BBRex said:

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I think people are starting to grasp at straws to try to prove Trump right. There can definitely be problems with ATC, but those problems appear to have had little bearing on this particular incident.

My personal opinion is that they're going to blame the pilot of the helicopter for this crash, but there will be enough of a reference to staffing problems at ATC for everyone to jump on board and say Trump was right.

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Maybe it's both?

ApachePilot said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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Hegeseth mentioned it was a continuity of government exercise training that they conduct regularly and at varying times of day.

In order to be effective, I would think you would want there to be the varying conditions such as last night.

Just a thought as I am not sure how much the type of exercise they were doing has been discussed much.

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Was this her first time on this exercise? First night flight on this route? Had the flight crew worked together before? Many things I'd want know. Spent hours last night talking to my hawk buddy in the 160th. Trying ti better understand. This is depressing.

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This is possible. Perhaps you could answer if it would be common for here to not be the pilot communicating with the tower in the radio transmissions. IS it normal for the Co-Pilot to do that when it comes to things like traffic avoidance calls or, is this indicative of a Co-Pilot who may be helping her learn trying to take some workload off her?

Muy said:

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BBRex said:

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I think people are starting to grasp at straws to try to prove Trump right. There can definitely be problems with ATC, but those problems appear to have had little bearing on this particular incident.

My personal opinion is that they're going to blame the pilot of the helicopter for this crash, but there will be enough of a reference to staffing problems at ATC for everyone to jump on board and say Trump was right.

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Maybe it's both?

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Based on the info out there right now, I think it's both…

Catag94 said:

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ApachePilot said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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Hegeseth mentioned it was a continuity of government exercise training that they conduct regularly and at varying times of day.

In order to be effective, I would think you would want there to be the varying conditions such as last night.

Just a thought as I am not sure how much the type of exercise they were doing has been discussed much.

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Was this her first time on this exercise? First night flight on this route? Had the flight crew worked together before? Many things I'd want know. Spent hours last night talking to my hawk buddy in the 160th. Trying ti better understand. This is depressing.

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This is possible. Perhaps you could answer if it would be common for here to not be the pilot communicating with the tower in the radio transmissions. IS it normal for the Co-Pilot to do that when it comes to things like traffic avoidance calls or, is this indicative of a Co-Pilot who may be helping her learn trying to take some workload off her?

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I think that it is normal in many crews for the one not actively piloting to handle the radios.

BBRex said:

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[Give your opinion without the obscenity and it will stay on the thread. -Staff]

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Fair enough. And to Muy's and FireAg's point, it could well be both. I just think it's dumb to be worried about optics or looking for any angle to prove a politician correct. If you think that the ATC staffing is a problem, fine. But save me the DEI stuff unless you have some proof.

I based what I said on the history of "pilot error" being the outcome of a majority of investigations, and it looks like the commuter jet was right where it was supposed to be. I think there will be a bunch of caveats, including the ATC staffing, because NTSB has a history of including everything that could possibly be an issue (look at the Sudden Acceleration Incident investigation in the late '80s and early '90s).

Catag94 said:

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ApachePilot said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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Hegeseth mentioned it was a continuity of government exercise training that they conduct regularly and at varying times of day.

In order to be effective, I would think you would want there to be the varying conditions such as last night.

Just a thought as I am not sure how much the type of exercise they were doing has been discussed much.

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Was this her first time on this exercise? First night flight on this route? Had the flight crew worked together before? Many things I'd want know. Spent hours last night talking to my hawk buddy in the 160th. Trying ti better understand. This is depressing.

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This is possible. Perhaps you could answer if it would be common for here to not be the pilot communicating with the tower in the radio transmissions. IS it normal for the Co-Pilot to do that when it comes to things like traffic avoidance calls or, is this indicative of a Co-Pilot who may be helping her learn trying to take some workload off her?

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yes it happens often. Especially since there are multiple radios. This often gets us in trouble because we both are in the cockpit and not outside. This is why I mentioned if the crew was new together.

eric76 said:

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I think that it is normal in many crews for the one not actively piloting to handle the radios.

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I think so on private and even commercial flights too, but I didn't want to speak for military flights. If in the pilot communicating was not the PIC, and he was not seeing the correct plane, it begs the question was there any cockpit chatter regarding the traffic.

Question ApachePilot. A military pilot with 500 flying hours. Is she a rookie? Seems low for military pilot.

I know HPD pilots who rack up 500 hours in less than a year. I know it's all speculation, just curious how experience she might have been.

Psycho Bunny said:

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Question ApachePilot. A military pilot with 500 flying hours. Is she a rookie? Seems low for military pilot.

I know HPD pilots who rack up 500 hours in less than a year. I know it's all speculation, just curious how experience she might have been.

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Very junior. I think I left flight school with 200. Not sure now a days. And factors like time in that aircraft, model of the bird. I mentioned night flight time because it's much more challenging than VFR. With 500 hours I wouldn't be shocked if she had only 75 hours night flight time. Which is nothing. And if she hadn't flown nights in months it is like starting over. I always read accident reports in aviation to understand. The other pilot would know she was low hours though and would be protecting her from herself. Popping up 200 feet in seconds is nothing though.

What do you make of the apparent right hand turn just before the crash. Trying to make evasive maneuvers, maybe? I can make sense of it any other way.

I said earlier that I don't think the pilot being female could be tied to DEI, but if you mention that 500 hours would be very junior then that begs the question of why she would be assigned to the VIP detail who carries SecDec and the Army high ups.

Was she put on that detail to give a more public image of diversity?

I have no idea and would hope not, but shades of Trump Butler detail come to mind.

Catag94 said:

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What do you make of the apparent right hand turn just before the crash. Trying to make evasive maneuvers, maybe? I can make sense of it any other way.

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If I had to guess and I hate doing that. Maybe the other pilot saw the error and took the controls. There are 3 sets of eyes on a Blackhawk helping with aircraft avoidance. Maybe last minute one realized the error.


I would say more but I do t want to get blasted.

Thank you for your input.

flown-the-coop said:

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I said earlier that I don't think the pilot being female could be tied to DEI, but if you mention that 500 hours would be very junior then that begs the question of why she would be assigned to the VIP detail who carries SecDec and the Army high ups.

Was she put on that detail to give a more public image of diversity?

I have no idea and would hope not, but shades of Trump Butler detail come to mind.

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I'd be happy to talk offline.

Good analysis.

The concept is overarching. One could argue we are now seeing the cumulative result of unnatural market forces when it comes to putting people in positions they might not be in but for consideration of non-performance related factors.

txags92 said:

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Seems like there was a cascade of small errors by ATC and the pilots both that had to happen in order to cause the wreck. Hard to pick just 1 of them as the "root cause", because if any of them were erased, the accident becomes a near miss instead.

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The definition of the "Swiss cheese" theory. All of the holes have to line up, and did in this case.

Duckhook said:

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txags92 said:

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Seems like there was a cascade of small errors by ATC and the pilots both that had to happen in order to cause the wreck. Hard to pick just 1 of them as the "root cause", because if any of them were erased, the accident becomes a near miss instead.

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The definition of the "Swiss cheese" theory. All of the holes have to line up, and did in this case.

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You look at the Baltimore bridge collapse and it's the same deal here. A lot of factors weave through the holes in that cheese and it comes down to ~1-2 seconds on either side, and the incident would have been a near miss.

Pilots had reported near-misses with helicopters at Reagan National Airport in the years before the deadly crash.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/30/us/dca-plane-helicopter-crash-invs/index.html

According to WAPO, a near miss happened day before yesterday

Charpie said:

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According to WAPO, a near miss happened day before yesterday

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Yes, a regional jet on final had to go around because of a helicopter in its path.

One air traffic controller handled both helicopters and planes yesterday. Is that right?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/air-traffic-control-staffing-plane-crash.html

Staffing at the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport was "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic," according to an internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration safety report about the collision that was reviewed by The New York Times.

The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport's vicinity Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways. Those jobs typically are assigned to two controllers, rather than one.

This increases the workload for the air traffic controller and can complicate the job. One reason is that the controllers can use different radio frequencies to communicate with pilots flying planes and pilots flying helicopters. While the controller is communicating with pilots of the helicopter and the jet, the two sets of pilots may not be able to hear each other.

Like most of the country's air traffic control facilities, the tower at Reagan airport has been understaffed for years. The tower there was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023, according to the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, an annual report to Congress that contains target and actual staffing levels. The targets set by the F.A.A. and the controllers' union call for 30.

The shortage caused by years of employee turnover and tight budgets, among other factors has forced many controllers to work up to six days a week and 10 hours a day.

The F.A.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This was one response from previous pilot pic.twitter.com/ufrWDhy7Wy

— SportDiva (@KBRealTalk) January 31, 2025

Apache,

I know that civilian airliners have cockpit recording that will sometimes provide additional information about what was happening in the cockpit. Do military aircraft, in this case a Blackbird Helo, have a similar recording system? I'd be curious if that would perhaps provide insight into what plane the PAT25 crew was looking at.

To be fair, I said "at the very least" it was bad optics…

The reality is likely it wasn't simply bad optics…the optics expose a very unfortunate reality…having an understaffed tower played a role in the deaths of 67 people…

Not saying they aren't understaffed or even that being understaffed didn't contribute to this, however, it is probably better for a single controller to be controlling all the aircraft within his sector of airspace.

eric76 said:

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Catag94 said:

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ApachePilot said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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Hegeseth mentioned it was a continuity of government exercise training that they conduct regularly and at varying times of day.

In order to be effective, I would think you would want there to be the varying conditions such as last night.

Just a thought as I am not sure how much the type of exercise they were doing has been discussed much.

---

Was this her first time on this exercise? First night flight on this route? Had the flight crew worked together before? Many things I'd want know. Spent hours last night talking to my hawk buddy in the 160th. Trying ti better understand. This is depressing.

---

This is possible. Perhaps you could answer if it would be common for here to not be the pilot communicating with the tower in the radio transmissions. IS it normal for the Co-Pilot to do that when it comes to things like traffic avoidance calls or, is this indicative of a Co-Pilot who may be helping her learn trying to take some workload off her?

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I think that it is normal in many crews for the one not actively piloting to handle the radios.

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It's common in the hawk for one pilot to fly while the other manages the flight (radios, navigation, etc) but the pilot flying will back up the one managing as needed if the managing pilot gets overwhelmed.

Thank you.

Catag94 said:

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Not saying they aren't understaffed or even that being understaffed didn't contribute to this, however, it is probably better for a single controller to be controlling all the aircraft within his sector of airspace.

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Not sure I can agree with this…

Apparently, the SOP is for one ATC to handle helo traffic and one handles airliner traffic…one reason given is that the military helo's are on a different radio frequency than the airliners…

ApachePilot said:

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Psycho Bunny said:

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Question ApachePilot. A military pilot with 500 flying hours. Is she a rookie? Seems low for military pilot.

I know HPD pilots who rack up 500 hours in less than a year. I know it's all speculation, just curious how experience she might have been.

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Very junior. I think I left flight school with 200. Not sure now a days. And factors like time in that aircraft, model of the bird. I mentioned night flight time because it's much more challenging than VFR. With 500 hours I wouldn't be shocked if she had only 75 hours night flight time. Which is nothing. And if she hadn't flown nights in months it is like starting over. I always read accident reports in aviation to understand. The other pilot would know she was low hours though and would be protecting her from herself. Popping up 200 feet in seconds is nothing though.

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I disagree. 10 years ago 500 hours would have been junior. Now 100 hours a year is average in a hawk. Many aircraft commanders have a 500 hundred hours are considered the low end of mid grade. When I was junior no one would look at us for aircraft commander until 500 hours, today 300 is about that mark. I only graduated flight school with about 120 hours.

Why have the qualifications been decreased over the years?

Coppell97 said:

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This was one response from previous pilot pic.twitter.com/ufrWDhy7Wy

— SportDiva (@KBRealTalk) January 31, 2025

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So much incorrect information in that post, that it's not worth highlighting it all

FIDO95 said:

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Apache,

I know that civilian airliners have cockpit recording that will sometimes provide additional information about what was happening in the cockpit. Do military aircraft, in this case a Blackbird Helo, have a similar recording system? I'd be curious if that would perhaps provide insight into what plane the PAT25 crew was looking at.

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Military aircraft have recording too.

FireAg said:

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Why have the qualifications been decreased over the years?

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To let more people avail of the "benefits" of the positions so they can attain their aspirations.