Posted on 01/30/2025 11:20:14 AM PST by Red Badger
In order to enable safe flight, airspace is split into categories ranging from very tightly controlled areas around airports to other zones – mostly rural – where rules are much more relaxed.
The most stringently controlled zones are Class A airspace, such as the area around the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.
Pilots must obtain clearance from Air Traffic Control (ATC) to enter and, except in an emergency situation, must follow ATC instructions – such as on heading, height or clearance to land – to the letter.
If reconstructions of the situation in Washington on Wednesday night and ATC instructions are correct, a passenger aircraft seems to have been given clearance to line up and land on runway 33 (the runway is laid out on heading 330 degrees, with the opposite direction being 150 degrees.)
Donald Trump took to his Truth Social network overnight and wrote: “The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport.
“The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a clear night, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn.”
In ordinary flight outside controlled airspace, when two aircraft are approaching each other the aircraft on the right-hand side has right of way.
This is why one wing has a red light and the other green – approaching aircraft have a visual cue to take avoiding action or not, depending on which colour of light they see.
Once given clearance to land by ATC, however, an aircraft does not have to alter course even if, as seems to be the case in this incident, another aircraft (the military Black Hawk helicopter) is closing in on its right-hand side.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ummm... yeah it has.
I never flew in urban areas with NVGs in use. Cultural lighting washes out EVERYTHING.
Back in the Stone Ages when the military first started learning to fly wearing NODs (when the only ones available had been designed for use by infantrymen), before an NVG mission the crew would take a piece of duct tape, poke a pinhole in it and use it to cover the a/c’s position lights (with the pinhole roughly at the apex).
Notice I said “position” lights, not anti-collision lights. Because even the non-flashing red, green and white position lights put out so much light they interfere with normal NOD operation. Flashing ac lights? Fuggedabout it.
Even with just the pinhole there was adequate light for other NODs pilots to see you, and the military segregated training areas between those using NODs and those not, because without NODs you could never see such a faint light as the pinhole emitted. And if you were under NODs you stayed far, far away from anything with standard ac and/or position lights on because the intensity would be blinding under NODs. Not to mention they couldn’t see you, so it was hazardous to get close to them.
Now military aircraft have extremely dim blue-green electroluminescent panel position lights and infrared anti-collision lights they switch on under NODs.
If anything brighter than a pinhole from a rather anemic incandescent bulb can overpower NODs, imagine what runway and taxiway and obstacle lights and the rotating beacon would do to them.
“””The helicopter should therefore have given way to the passenger jet. The crew of the Black Hawk should also have sought permission from ATC to “cross the active”, meaning to fly over the active runway and an imaginary line extended from that runway out to the ATC zone limits.
This is another safety mechanism designed to keep aircraft landing, and other airspace users clear of each other. In the ATC transcripts released so far, no such permission seems to have been given.”””
This is the critical part of this article.
NO SUCH PERMISSION SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN GIVEN
I’m no ATC, but the whole thing seemed crazy, having a helicopter crossing that close to the approach.
And NOD is...?
Word is it was a night fly training op.
Why do we have some of the helicopter crew names but not all at this time?
Also as with watercraft, if two vessels appear to each other as stationary, it’s because they’re on a collision course.
Regardless, an airplane has right-of-way over a helicopter. This is drilled into helicopter pilots from day 1.
That's counterintuitive... Got a link?
Possible helo altimeter error? Good point - but these were reportedly experienced pilots who presumably would know they were well over their allowed ceiling.
“Pass behind” is permission to pass through the airspace.
TCAS will not generate a resolution below 1000 gal, however the traffic is still displayed with relative altitude.
“Is it possible there was an altimeter error on the chopper?”
I don’t know know if a radar altimeter — which wouldn’t be subject to much error — is in use on a military aircraft when operated in civilian airspace like that.
But regardless, helicopter pilots develop quite a keen sense for altitude above ground even at night (out of a sense of survival). And there were plenty of lights along the river. If the 200’ AGL ceiling I read is valid, it’s hard to understand how he/she could have been off by a big fraction of that. But he evidently was.
Is your search engine broken? “Collision course at sea”.
I can tell you’re not a mariner.
WOULDN’T OPPOSING DIRECTION BE 165 DEGREES???
1/2 of 330???
From Kristina Wong from Breitbart on Twitter/X:
Spoke to someone who served in the same unit as the Army Black Hawk crew, knew them personally, and flew those routes. He made the following points:
1) That it was a training flight was not unusual at all. Those flights are flown everyday.
2) The co-pilot was going through her annual evaluation for night flying. Night vision goggles can magnify light, making it easier to confuse aircraft lights with ground lights.
3) Runway 33 — where Air Traffic Control told the passenger jet (CRJ) to land — is “rarely used.” This person said in his four years, he saw it being used 10 times. It is a much shorter runway than the main one used, which is Runway 1.
4) The Black Hawk appeared to confuse the passenger jet with another plane landing at Runway 1 — which is why the pilot-in-command confirmed seeing the CRJ and requesting “visual separation,” or essentially saying he would avoid it.
5) The CRJ was circling to land and making a left turn at the time. The Black Hawk was in its blind spot.
6) The crew was experienced: The instructor pilot had just under 1,000 flying hours. He was former Navy. The co-pilot had around 500 hours, and the crew chief — who served on multiple combat tours — around 1,000 hours. They flew these same routes for at least three years.
7) It was not unusual to have three crew members on a Black Hawk. There’s only four for certain mission sets. Whether the crew chief saw the CRJ would have depended on which side he was sitting on.
8) It was a dark night, with no moon.
9) Air Traffic Control could have told the Black Hawk to hold north, or diverted it.
10) Potential changes could be to change the route, altitude, or hours during heavy air traffic.
“All these things, they all made for the perfect storm.”
I’d be curious to hear from any pilots about how to approach an airport. Skyvector had the details of which direction, altitude and direction of circling to prevent chaos in the air. Why was the helicopter flying counter to the landing pattern within the landing pattern? I just have forgotten how to read the Skyvector charts. You have to learn that stuff to get a Drone license.
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