Comments on: Potomac

By: Tom.in Vegas

Tom.in Vegas — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 14:37:23 +0000

I’m sure it will give great comfort to the families and the flying public that it was a certfcation flight and not a training flight that killed all those people.

By: Jeff O'Byrne

Jeff O'Byrne — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 12:42:38 +0000

After the last mid-air at DCA an immence
amount of tax money was expended to build a new airport to serve the National’s Capital. Despite building a large, modern airport it has been under utilized. Until the congressional travelers use the super highway and Dulles to get home, the dangers of DCA will exist.

By: Gimlet Winglet

Gimlet Winglet — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 11:02:32 +0000

Tom, no the NTSB did not agree with your sentiment that “it seems insane that a military helicopter can be flying training missions with night vision in close proximity to a major civilian airport approach path”.

What the NTSB did was ban *all* helo traffic from crossing the approach path to runway 33 at DCA when runway 33 is in use for landings, thus addressing a historic clusterfuck of normalization of deviance depending on visual identifcation crossing airliners (which look identical at night, vision goggles irrelevant, all you see is landing lights). The holes in the swiss cheese lined up that night.

Also, it was not a “training” flight. It was a certification flight. You cannot certify that pilots are able to execute a continuance of governance mission (namely evacuating key personnel after a DC catastrophe) without actually, you know, flying the route. Every pro pilot does routine certifcation flights, incuding our site host who has at least 30 years paid in the cockpit. Those are not training flights, those are certification flights, as in “just checking you still know how to do this job”.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:30:57 +0000

In reply to Clark.

It doesn’t count as a major carrier crash because it wasn’t a major carrier. It was PSA Airlines. American Airlines doesn’t pay PSA employees, doesn’t hire them, doesn’t train them, doesn’t maintain their planes…

I get what you’re saying, and sure, if the mainline airlines wanna slap their logos on these regional jets, they need to be there when something bad happens. But… it wasn’t American Airlines.

By: Penny Jackson

Penny Jackson — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 13:24:14 +0000

Rod: After a disaster there should always be an investigation. However there’s no room for speculation here about what happened. A helicopter collided with a jet on approach. I never commented about what Patrick should be expected to address. I think he does just fine as it is.

By: Tom in Vegas

Tom in Vegas — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 01:19:59 +0000

I see that on Feb 5 I posted a comment that as a non pilot, it seems insane that a military helicopter can be flying training missions with night vision in close proximity to a major civilian airport approach path. On March 10 the NTSB said they agreed with that sentiment. Tragic it took a disaster to figure that out.

By: Ed

Ed — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:13:14 +0000

Hope the Airbus training goes well. Looking forward to your perspective on the crash in Toronto.

By: Gimlet Winglet

Gimlet Winglet — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 02:31:54 +0000

Congrats on choosing to explore professionally the airbus world. I look forward to compare and contrast type posts.

By: Rod

Rod — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 14:23:20 +0000

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.

By: Clark

Clark — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 23:16:43 +0000

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.