Potomac
February 1, 2025
“Perhaps a boring 2025 is what we should hope for,” I wrote back on January 21. A week later, a Blackhawk military helicopter collided with a PSA Airlines regional jet maneuvering to land at Reagan National Airport. Both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River, killing 67 people.
Not a good way to begin the year.
As I understand it, the crew of the helicopter told air traffic control it had the regional jet in sight, and was asked to “maintain visual separation,” as we say. When this happens, the onus of avoiding a traffic conflict falls to the pilot, rather than ATC. Maybe that sounds a bit old school, and I suppose it is. But it’s a common procedure when operating close to an airport, and almost always a safe one.
So the big question is: why did the helicopter not do as instructed? It’s possible the pilots misidentified their traffic, confusing the lights of a different plane with those of the PSA jet. Or, They had the correct aircraft in sight, but misjudged their trajectories. Were they paying close enough attention? Were they reckless, negligent, or something in between?
Another question is why the regional jet’s collision avoidance system, called TCAS, didn’t save the day. For one, although all commercial aircraft are equipped with TCAS, military helicopters are not. For the system to work optimally, both aircraft need to be wired in, so to speak, with their transponders exchanging speed and altitude data.
Regardless, the most critical TCAS function, called a “resolution advisory,” or RA, which gives aural commands to climb or descend, is normally inhibited at very low altitudes. The collision happened at less than 400 feet above the ground, maybe 25 seconds from touchdown. The RJ pilots might have received a basic TCAS alert — a synthesized voice announcing “Traffic! Traffic!” — but they would not have received maneuver instructions, and were likely preoccupied with aligning themselves with the runway. That close to the runway, a pilot is focused on landing, not on scanning for traffic.
DCA is a busy and challenging airport. There are twisty approach and departure patterns, and military copters are often transiting the airspace. It’s hard to know at this point what the takeaways of this crash might be, but the whole “maintain visual separation” thing may need to be reevaluated, especially for operations at night.
This was the deadliest U.S. aviation accident since 2009, when 49 people died in the crash of Colgan Air (Continental Connection) flight 3407 outside Buffalo.
PSA is an Ohio-based regional affiliate of American Airlines. Although wholly owned, it operates independently, with its own employees and facilities. Its pilots are neither employed nor trained by American Airlines.
Unfortunate as this accident was, it didn’t involve a major carrier or a mainline jet. And so, if nothing else, our 23-year crashless streak, which I discuss often in these pages, remains intact. And we hadn’t had a serious crash of any kind in fifteen years, which itself is remarkable. Making these points is, I hope, not in poor taste; the deaths of 67 people is still a significant tragedy.
PSA Airlines is not to be confused with the original PSA, a.k.a. Pacific Southwest Airlines, which operated from 1949 until 1988, when it was taken over by USAir.
As it happens, the old PSA was involved in an infamous midair collision over San Diego in 1978, in which 144 people were killed. In that disaster, which remains the deadliest midair collision in U.S. history, the pilots of the PSA Boeing 727 lost sight of a private plane that ATC had instructed it to follow, eventually colliding with it. There’s an irony in there.
Hans Wendt’s photograph of the stricken PSA 727, flames pouring from its right wing, is one of the most haunting airplane photos ever taken. Google it.
Neither was last week’s crash the first involving the Potomac River. Some of us are old enough to remember the spectacle of Air Florida flight 90, in 1982. The pilots of flight 90 failed to run their engine anti-ice system during a Janauary snowstorm at DCA. The plane took off, stalled, slammed into the 14th Street Bridge, then disappeared below the frozen river.
I was a sophomore in high school at the time. I remember our teacher wheeling a television into the room so we could all watch the rescue efforts. The heroics of Arland Williams and Lenny Skutnik.
No heroics this time.
And nope, not the first time a military aircraft collided with a civilian one. I can think of at least three others, including the 1971 collision over California between a Hughes Airwest DC-9 and a U.S. Air Force F-4 Phantom.
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34 Responses to “Potomac”
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Hope the Airbus training goes well. Looking forward to your perspective on the crash in Toronto.
Congrats on choosing to explore professionally the airbus world. I look forward to compare and contrast type posts.
NTSB yesterday revealed that the recorders noted a TCAS warning sounding in the RJ cockpit & a last-second max up-elevator input, suggesting the crew saw the helicopter but too late.
A very troubling incident; a few random thoughts:
1. Patrick, I don’t know how you parse this to say it doesn’t count as a major-carrier crash – sure, not a mainline service, but when AA sells the ticket and the plane has an AA logo, I’m not sure the distinction that the crew are under a different labor contract is all that relevant. To me, it’s an AA crash of an RJ at one of the country’s major (if smaller) airports.
2. From everything I’ve read, the RJ pilots followed all instructions, and the Blackhawk was out of position for whatever reason. So they may end up with much of the blame (and of course paid with their lives), but sending these choppers right through the DCA landing path with no more than visual instructions to avoid was a disaster waiting to happen. Hopefully that will be something that changes.
3. I’m tired of the “move it to IAD” comments, which are silly – far more people than Congressional staff use this airport. It’s simply much more convenient than IAD for eastern-seaboard flights. If there’s too much traffic there now to operate safely, that’s an FAA/NTSB issue to straighten out. For a few years I lived in Rosslyn virtually underneath the takeoff path and cursed it many times at 7:00am on a Saturday. But I knew that before I moved in, and the airport was there well before the building was.
4. Hopefully this will prompt a full assessment of the causes of a number of near-misses in recent years at busy airports; we are pushing our luck.
As a very old Californian, I remember the original PSA very well. Flew it to LA to attend my very first Star Trek convention. I loved their commercials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdLITtZfvLA
As a completely ignorant boob about how to fly a plane, my only thought is I think they are very hard to tell apart in a dark night in the sky. Perhaps, they should be equipped with a colored light sequence to tell one from another. Perhaps they copter pilots thought they saw the plane, perhaps it was a different. However, if the actually plane had red, blue, blue light sequence and the plane they saw was green, red, blue, they realize it was the wrong one. Again, I don’t know enough to have a valid opinion, and trained pilots may see the differences in planes as plain as day and totally obvious.
I thought “visual separation” had been done away with after the North Park (PSA) and Cerritos (Aeromexico) crashes and the establishment of Class B airspace. At least that’s been my experience flying around SoCal.
Julia, can we have a sourced quote of Trump actually blaming the crash on DEI (as opposed to stirring the DEI pot in connection with the crash)? I’ve looked at a number of articles reporting this but they lack the actual quote.
Failing to hire the best person for the job & instead hiring on the basis of race/sex is racist/sexist by definition.
This guy puts it well:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiQz93yqnmM&ab_channel=TakingOff
When I see ridiculous pressure Congressional people put on airlines to get direct flights from National, home on weekends its disgusting. And they dont want to be inconvenienced by having to go out to Dulles or to BWI like the rest of humanity. How much of this dynamic played into this disaster?
I came here immediately after the crash to see what Patrick would say. I thought about the Colgan crash and what he’d said about that. I was working in a Baltimore suburb even though I’m based west of Denver, and the office buzz was, “are you afraid to fly tomorrow night?” And of course my answer was, “absolutely not, I’m way more afraid of the ride in the car to BWI” (no offense to the colleague who drove me there in his rental).
I thought news coverage was mostly good, though calling in Sully to opine about a crash into a river seemed gratuitous to me. I was, however, deeply offended that Trumpf immediately blamed “DEI,” Biden, the FAA’s hiring standards, and anyone else who has ever stood still in an airport while not a white male, before a single body had even fully cooled in the icy river. FFS. And when he started going off about the helicopter pilots and ATC being in the wrong, all I could think was, “lawyers are drooling, this will all be used as evidence for the victims’ families in court,” a point several news people made the next day.
My flights on LUV from BWI to BNA and BNA to DEN on Friday night were uneventful and the flight attendants were chipper. The first pilot did say something about “no helicopters in sight” as he did his taxi-out chat with the pax. I thought it was amusing but likely not very reassuring to a non-plane-geek.
I hate IAD, but it is true, with Silver Metro going there, I should get over it. DCA needs a break.
To a non pilot, it seems insane that a military helicopter with night vision, is “training” in close approximity to the aporoach path of a major civilian airport. Separations should be in 1000s of feet not a few hundred, with obviously no room for error.
Aural command?
If I were in the RJ Captain, I’m not certain I’d be focusing much attention to TCAS while 400 feet AGL…on approach.
ND if I were to have noticed it, it’s highly unlikely that given my descent rate on approach, coupled with the ascent rate of the Blackhawk, that avoidance would have happened.
But a quick question that I don’t know the answer to. Would the RJ TCAS have detected the Blackhawk? I honestly don’t know how the Blackhawk can (electronically) or was configured.
Gimlet Winglet, everything I know about flying & about union-busting clods like Reagan tells me you’re right. But have you read William Langewiesche’s “Aloft” (particularly the chapter “Slam & Jam”)? The book’s worth reading just for the beauty of the writing, but it has quite a different take on ATC in the US & the whole 1981 kerfuffle.
Just want to say, from everything I have read the ATC person on duty was just doing his(?) job within the parameters of how DCA operated at that time and did it by the book, and was wearing at least two hats simultaneously, maybe three. US ATC has been chronically understaffed ever since saint ronnie fired PATCO (something about the difficulty of hiring qualified people into a high stress job where the US president might fire you or blame you on a political whim).
Yeah, the approaches to runways 33 and 01 differ by only 40 degrees’ angle. Easy to mistake an 01 approach for the one ATC is warning you about. So much normalization of deviance in this tragic clusterfuck.
There isn’t a pilot who hasn’t been looking at the wrong airplane, then telling ATC “I have traffic in sight”, myself included.
Patrick- nice article, as we all expect from you. As a separate or follow up post, it would be helpful for your take on the media coverage of this crash. Who gets praise for their reporting and what media outlets were off in their coverage?
Personally, I caught a few news stories and watched the coverage not to learn of the cause but to see how the media covered it. If they used sensationalism, speculation, and just bad journalism. Overall from the few data points that I have, there didn’t seem to be the sensationalism and rush to judgment that I feared. Of course many just filled the air rambling on repetitively. But Id be interested in everyone’s take.
Rod @ February 1, 2025 at 2:50 pm is correct. If a plane with AA livery, with an AA flight number, where AA sold the tickets, which was operated by a wholly owned subsidiary of AA, has an accident, then AA had the accident.
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”.
Penny: If there’s no room for speculation, why are they bothering with an investigation? Granted: there are fewer unanswered questions than with, say, the Jeju crash. But getting to the Very bottom of it will bring benefits.
Sorry to use this as a debate board, but it’s true that Patrick doesn’t address all points made here. (Nor should he be expected to.)
About thirty years ago I decided to start taking flying lessons at a small airport northwest of Philadelphia. Everything went smoothly until it was time for my first nighttime lesson. I became so disoriented by the lights — from other small planes, from commercial jets approaching PHL from the west, and from cars and trucks on the ground — that I stopped taking lessons because I didn’t think I could ever get used to the visual confusion.
Dear Patrick,
You very wisely refrained from commenting on the latest tragic accidents until now. In the accident at Washington airport there there is no room for speculation about how it happened, it’s clear. I find the keyboard warriors who wade in with their excited and usually misspelled and invariably misinformed comments on your blog embarassing and would support you in much more tight moderation. But it’s your call.
My comment is not intended for publication.
All the very best,
Penny Jackson
I still don’t understand your criteria for what defines a “major” crash. Does it involve a minimum sized plane such as a 737 or larger while excluding RJ’s? Or is it death toll? I’d really like to see you both elaborate and clear this up.
Also. Re: PSA. I seem to remember somewhere that the reason they operate under that name was to protect the trademark of the original. Back in the mid 90s, there actually was an attempt at a new start under that name. USAir got wind of it and promptly put a halt to that. Though why, I have no idea. By then, they had already pretty much abandoned and dismantled all they had bought from PSA.
Patrick – of course I came straight to here to hear your take but I just wanted to say you have taught me well over the years. I always remember the amazing safety record and statistically secure record of major carrier flight over the past decades that you have emphasized. The only downside of so many years of no incidents is that people become complacent and used to a comfort level, then an accident comes along and causes their world to crumble. Thank you so much for educating and remaining a sane voice among the fearmongering media
Tom: If I were an AA pilot, I’d say Well, we allow them to paint their aircraft in our livery, how are journalists expected to convey this fine nuance to the public?
AA should accept that it’s had a fatal accident, or not allow a regional to fly in its colours.
I’m not going to comment on the technical part of this accident, but rather on the way the media reports on incidents involving “regional” airlines. Specifically, if I were a pilot employed by American I would be royally ticked off over the way news agencies conflate the large company with its smaller partners. Having the aircraft of an independently operated carrier painted in the same livery as the mainline company creates enough confusion to the public as it is, but reporting this as an American Airlines accident gives a black eye to the flight operations of American itself, in my mind. This was also the case with Continental/Colgan 3407 and numerous lesser incidents involving regional partners of major airlines.
Low-level visual separation in a dense urban environment with all those lights competing for your attention is bound to go wrong sooner or later. Too much traffic in too small a space.
Thank you for this reporting. Tragic accident should have been avoided. My brother – a long time reporter in DC was at the Air Florida reporting on the rescue efforts and heroically because part of the rescue efforts. He still talks about it today.
Good work on defining goalposts narrow enough to squeeze a 23-year crash-less streak out of them
I wonder how the proportion of air traffic accounted for by “major carriers” differs between the 1970s and now.
That aside, it seems like this procedure was just badly thought out and an “accident waiting to happen”. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huVFZ__q2rI . When ATC has become inured to their collision alarms blaring and ignores them routinely, there is certainly something wrong.
Donald would rather shift blame to others using racist tropes than take responsibility for not appointing a FAA administrator or adequate staffing levels for air traffic controllers. Grotesque.
Since we the public spent billions to extend Metro Silver Line to John Foster Dulles airport, DCA traffic should be relocated there, where the airspace isn’t so constrained.
And since DCA is Congress’s airport, there will be a LOT of pressure to remedy some of the problems. Donald gets his own military flights, but the Senators and Representatives are at the mercy of Air Traffic Control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfgllf1L9_4
Analyzing the Mid-Air Collision Over the Potomac: A Detailed Examination of ATC Communications
3.4M views
1 day ago
Captain Steeeve
I don’t see the *nation* descending into political arguments — only the nation’s president and a few of his minions.
The helicopter was following Route 1 to Route 4, both designated flyways for helos near DCA. But Route 4 has the helos descend to 200 feet when they pass through the approach to runway 33, and the landing jets on glide slope are at about 350 feet when they turn right through Route 4. The helos are supposed to coordinate with ATC about passing through during a gap in landing traffic; it’s a bit like an unsignalized at-grade rail crossing where you radio someone to ask when to cross, except the freight trains are coming at you at 150 knots and every 90 seconds. And there’s more than one crossing in sight, and it’s dark, and you have to be certain you see the right train you’re supposed to pass behind immediately after it crosses in front of you.
The FAA has now shut down both runway 33 and declared a hold on all helo traffic in a runway-defined perimeter around DCA. A better response than the FAA had to the first 737 MAX MCAS crash, but still a bit of a horse-barn-door situation.
From what I can gather, it seems highly likely the helo that requested visual flight rules (standard operating procedure) and was told to pass behind the CRJ, misidentified another jet aircraft as the one they were to pass behind, likely one doing an approach to runway 1, which is a bit parallel to runway 33 and farther away. Jets look mostly the same at night, all you see is a bunch of lights.
Before Air Florida there was another crash involving the Potomac River. And DCA. And an airliner on final approaching from the south. And a collision with a military aircraft.
1949, Eastern Air Lines Flight 537
This had to be a tough one to write but I was looking forward to hearing what you had to say about this. Thanks for your thoughtfulness on this today.
It’s depressing to see how the nation has descended, almost immediately, into political arguments and blame games awhile bodies were still being pulled from the water. Attacks on minorities, women and transgendered people who had absolutely nothing to do with the crash. I see the family of the female UH-60 pilot have asked that her name be kept private, probably as they are afraid of threats from Trump’s minions after his rant against “DEI” or whatever.
Never in my lifetime have I see such sensationalism and farce after an aviation accident. The nation has truly taken a turn for the worse.