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  • The Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger plane on Wednesday night was on an annual proficiency training flight, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Thursday.

    In fucking active air ways?

    • The explanation I saw that the Blackhawk pilot got confused about which airplane he was supposed to be paying attention to kind of brings up the obvious question of "why the hell were they flying through the approach corridor of a major airport?" I normally try to refrain from backseat quarterbacking subjects I don't have expertise in, but it seems obviously reckless.

      • You don't need to be an expert when its so obvious. If I see a derailed train, I don't need to be a locomotive engineer to know its not supposed to be off the tracks. The helicopter flew into airspace every pilot and non pilot knows you don't fly into.

      • What's also really dumb is like....you're a helicopter. You can just sit there and hover. No need to be moving anywhere while planes are taking off. You can literally stop and float, go up or down, backwards...any direction other than forwards (including no direction at all).

        This whole thing is like if a person driving a car didn't know you had brakes or taking your foot off the accelerator slows you down and drove through a four-way stop without stopping.

      • I don't understand why we have to have these schlemihls fucking around in hundred million dollar equipment and incinerating a billion gallons of kerosene when surely flight sims are really fucking good in this year of our lord 2025

        • Sims have come a long way (and they are used for some training) but they'll never be able to fully replace actual flight time. Obviously they shouldn't need to be flying in an active approach path, but as long as pilots are a thing they'll still have to have regular flight hours to keep up with certification and all that. Washington DC airspace is a total mess and the base the heli took off from is across the river from KDCA, and right next to the most common RNAV approach for runway 33 which seems like a horrible spot for training flights.

      • Maybe this is some long covid consequence or something. I heard an anecdote on here awhile back that people with long covid are just sitting at stop signs in their cars and getting confused at what to do next.

        Add in the fact that most people with long covid don’t even realize they have long covid and we start getting more freak accidents like this.

        I’m not saying that’s what this is but who knows it could be

    • Well yeah, the DoD has an entire 1000 acres of military base that the Air Force uses right across the Potomac from Reagan Airport.

      Not exactly where I'd put civilian airport but technically it was there first. Why the DoD/Air Force can't take a detour that completely avoids coming even close to descending/departing planes for training

    • Look up the DC HELO chart, route 4. There's a route that runs right by the approach corridor for runway 33. It mandates at or below 200 feet in that section and the Data suggests the collision occurred at 350 feet, but that is internet ads-b data and not reliable for that level of fidelity. But yes, you can fly helicopters straight through the path of an active airport if they're talking to atc.

      • To add on to this: Here is the ATC recording from the time of the collision, though the military is on UHF and this is only VHF so it's still a bit tricky to fully decipher what happened

        Skip to around 16:30 to get to the involved aircraft

        The CRJ is Blue Streak 5342 and the black hawk is PAT 25

        https://archive.liveatc.net/kdca/KDCA1-Twr-Jan-30-2025-0130Z.mp3

        The heli was instructed to visually pass behind the CRJ, but beyond that it's unclear how they managed to fuck it up so badly

    • not too proficient if you ask me

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