Black Hawk military helicopter collides into American Airlines flight landing at Reagan Airport in Washington, DC

[luc]

But how do we know the helicopter wouldn't have crashed if it was a man flying it? Would a man overcome the remote control takeover of the helicopter or some 4D bleedthrough that messed up space/time in the vicinity?

Btw, I'm not against the point Luc was making, or that you are making. DEI i.e. hiring people for other reasons other than their ability or aptitude is not right.

I am just not sure DEI is the reason for this crash or that someone can say definitely that it is.

Also, just to drive my point, why is that F35 pilot who crashed that super EXPENSIVE plane in Alaska get away from all this blame about competency? I can only imagine if it was a woman flying that jet. She would have been CRUCIFIED on social media. Scratch that, she'd have been absolutely massacred.

From your post it seemed you were saying the whole anti-DEI thing might have gone too far, but while I agree obviously that we can't just conclude "there was a woman involved, therefore she's too blame", my point was that the backlash against DEI is understandable, including that people will notice and point out such things in the case of an accident. Which might seem cruel, especially if it turns out the accident had nothing to do with it, but it's not unexpected given the enormous pressure for the last 10+ years on all kinds of institutions to fulfil their unofficial women quota, especially when it comes male elite professions.

 

[SOTTREADER]

From your post it seemed you were saying the whole anti-DEI thing might have gone too far, but while I agree obviously that we can't just conclude "there was a woman involved, therefore she's too blame", my point was that the backlash against DEI is understandable, including that people will notice and point out such things in the case of an accident. Which might seem cruel, especially if it turns out the accident had nothing to do with it, but it's not unexpected given the enormous pressure for the last 10+ years on all kinds of institutions to fulfil their unofficial women quota, especially when it comes male elite professions.

I think we got there in the end. The backlash against DEI is definitely a natural correction to this being rammed down people's throats, but it's not always the case that anything wrong that happens professionally because a woman or whatever was doing it is because of DEI. I think both positions are true.

 

[A Jay]

I've been thinking about the conspiratorial angle, and to me I don't see how it's possible without someone in ATC being a part of it. They advised the pilot of the commercial jet to switch runways basically at the last minute.

I was thinking about this aspect of it as well. Without the ATC being involved in some way the conspiratorial possibility seems remote. At that point it's less likely to be a message from TPTB and more likely a message from the universe. If it was a message at all.

However, we don't know the ins and outs of the decision to have the CRJ land on runway 33, or at the very least I haven't much information about it. Such as, how often do flights get told to land on runway 33 instead of runway 1? Do those flights which get directed towards 33 always line up with runway 1 first? Is it always the same flights? And so on.

It's possible that the ATC wouldn't need to be tapped or told to make the change. If it's a pretty standard procedure for a given set of circumstances then you can set up the situation for it to be the thing to do at that time and then you have a means of making it happen without anyone being the wiser for it.

Basically, if it was an inside job, which the timing and circumstances suggests it likely was, then there were probably more moving parts than just the helicopter.

 

[Beau]

It's possible that the ATC wouldn't need to be tapped or told to make the change. If it's a pretty standard procedure for a given set of circumstances then you can set up the situation for it to be the thing to do at that time and then you have a means of making it happen without anyone being the wiser for it.

Would they really leave any step in a plan up to chance?

 

[A Jay]

Would they really leave any step in a plan up to chance?

What kind of chance, though?

There was a chance someone was going to run at JFK and spoil the plot before they had a chance to kill him. There was a chance the planes were going to crash before they hit the Twin Towers.

I think the chances of the ATC doing something deviating from standard procedure were similarly slim. So, they set it all up and let it unfold.

I'm not saying the ATC couldn't have been directly involved in some way or that someone wasn't waiting in the wings to make the necessary changes if they weren't made organically.

I was just thinking that they might've wanted that to be the last resort, which I could be wrong about, and we don't know enough about the circumstances to know if it was necessary to have them directly involved.

 

[Niall]

Two airport authority workers arrested for allegedly leaking DC plane crash video to CNN ​

Two employees of the authority that manages Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were arrested over their alleged involvement in leaking surveillance footage of last week’s deadly midair aircraft collision to CNN.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) staffers are accused of making an unauthorized copy of records and are facing charges of computer trespass, the agency said Monday.

The legal trouble is tied to the chilling video obtained by CNN last week that offered a horrifying new vantage point to crash over the Potomac River, ABC News reported.

The Wednesday night collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet killed all 67 people on both aircrafts.

Mohamed Lamine Mbengue, 21, of Rockville Maryland was charged Friday and Jonathan Savoy, 45, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, was charged Sunday, the MWAA said in an email.

Mbengue was booked into Arlington County Adult Detention Center and later released while Savoy was issued a summons by the magistrate and cut loose.

The above refers to the 'close-up' footage of the collision that came out a couple of days afterwards.

 

[Beau]

I think the chances of the ATC doing something deviating from standard procedure were similarly slim. So, they set it all up and let it unfold.

Certainly more likely in the case of a conspiracy than an inside man within ATC. They would have to assume that the heli would get too high at some point. But, "never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" . I think we all can agree that flying a heli so close to a landing strip at a major airport is incredibly stupid.

Based on the comments below from the latest YT video I posted, looks like the jet pilots would not be able to see the heli coming at them because of the tilt of the plane, and that the NGVs create a big vision problem.

As a former Helo pilot with lots of goggle time I can tell you this with almost certainty: There is no way, in a city lights environment, under nods, can you identify an aircraft coming at you head on...6 miles away. Just no way. They said their request out of habit and never had that aircraft in site.

Juan, as you might remember I flew EMS and Law Enforcement for over 30 years in Helicopters. During this time I worked over 50 percent at night and have logged over 2500 hours under NVG’s. We used the ANVIS 9 goggles and I can say they do have issues with being over city lights at night. At low altitudes they can be overwhelmed with input from ground lighting, causing interference with the clarity of what you see in them. We as helicopter cops often would go off goggles in bright city environments due to excessive glare. Also there is a video on utube by a former CRJ Piedmont pilot who had flown that very aircraft and many approaches into Reagan with the circling approach to RW33. He showed a video from another Piedmont Pilot while flying that approach he synchronized his video with the time line and CRJ would have been wing-up in a left turn about the same time as impact. There is no way they could have seen the Blackhawk coming from their right rear. This may have played an important role in lining up the holes in the cheese. Thanks again for your great video contents. Your awesome.

And one more from a pilot:

I have 38 years flying experience flying military and commercial airplanes. Currently I fly for a major airline and fly into DCA (was there three weeks ago). I am a firm believer that the root causal factor of this accident was ATC changing, and the pilot accepting, a runway change very late in the game. Things that are likely being accomplished (at night, low alt, congested airspace, while turning twice....) are changing ILS frequencies, changing ILS course, acquiring new landing data (switching to a shorter runway that is very short for bigger aircraft), and potentially looking at engine out contingencies. Additionally, the aircraft is going "belly up" in a left turn with the helo low and to the right, as it aligns for RW33. All these detract immensely from clearing. I don't fault anyone.....except the FAA for not trying to restrict this. It has become the norm in many places. I feel everyone would have gone home that night if the crew continued the approach to RW1 and spent all their time wings level, clearing for traffic.

 

[A Jay]

The helicopter pilots acknowledging the CRJ out of habit would explain why they first acknowledged the plane when facing 90 degrees away from the plane.

But here's the rub.

You're wearing NVG. You can't tell the difference between a streetlight and a plane because it's all one big blur. Okay.

The ATC has still warned you twice that there's planes coming in as you're flying past the airport and you're not hugging the lower end of the 100 to 200ft range when not only do you know it's prohibited to fly above 300ft but you've also presumably flown the route enough to know your relative height on top of the altimeter telling you how high you are with an instructor there with you to make sure you don't do something stupid. While this is supposed to be some kind of like recertification thing.

That's so much stupid it defies belief.

At least until the C's tell me it was a Darwin Award moment.

Edit:

Also there is a video on utube by a former CRJ Piedmont pilot who had flown that very aircraft and many approaches into Reagan with the circling approach to RW33. He showed a video from another Piedmont Pilot while flying that approach he synchronized his video with the time line and CRJ would have been wing-up in a left turn about the same time as impact. There is no way they could have seen the Blackhawk coming from their right rear. This may have played an important role in lining up the holes in the cheese.

Now that is interesting and gets to some of what I was wondering about regarding how regular this kind of approach is.

 

[Beau]

That's so much stupid it defies belief.

Yes, lots of stupid. Maybe too much to believe.

 

[Ina]

There is going to be a salad of interpretations from 'what did everyone mean'. Are there no standards?

 

[Joe]

The jet is hardly visible at all!

Remember that that's a simulation, and the guys keeps saying "could" about all his hypothesis which aim to explain what is, effectively, inexplicable by standard methods. The idea that night vision goggles would render a large aircraft, which the googles are being worn to actually see (along with everything else), "hardly visible" seems a bit implausible to me.

 

[Beau]

The idea that night vision goggles would render a large aircraft, which the googles are being worn to actually see (along with everything else), "hardly visible" seems a bit implausible to me.

There are a number of comments I've read by current and former blackhawk pilots who say they don't wear NVGs when flying low near urban areas because of the visibility issues caused by the blending of a plane's lights with city lights . We still don't know for sure if they were all wearing NVGs or not, though Hegseth indicated they were in his press conference.

 

[Joe]

There are a number of comments I've read by current and former blackhawk pilots who say they don't wear NVGs when flying low near urban areas because of the visibility issues caused by the blending of a plane's lights with city lights . We still don't know for sure if they were all wearing NVGs or not, though Hegseth indicated they were in his press conference.

Yeah, I know. So night vision goggles plus congested air-space plus faulty instruments plus human error all came together on this one day to cause a crash that has never happened before, despite all of those clear crash-causing elements being potentially in play on thousands of other similar flights over the past few years. Still don't buy it.

 

[RedFox]

faulty instruments

If you can remote control the helicopter, you can sure as heck alter any and all instruments panels/reading/data transmissions etc

Northeastern University researchers show that hacking an airplane’s landing instruments isn’t as hard as it should be

Using a relatively inexpensive setup, researchers demonstrated they could hack radio signals and direct a plane to land off target.

news.northeastern.edu

When the terrorists in Die Hard 2 interfere with an airport’s instrument landing system, the result is a fiery explosion as a plane meets the runway 200 feet before its pilots expect it to.

“Of course, that’s fiction,” says Northeastern doctoral student Harshad Sathaye. “But the instrument landing system is a very simple analog system. It can be spoofed.”

Using a relatively inexpensive setup, Sathaye and his fellow researchers recently demonstrated that they could hack an instrument landing system and direct a plane to land off target. While such an attack is unlikely to cause a plane to crash, it could be used to disrupt the operations of an entire airport.

How a hacker could fly a PLANE

A US cyber company has exposed vulnerabilities in the in-flight entertainment system on airlines including Virgin, Emirates and Qatar Airways that could allow hackers to take control of an aircraft.

www.dailymail.co.uk

The system's potential flaws were discovered by IOActive's principal security consultant, Ruben Santamarta.

He said that the 'exploits' he found in the IFE system could allow a hacker to spoof flight information on screens such as altitude, speed or show a bogus route.

This would, he said, create a 'baffling and disconcerting situation for passengers'.

 

[Ca.]

The New York Times' take on the D.C. air disaster may reveal something overlooked.

Examining the Minutes Before the D.C. Air Disaster | Visual Investigation

Feb 5, 2025

Update:

Charlie Kirk explains what happened with the helicopter and the American Airline crash. 💥 not good for the helicopter at all. pic.twitter.com/BN7eE0eWI3

— Kathleen Winchell ❤️🤍💙🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@KathleenWinche3) February 6, 2025