the NTSB to slow-walk its findings. I suspect that neither Trump nor Secretary Hegseth will tolerate this.

Show Horse Or Work Horse?

Last month, Capt. Lobach escorted fashion designer @RalphLauren at the White House when he received his Presidential Medal of Freedom. https://t.co/GyTGMliwaI pic.twitter.com/fDMX5W3m40

— Jim LaPorta (@JimLaPorta) February 1, 2025

Over the weekend, the Army finallly released the name of the third pilot -- apparently the one at the controls -- of the helicopter that crashed into the regional jet Wednesday evening, killing 67.

At the request of and in coordination with the family, the Army is releasing the name of the third Soldier who died while performing a training mission near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29.

Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina, served as an aviation officer (15A) in the regular Army from July 2019 to January 2025. She has no deployments. She was assigned to the 12th Aviation Battalion, Ft Belvoir, Va.

It turns out that the three-day delay, which was atrributed to the request of the family, must have been to give them time to scrub not only her own social media, but that of the rest of the family as well. Even so, what remains -- the image at left is apparently an official Army photo -- isn't helpful. It shows her all tricked out as a helo pilot on the flight deck having just a giggly good time. The alt media was quick to see the incongruity of the giggle glam and the tragedy.

The official Army bio at the link above says that she served for her whole career in the the 12th Aviation Battalion, Ft Belvoir, whose mission is to ferry VIPs around in gold-striped helicopters, a plum assignment in itself, but other references point out that during some part of this time, she also served as a social aide in the White House. According to Wikipedia,

A White House social aide is a United States Armed Forces officer assigned to attend to the personal needs of visiting dignitaries at the White House and to facilitate interactions with the President of the United States and the First Lady of the United States. White House social aides were first appointed in 1902; as of 2014, there were 45 such officers.

. . . White House social aides report to a coordinator in the office of the White House Social Secretary. Their duties include managing "guests who attend social functions at the White House, [facilitating] interactions with the president and first lady and [escorting] dignitaries". In the past, this has included entertaining single guests, such as providing dance companions; initiating small talk with lonely guests during teas; directing the flow of traffic at receiving lines; and greeting visitors.

It isn't clear how this related to her duties as a helicopter pilot, or whether her status as a White House social aide superseded her regular tasks at Ft Belvoir. On the other hand, it does appear that the Army thought she was at least an attractive window display for the White House and VIPs who needed helicopter rides in Washington.

But this comes as the collision investigation focuses more closely on "some sort of elevation issue”, in Secretary Hegseth's words. According to the NTSB Saturday, the regional jet's flight recorder showed an altitude of 325 feet plus-minus 25 feet. This would be consistent with the jet's landing pattern at the airport, while the maximum altitude for the helicopter there should have been 200 feet. A cooment to the post on X embedded above said,

Altitude control is a basic fundamental flying skill for any pilot. Its like staying between the lines on the road. Whoever was flying failed to control altitude (and course) properly. ATC sounds like it will be a contributing factor.

— Lumpschlevot (@Lumpschlevot) February 2, 2025

Whatever the reason Cpt Lobach's family may have had to withhold release of her name, and whatever reason the Army may bave had to cooperste with this. it does nobody any favors. It simply feeds the impression that Cpt Lobach had been receiving special treatment throughout her career and in the wake of the tragedy, when the evidence that's beginning to emerge suggests that the special treatment was part of the accident's cause.

On Saturday, the NTSB said that although the flight data recorder-cockpit voice recorder on the helicopter had been recovered, it would take time to repair water damage. But in the same press conference, the NTSB spokesman said there had been dissagreement among the investigators over even releasing the jet's altitude data, suggesting that what eventually comes out will be even more damaging to Cpt Lobach's reputation.

Not to mention the incredibly bad look for the Army. At minimum, Secretary Hegseth is probably going to have to get rid of the gold-striped VIP helos and their show horse pilots.

"What Is Going On With The FAA ATC System Here Domestically In The United States?"

This is the question Juan Browne, the highly respected aviation YouTuber, asked in the post above nine months ago. He continued,

In the last couple of days, we've had no less than three to four major incidents that, if we continue to perform at this level, will eventually lead to disaster.

He was clearly correct in his prediction. Whatever the efficient cause of Wednesday night's collision -- and based on the information that's slowly dribbling out, a politically connected DEI helicopter pilot may be partially responsible -- the formal cause seems to be the long-festering disorder within the air traffic control system, run by the FAA. If this particular glitch didn't cause a disaster, the next one would have.

Browne discusses in detail three of the incidents he refers to. The most interesting for us here took place on April 18 last year at Reagan National, where Wednesday night's collision also took place. He begins his discussion of this at 7:31. It involved two separate controllers unwittingly putting two different flights onto a collision course on the same runway. The controllers catch the conflict at the last minute and scream "STOP! STOP! STOP!" to both flights, luckily averting a collision. Browne comments at 10:39,

There was a lot of background noise on the radio frequency of the tower there. Are there distractions going on in the tower? Are these conversations that are going on in the tower during operations, are they operational conversations, or are they distractions going on in the tower during operations?

Apparently he feels that's comment enough, he's pointing out an unserious atmosphere in the tower that just contributed to a near-disaster, the sort of thing that the FAA appears to tolerate routinely. In a post at PJ Media, Matt Margolis points out,

In the wake of the deadly midair collision at Reagan National Airport, it’s important that we reassess our nation’s aviation safety standards. President Trump said on Thursday that safety standards declined under Joe Biden, and let me tell you, he is right.

To illustrate this point, let’s look at his first nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Phil Washington.

During his confirmation hearing, Washington faced significant scrutiny over his lack of knowledge of essential aviation regulations. Washington struggled to provide answers to a series of basic questions that one would expect from someone nominated for the position of FAA administrator. For instance, when asked about the airspace that requires an ADS-B transponder, Washington admitted, “Not sure I can answer that question right now.”

. . . Washington, acknowledging his lack of expertise, often replied, “Senator, I’m not a pilot.” This admission underscored a troubling disconnect for a nominee expected to oversee the regulatory framework governing aviation safety and operations.

Margolis went on to cite a CNN report that, if confirmed, Washington would be the first black permanent administrator of the agency. According to Just the News,

The Obama-era changes to air traffic control system hiring has come under scrutiny in the past by prospective air traffic controllers and Congress alike for prioritizing diversity over merit, which critics say could compromise safety.

One prospective Air Traffic Control Specialist sued in 2015, alleging that the Obama FAA discriminated in its admissions process for air traffic controller training by designing a questionnaire that prioritized minority candidates over others, even those who had completed the FAA’s Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI).

. . . The prospective air traffic controller who filed the lawsuit, Andrew Brigida, said the FAA’s hiring practices, the air traffic controller staffing shortages, and the air disaster that occurred on Wednesday are all interrelated.

Asked by the Telegraph in the aftermath of the crash whether the years of diversity programs would ensure that an accident was likely to happen eventually, Brigida said, “Yes, that’s kind of accurate.” Brigida added that “There have been plenty of stories of near miss events that have been the cause of staffing issues. It’s surprising that it’s gone on this long without being properly recognised by the government.”

The UK Daily Mail has additional information,

The FAA dropped a skills-based system for hiring air traffic controllers and instead based it on a 'biographical assessment' under the Obama administration.

Brigida, who is white, alleged that he was discriminated against based purely on his race and was the reason his application was knocked back.

The Arizona state graduate was turned down for a job with the agency even though he had passed his training exam with full marks, the suit claims.

The FAA has struggled in recent years with staffing issues following pandemic-era layoffs and has yet to fully recover.

. . . Following the horrifying scenes on Wednesday night, it has since emerged that there was staffing issues inside the control tower of Ronald Reagan National Airport.

The FAA have found in their preliminary report that it was 'not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic'.

On Wednesday, an air traffic controller was left to handle both helicopter traffic and manage planes - which should have been a divided duty - according to The New York Times.

Those tasks are usually handled between two people from 10am until 9:30pm, according to the report.

Legacy media was aghast at Trump's suggestion on Thursdsy that DEI wass behind the disaster, but it's looking more and more that DEI was both the formal cause -- the FAA's inadequate supervision of the air traffic control system due to inability to staff its operations fully -- and the efficient cause -- an incompetent DEI helicopter pilot -- of the disaster.

The Swiss Cheese Model

As an avid viewer of Air Disasters reruns on the Smithsonian Channel, I've been trying to soak up every detail about the Washington regional jet-Army helicopter collision. But one comment by a Fox News guest sums up the whole situation:

"It's our system that is bad and that's what has to be looked at. To be honest with you… we need to take a bulldozer to the front of the FAA. This is bad management, and it's putting us at risk," Boyd Group International President Mike Boyd said Thursday in reaction on "Mornings with Maria."

"We had two flying machines run into each other over the Potomac. That is the FAA's job to avoid those things," he argued. "We have all kinds of human issues here. But the fact is, we've had near-miss after near-miss for the past 20 years. Now we've had a collision. The collision is the responsibility of the FAA and the air traffic control system. Somebody failed."

Until late yesterday afternoon, the focus was on the Army helicopter and why it was 200 feet above its assigned altitude -- then another crash seems to have derailed the whole discussion. But Mr Boyd has correctly refocused the question: there are human issues in place, humans make mistakes. But it's the FAA's job to design and implement a system that eliminates human mistakes.

The problem with the Washington collision wasn't that the air traffic controllers were overworked, or were hired via DEI, or that an incompetent pilot was flying the helicopter, or that there should have been four people on the crew instead of three, or that the lane for helicopter flights down the Potomac crossed the approach pattern for Reagan National Airport; the problem was all these factors working in combination. According to Wikipedia,

The Swiss cheese model of accident causation is a model used in risk analysis and risk management. It likens human systems to multiple slices of Swiss cheese, which has randomly placed and sized holes in each slice, stacked side by side, in which the risk of a threat becoming a reality is mitigated by the differing layers and types of defenses which are "layered" behind each other. Therefore, in theory, lapses and weaknesses in one defense do not allow a risk to materialize (e.g. a hole in each slice in the stack aligning with holes in all other slices), since other defenses also exist (e.g. other slices of cheese), to prevent a single point of failure.

Thus yesterday afternoon, the FAA very belatedly took the step of closing the path for helicopters to fly down the Potomac in conflict with the Reagan National approach pattern:

NEW: With the support of @POTUS and in consultation with the @SecDef, effective today, the @FAANews will restrict helicopter traffic around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport airport.

Today’s decision will immediately help secure the airspace near Reagan Airport, ensuring… pic.twitter.com/Oo6B9H8z8S

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) January 31, 2025

This simply elminates one of the holes in the series of slices that allowed the collision to happen. But that doesn't mean there aren't other holes that need to be closed as well. Via CBS News,

The permitted flight ceiling on the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport is 200 feet – a crucial ceiling for keeping the heavy flow of military helicopters safely clear of the steady commercial aircraft traffic into and out of the nation's capital.

Data from FlightRadar24, which tracks and records aircraft data for most flights across the U.S., showed the helicopter's last estimated altitude was about 400 feet when it crashed. The jet's altitude was about 375 to 400 feet, according to data from FlightAware and FlightRadar24.

"They're military pilots; they're familiar with the routes," [former NTSB investigator Doug] Feith said. "Why is it on this day, on that flight, they were [as much as] 150 to 200 feet higher than they knew they should be?"

That's just another hole in the Swiss cheese. If the helicopter lane crossed the airport flight path, but the helicopter crew had stayed at the prescribed altitude, the collision wouldn't have happened, either. This focuses attention on the crew.

The United States Army released the information of two of the three soldiers/pilots onboard the Black Hawk that flew into a regional airplane, crashing into the Potomac River. Reuters said two of the names were released, but the Army refused to provide the third.

Now people want to know what's going on and they're demanding transparency.

A Reuters report quoted at the link said it was done at the request of the soldier's family, but this raises inevitable questions about whether the third soldier had something to do with the helicopter being at the wrong altitude. If the family hoped to avoid oppobrium at their son or daughter, or at the family name or background, if such a blunder was involved, this will prove only a temporary fix. Beyond that, according to an experienced Blackhawk pilot and crew chief,

The single-greatest error in this accident was the decision to fly without a second Crew Chief on the left-hand side of the Blackhawk, who could have provided an extra set of eyes to “look out-and-up” to see the approaching American Airlines Passenger plane.

. . . Flight Unit Leadership failed to recognize the need for a second Crew Chief in the Mission Planning and Risk Assessment Process. This is where either incompetence, or DEI (or both), may have come into play. This was certainly poor leadership.

. . . The Flight Unit Commanders must share the blame, and they’re still alive! There is a 12th Aviation Battalion commander of that B Company, and I don’t know who that is, but this individual was the first leader in the chain of events for the Mission Plan and Risk Assessment to get signed off and approved. This B Company commander should be asked why they did not enforce a second Crew Chief to be on that flight.

So there were at least three slices of Swiss cheese whose holes lined up to cause the accident. The helicopter lane down the Potomac crossed the landing flight pattern for Reagan National, and near-misses were common. It was only a matter of time until a helicopter would fly high enough to hit a civilian airliner. The helicopter in this case apparently had a pilot wih shaky experience who in fact did fly too high. But on top of that, the helicopter unit commander failed to recognize that the crew needed additional supervision.

The factors contributing to this appear to have included extreme complacency at the FAA, which neglected to address the conflicting flight patterns near the airport for decades, as well as the apparent distraction within both Army and FAA management as they were forced to focus on DEI in hiring and performance appraisal. At the Department of Transportation, there was the additional problem at the cabinet level that the secretaries in previous administrations of both parties were patronage hacks, Elaine Chao, who is Mitch McConnell's wife, and Pete Buttigieg, who was appointed to appease the gay wing of the Democrats.

Given the Trump administration's track record so far, I would expect heads to roll, and quickly.

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.

This Will Be A Real Test

NOW — Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy:

“Whether it was air traffic control, whether it was military aircraft, helicopters or the American flight, everything was standard in the lead up to the crash … Something happened here.” pic.twitter.com/ojRVAf34ZO

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 30, 2025

A YouTube commentator that I trust on aviation matters, Juan Browne on the blancolirio channel, a working airline pilot with both military and civilian experience, has a good video with graphics. At 0:50, he says,

. . . the [Regional Jet] flies the approach to this Runway, 1, the long runway, and then sidesteps around here to a left dogleg entry to Runway 33, the relatively short runway at about 5200 feet long here at Washington DC, a very demanding approach. This crew is focused on this approach. This midair collision occurred just below 400 feet above the ground. The National Guard helicopter, believed to be eithet as UH60 or VH60, was presumably operating out of Joint Base Bolling. . . . They have this procedure where they can dart across the Potomac River right across the final approach for these airlines, this is an approved procedure.

He then narrates over the video of the collision, in which the helicopter approaches the regional jet from its left and crashes into its right side. He continues,

Now let's review the ATC data. Let'sf first check this out from ADSB Exchange, where the two aircraft came together. So here you can see the regional jet doing the sidestep maneuver to Runway 33, so kind of a left dogleg base entry, this is all done visually to Runway 33, and the helicopter coming out of Bolling and crossing right into its path. . . . The tower at DCA sayhs, "Pat 25 [the helicopter], do you have the RJ in sight?" Now I believe the helicopters are operating on a separate frequency from the CRJ, so I don't believe the CRJ hears the helicopters, but all this is being controlled by the tower there at DCA, so the tower says, "Pat 25 [the helicopter], do you have the CRJ in sight?" Pat 25 responds, "Have the CRJ in sight, request visual separation," standard procedure, and then the tower clears Pat 25 to pass behind the CRJ. For whatever reason, the helicopter did not see and avoid the CRJ and ran right into him.

. . . Looking at the track log, the CRJ was on a perfectly stabilized approach. In other words, the CRJ was exactly where he was supposed to be, doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing.

WUSA9 has an intefrview with Doug Feith, a retired NTSB investigator and a regular on the Air Disasters program on the Smithsonian Channel. At 6:20, he says

The question that I would ask as an investigator, of the military, is, "What are your procedures, especially in an environment where we have high density traffic flow? You're mixing civilian and military operations in this corridor." I grew up here, in Maryland, so I'm very familiar with the area, I've lived there for most of my life, I've seen these operations, I've flown down the Potomac River. It is busy, and you're constantly listening for other aircraft on frequency to see where they are and where they're going, just because it's all about this term that we use in aviation called "situational awareness". I want to know who's in my environment. The question is, was there that kind of communication, interaction bdetween military and civilian, and then of course, where were the controllers?

What we're starting to hear from experienced observers is that there was a procedure that the military helicopter, on a training mission, was supposed to follow, and it had instructions from the tower controller to avoid and pass behind the regional jet, which it didn't follow.

Air accident investigations of the type Mr Feith led typically take years. He decries a culture of instant gratification in the interview, but the new Trump administration is setting expectations for a culture of accountability. In the military, situations like this develop in an environment, and the chain of command is held responsible for the environment. A reasonable conclusion from the circumstances we've learned so far is that there was a trainee pilot on the helicopter who apparently shouldn't have been there, and 64 civilians were killed as a result.

Secretary Hegseths initial message to the Department of Defense said, in the context of rebuilding the military,

All of this will be done with a focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness.

We're going to have to see how this plays out, and fairly soon. Among other things, dereliction of duty is a crime in the military. Somebody allowed this situation to develop.