Twitchy: Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, wasn’t afforded time to settle into his new Cabinet position in President Donald Trump’s administration. Hours after being sworn in, tragedy struck in Washington, D.C. as an American Airlines flight and military helicopter collided mid-air at Reagan National Airport. more
Trump laments air tragedy over Washington DC: ‘Should have been prevented.’
JTN:
President Donald Trump early Thursday lamented the midair collision that occurred over Washington D.C. and raised serious concerns over how such a crash could occur.
“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,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social account. “It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn?
“Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane,” he added. “This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!”
Trump reacted after an American Airlines jet collided with an Army Blackhawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport on Wednesday evening.
Earlier, Trump expressed sorrow for the victims and the country. more
Passengers on downed flight included American and Russian figure skaters.
…There were 60 passengers and four crew members on the American Airlines flight on Wednesday and three soldiers aboard the training flight on the Blackhawk helicopter. It was believed that there were no survivors.
…Passengers aboard the American Airlines flight that collided with an Army helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River included figure skaters returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and two of their Russian coaches.
Petey would have had to take a sick day.
Trump should release all government info on TWA 800.
dei atc again?
Asshole Leftists are already screaming it’s Trump’s fault!
From the video I saw it looks like the blacked out helo traveling at a faster speed slammed into the plane while it was on final.
Could there be some DEI involved here?
Possibilities besides accident/equipment/DEI failure:
1. They wanted somebody dead on the plane (or helicopter)
2. Helicopter pilot was suicidal
3. Terrorism
It’s just different levels of horrible.
Poor souls.
This is supposed to be Air Traffic Control radar of the incident. I don’t know the source, but it came via Clarice Feldman whom I trust.
It looks like the plane turns more than the helo – but I would have to assume that the plane is on its normal flight path.
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1884827088437264387
Somebody’s losing their contract.
Helo pilot screwed up. ATC asked them if they had the jet, requested they pass behind them, he said yes and requested visual separation, and impacted a second or two later. He probably sighted a different jet further out.
Reagan National is it’s own case study in tight airspace. Makes NYC look easy.
May God rest their souls.
KR
The thing that pisses me off the most about tragedies like this 1)our government lies to us so often that we never learn the truth, and 2)there is never ever (ever 20 times more) accountability, i.e., somebody fired, sued or goes to jail.
The NTSB will probably be more forthcoming and instructive, but the military will give us very little. And yes, a DEI pilot of the helo was my first thought, how sad it that?
I feel very bad for all the victims and their families.
One thing is for sure.
Flying, now days, really seems to be a crap shoot with the abundant lack of skill, patience, & self responsibility.
Ditto for Space travel & Container shipping.
I’ve got my private pilot certification with an instrument rating and I own my own aircraft. This is my opinion on this crash.
1. The DC Class Bravo and Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) is one of the most heavily controlled air spaces in the entire US if not the entire world.
2. The lame ass press keeps reporting the jet flew into the helicopter when it was clearly the other way around. The jet was cleared for approach to runway 33 at Reagan International. He had the right of way.
3. The military helicopter had zero business vectoring across the approach path of an active runway and no competent ATC would allow for that.
4. The helicopter flew right into the jet flying left to right in front of it on a clear night with the jet having all its beacons, anti-collision lights, strobes, and runway lights blazing. Fucking Ray Charles would’ve seen that thing. Both aircraft and the ATC screens should’ve had warnings going crazy, unless the military helicopter had its ADS-B Out and Mode C transponder turned off. Then the ATC and jet would be blind to the helicopter except for its lights.
5. This…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2307544/The-ultimate-remote-control-helicopter-US-Military-set-use-sized-aircraft-actually-DRONE.html
Call me paranoid, but I don’t trust the fucking deep state one bit. This is literally within days after Trump’s new DoT and DoD secretaries get confirmed and the day after Trump cut off the money spigot to many government agencies.
The longer it takes to release the names of the military personnel on that helicopter, the more likely it was either a kamikaze or drone situation. Never put any level of evil past the deep state, especially when the new administration is standing between them and their free money/power gravy train.
Everything TheMule said. And a plane full of Americans, and some Russians? I thought we were sanctioning even Russian MUSIC from being played here. I’m not going “allahu akbar”, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Iran gets the blame—again—in order to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran.
Okay, I’m crumpling my tinfoil hat and throwing it in the trash. At least give me credit for not working the Mossad into my crackpottery.
The Mule – Thank you for your very informative post.
@TheMule — Many thanks. Many thumbs for 3, 4, 5.
At what altitude was the collision?
What’s the floor of the DCA Class B airspace where collision happened?
My guess is ground level.
Third Twin – The Russians were figure skaters. The figure skating Championships took place in Wichita, Kansas this past Sunday.
Geni, I know that. The Russians were banned from the Olympics. They’re being sanctioned all to hell, with more sanctions bring threatened. I just find it strange that they’re skating in the middle of America right now with all of that. Must be some discreet diplomacy going on.
helicopter “training” in flight pattern? bullshit.
Uncle Al,
The floor of the class Bravo was the surface at that point.
According to this video, the aircraft collided at 400 ft. The helicopter turned right and climbed from 200 feet to 400 feet to slam into the jet. Apparently the helicopter could be seen and was talking to the ATC. How this clusterfuck could’ve happened in plain sight is beyond me. The military pilot seems to have caused all of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiOybe-NJHk&t=183s
@TheMule,
#2 – The problem is a straight approach to runway 33 brings you in over joint base Bolling (DIA, USSS, etc…), which they don’t allow. Approach to 33 is done on the main runway 1 route. You then do a “sidestep” to transition to runway 33 over the Potomac. I’m guessing the Helo sighted another heavy further out on approach to 1.
#3 – Standard operating procedure at DCA. The Helo’s are usually lower than the aircraft, but they do have an established cut-across path.
#4 – The Helo was on a training mission out of Virginia, probably intending to bring the crew up to speed on DC operations. They may have had their night vision goggles on, which with all the “cultural lighting” around DC, might saturate the goggles, or completely screw up the pilot’s situational awareness. There’s also the radio question, I’m guessing DCA has separate channels for helo’s and planes, which means the ERJ probably didn’t even know they were there.
Bottom line… The ERJ was cleared to do the runway 33 sidestep approach so it was his airspace. The helo was told to spot the ERJ and maintain visual separation, and failed to do so. Honestly I kind of question DCA in general, and runway 33 in particular. It points right at the Pentagon and Joint base Bolling, and I believe only the little jets can even perform the sidestep approach. They should just close runway 33 permanently, stop trying the thread the needle several times an hour, and deal with reduction in capacity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouDAnO8eMf8
KR
@Kali TX
Great post. Very informative. I’ve never been in the SFRA myself; sot that’s great to know.
these assholes need to remove the complexity from their bullshit “control” system…”if no one else can understand it, they can’t fire us”
I just read something on X that said the first responders saw life boats in the water.
Praying for some survivors.
Third Twin – It is indeed strange but from my observations there have been exceptions to their “rules” particularly where Athletes are involved in Medal sports .
If this had happened this time last month we would have to have suffered through a half hour of how Climate Change and racism contributed to or caused the accident.
I heard a radio interview where it was stated that the helicopter crew were training in night flying and were using night vision apparatus.
Don’t know much about night vision equipment but I assume it narrows your width of vision.
If true maybe densely populated areas with heavy air traffic isn’t the place to test said equipment.
Update on the possible survivors. Pete Hegseth gave an update and said there were 64 who died from the airliner (60 passengers).
BTW, the update Pete gave was less than 24 hours after the incident. Didn’t Buttplug wait for one month before he went to the train derailment in Ohio?
Here’s the link to his update on X: https://x.com/PhilHollowayEsq/status/1884970527422337406
A horrible tragedy caused by DEI hire (deadly) directives for Air Traffic Controllers and Military personnel resulting in a literally collision course.
God help and comfort the families of the victims of this preventable tragedy, suffering because of the Biden Administration’s evil, neglect, incompetence and leftist policies.
Here is a post about a DEI-related ‘near-miss’ that happened January of last year:
https://x.com/stclairashley/status/1885021888155402567
Last night’s may not have happened because of DEI policy, but there are definitely issues with air safety because of DEI policy.
None of this makes any sense at all. What in the hell is any helicopter doing flying around in the approach path of commercial air traffic at a major airport. The towers only warning was “Hey, you see those lights on that big ass plane that’s headed towards you right?
Sean Duffy is going to be an extremely busy guy. DEI. Its gotta be.
why is national airport still in existence? the built Dulles to replace it decades ago.
A horrible incident. I haven’t the words to express it any differently.