PSA CRJ-700 AA midair collision

Or you know, don’t run a helicopter route 100’ under final approach, because we’re not pulling people out of saigon

How much density in the air littoral space do you think you will see in the next 10 years. How about 25. Somebody sees a drone in Class C airspace these days it’s a news event… that one air vehicle can derail how many thousands in revenue?

If you think a helicopter operating outside parameters for an approved approach is some one in a million situation and managing airspace users and deconfliction of traffic at a speed higher than “see and avoid” will ever achieve isn’t needed. Get ahead of the problem or else you are operating in the 90s.

Congrats to commercial passenger aviation for making it so safe, but guess what in 10-15 years you will not be the preponderance of users in the airspace, automation will be. The military has already figured that out, but as I said in another forum what makes the manned sky bus drivers feel so special they don’t think they need to adapt to the new reality of what is going to be happening in the space from Surface to ~4000agl.


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How much density in the air littoral space do you think you will see in the next 10 years. How about 25. Somebody sees a drone in Class C airspace these days it’s a news event… that one air vehicle can derail how many thousands in revenue?

If you think a helicopter operating outside parameters for an approved approach is some one in a million situation and managing airspace users and deconfliction of traffic at a speed higher than “see and avoid” will ever achieve isn’t needed. Get ahead of the problem or else you are operating in the 90s.

Congrats to commercial passenger aviation for making it so safe, but guess what in 10-15 years you will not be the preponderance of users in the airspace, automation will be. The military has already figured that out, but as I said in another forum what makes the manned sky bus drivers feel so special they don’t think they need to adapt to the new reality of what is going to be happening in the space from Surface to ~4000agl.


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Another day, lawman being condescending in another thread. Look, I’m in favor of all the cool tools for future proofing, even if it means i have to wear a dorky helmet to get 360° traffic point outs, but you won’t sell the airlines on it, at least not before they get rid of me, and at that point IDGAF anymore.
 
Also, lol at claiming the military has anything figured out. Dump even 1/10 of the military hardware budget into modernizing ATC and we can probably have it figured out too.

Hey <redacted> that’s what we’re doing with Astarte but you obviously don’t need it or any of that tech. Why would you need to change, it’s obviously the rest of the ecosphere that is doing it wrong.

The simple fact you start the conversation with comments about helicopter pilots and how dare we be in your sacred airspace is indicative of the constant argumentative cockfighting snark you’ve become for this forum.

You don’t have to participate here, in fact you jumped into a discussion between two individuals with a <redacted> lot more time under NVDs than you, but hey you know everything about operating in the air littoral right. I mean you flew some form of air medic so that makes you a damn expert. If you truly don’t gaf anymore, than I don’t know maybe just <redacted> and not draw the ire or people who might just have a wider set of operational experience and knowledge of internal billion dollar efforts on evolving airspace management than you.



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For the room of people wondering what exactly is a future here we actually adapt from see and avoid and voice only 1 person at a time comms structures….


This is ITDS. It can see in spectrums you can’t, at ranges you can’t, through obscurants you can’t. And provide both cueing or even put emphasis into an FCs to take corrective actions. Northrop Grumman Selected by US Army to Enhance Aircraft Survivability


This is Astarte, the DOD program to figure out how to solve the problem of having multiple 10-to-multi-hundred meter per second airspace participants in square mile and move them without conflict or having to actively communicate to them. It’s also expanding now to incorporate non kinetic interactions (ie electronic emissions that might blank a navigation source). DARPA ASTARTE provides a real-time, common operational picture of adversary A2/AD airspace - International Defense Security & Technology

Maybe, controllers in a tower or a center like we’ve always done isn’t gonna work that well in airspace which only stands to get significantly busier. This might be worth something to talk about to your head offices if you’re really thtat concerned with the idea of running into other metal at multiple meters per second. This air is only going to have more stuff in it, stuff which doesn’t communicate and if you’re really lucky, gives off a ppi.


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Hey dip that’s what we’re doing with Astarte but you obviously don’t need it or any of that tech. Why would you need to change, it’s obviously the rest of the ecosphere that is doing it wrong.

The simple fact you start the conversation with comments about helicopter pilots and how dare we be in your sacred airspace is indicative of the constant argumentative cockfighting snark you’ve become for this forum.

You don’t have to participate here, in fact you jumped into a discussion between two individuals with a • lot more time under NVDs than you, but hey you know everything about operating in the air littoral right. I mean you flew some form of air medic so that makes you a damn expert. If you truly don’t gaf anymore, than I don’t know maybe just stfu and not draw the ire or people who might just have a wider set of operational experience and knowledge of internal billion dollar efforts on evolving airspace management than you.



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🙄
 
Crazy take here that the airspace on short final at a class B airport should be used for the airliners flying into that class B airport. And I don’t see how pie in the sky future tech makes it a good idea today to run a helicopter route there just for the convenience of the military over the safety of the tens of thousands of passengers every year.
 
Crazy take here that the airspace on short final at a class B airport should be used for the airliners flying into that class B airport. And I don’t see how pie in the sky future tech makes it a good idea today to run a helicopter route there just for the convenience of the military over the safety of the tens of thousands of passengers every year.

The fact you think that the minuscule number of helicopter operations is what is putting tens of thousands of people at risk is exactly the kind of cluelessness Im talking about.

The helicopters have been there for years and are the least of the worries. The only reason you can’t acknowledge the fact that you are unprepared for the challenges faced with operating in an expanding airspace system with automation you don’t even begin to understand is because the crash included a green helicopter and not any of the expanding hazards you’re about to be ignorantly operating in proximity with at far greater risk.

It’s like listening to somebody bitch about aircraft runway incursions while ignoring all the potential incursions from ground traffic at an airport. You really have no idea how bad it’s about to get or how unprepared we are for what’s coming. But hey at least we mandated tcas and adsb…. That ought to do it. We’ve democratized participation in the airspace because drones are cheap. You can complain about it, or you can take active strides to adapt to it. Bitching you were here first or you’re more important is gonna go as well as the first guy run over crossing the street by one of them new fangled motor cars. It won’t matter to you or your pax if you were right.


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The fact you think that the minuscule number of helicopter operations is what is putting tens of thousands of people at risk is exactly the kind of cluelessness Im talking about.

The helicopters have been there for years and are the least of the worries. The only reason you can’t acknowledge the fact that you are unprepared for the challenges faced with operating in an expanding airspace system with automation you don’t even begin to understand is because the crash included a green helicopter and not any of the expanding hazards you’re about to be ignorantly operating in proximity with at far greater risk.

It’s like listening to somebody bitch about aircraft runway incursions while ignoring all the potential incursions from ground traffic at an airport. You really have no idea how bad it’s about to get or how unprepared we are for what’s coming. But hey at least we mandated tcas and adsb…. That ought to do it.


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And more arrogance, condescension, and talking down to people, yet I’m the argumentative one. Alright dude. Maybe you’re just stressed out because the mission you’ve been working is getting thrown under the bus or something, so I won’t hold it against you.
 
And more arrogance, condescension, and talking down to people, yet I’m the argumentative one. Alright dude. Maybe you’re just stressed out because the mission you’ve been working is getting thrown under the bus or something, so I won’t hold it against you.

The arrogance and condescension would probably be how a person would naturally feel talking to somebody about a subject they know nothing about and realizing they are woefully out of their depth on the topic.

But hey, tell us more about military helicopters and NVDs and how the national airspace architecture should evolve over the next few years. I’m sure you’ve got informed takes on that beyond “it’s class B so it belongs to me,” to paraphrase.

A reminder if participating in this exchange is just so taxing, you’re welcome to ignore it or just maybe <redacted> instead of providing your opinion and snark to bitch at every chance. I mean you are still here trying to have the last word like there is a prize.


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We’ve seen just how little and poorly one can see unaided vs aided.

Honestly the entire concept of purely visual on air traffic and SA through ifj voice comms is archaic when you look at the amount of information and sensor SA aiding that systems are capable of providing.

Think of the first time you looked through an HMD and saw the link icon of your wingman 4 miles away. What the hell are we doing thinking that ADSB on an IPad would provide the necessary SA to have prevented this crash. There is an immediate available COTS solution for this. The US government mandated cameras on the back of every car manufactured because people kept driving over their 6 year old backing out of the drive way. If we want to prevent this, but 2x ITDS sight assemblies on the nose of ever plane and give aural and visual cues to the flight crew.


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How much density in the air littoral space do you think you will see in the next 10 years. How about 25. Somebody sees a drone in Class C airspace these days it’s a news event… that one air vehicle can derail how many thousands in revenue?

If you think a helicopter operating outside parameters for an approved approach is some one in a million situation and managing airspace users and deconfliction of traffic at a speed higher than “see and avoid” will ever achieve isn’t needed. Get ahead of the problem or else you are operating in the 90s.

Congrats to commercial passenger aviation for making it so safe, but guess what in 10-15 years you will not be the preponderance of users in the airspace, automation will be. The military has already figured that out, but as I said in another forum what makes the manned sky bus drivers feel so special they don’t think they need to adapt to the new reality of what is going to be happening in the space from Surface to ~4000agl.


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Hey dip that’s what we’re doing with Astarte but you obviously don’t need it or any of that tech. Why would you need to change, it’s obviously the rest of the ecosphere that is doing it wrong.

The simple fact you start the conversation with comments about helicopter pilots and how dare we be in your sacred airspace is indicative of the constant argumentative cockfighting snark you’ve become for this forum.

You don’t have to participate here, in fact you jumped into a discussion between two individuals with a • lot more time under NVDs than you, but hey you know everything about operating in the air littoral right. I mean you flew some form of air medic so that makes you a damn expert. If you truly don’t gaf anymore, than I don’t know maybe just stfu and not draw the ire or people who might just have a wider set of operational experience and knowledge of internal billion dollar efforts on evolving airspace management than you.



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For the room of people wondering what exactly is a future here we actually adapt from see and avoid and voice only 1 person at a time comms structures….


This is ITDS. It can see in spectrums you can’t, at ranges you can’t, through obscurants you can’t. And provide both cueing or even put emphasis into an FCs to take corrective actions. Northrop Grumman Selected by US Army to Enhance Aircraft Survivability


This is Astarte, the DOD program to figure out how to solve the problem of having multiple 10-to-multi-hundred meter per second airspace participants in square mile and move them without conflict or having to actively communicate to them. It’s also expanding now to incorporate non kinetic interactions (ie electronic emissions that might blank a navigation source). DARPA ASTARTE provides a real-time, common operational picture of adversary A2/AD airspace - International Defense Security & Technology

Maybe, controllers in a tower or a center like we’ve always done isn’t gonna work that well in airspace which only stands to get significantly busier. This might be worth something to talk about to your head offices if you’re really thtat concerned with the idea of running into other metal at multiple meters per second. This air is only going to have more stuff in it, stuff which doesn’t communicate and if you’re really lucky, gives off a ppi.


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The fact you think that the minuscule number of helicopter operations is what is putting tens of thousands of people at risk is exactly the kind of cluelessness Im talking about.

The helicopters have been there for years and are the least of the worries. The only reason you can’t acknowledge the fact that you are unprepared for the challenges faced with operating in an expanding airspace system with automation you don’t even begin to understand is because the crash included a green helicopter and not any of the expanding hazards you’re about to be ignorantly operating in proximity with at far greater risk.

It’s like listening to somebody bitch about aircraft runway incursions while ignoring all the potential incursions from ground traffic at an airport. You really have no idea how bad it’s about to get or how unprepared we are for what’s coming. But hey at least we mandated tcas and adsb…. That ought to do it. We’ve democratized participation in the airspace because drones are cheap. You can complain about it, or you can take active strides to adapt to it. Bitching you were here first or you’re more important is gonna go as well as the first guy run over crossing the street by one of them new fangled motor cars. It won’t matter to you or your pax if you were right.


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The arrogance and condescension would probably be how a person would naturally feel talking to somebody about a subject they know nothing about and realizing they are woefully out of their depth on the topic.

But hey, tell us more about military helicopters and NVDs and how the national airspace architecture should evolve over the next few years. I’m sure you’ve got informed takes on that beyond “it’s class B so it belongs to me,” to paraphrase.

A reminder if participating in this exchange is just so taxing, you’re welcome to ignore it or just maybe stfu instead of providing your opinion and snark to bitch at every chance. I mean you are still here trying to have the last word like there is a prize.


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Honest question, why are you so defensive about this topic?
It's pretty cut and dry what happened here.
 
Honest question, why are you so defensive about this topic?
It's pretty cut and dry what happened here.

Do you want to prevent the next one? And by next one I’m not talking about the limit of low slow manned flyer with higher faster manned flyer. This was far from the only near miss/collision going on in the national airspace system and it’s only going to get worse. D.C. Plane Crash Puts Spotlight on History of ‘Near Misses’ in the U.S. our airspace system is barely holding the line as is, and in the next decade we are going to see a massive increase in participating parts of it, much of that semi to fully automated. Same is true of our ground transportation infrastructure. Use the emphasis created by this event to actually get ahead of the bigger emergent problem. Demanding procedural change or baring participants at the airport/airspace the event occurred in is just smacking the proverbial easy button.

This is why we are trying to field ITDS across our fleets. It’s not just a missile detection system, it’s poised to become our primary means of protecting ourselves from colliding with something operating in close proximity. Cooperative manned/unmanned aviation already creates a significant risk of collision in the air littoral space let alone stuff operating that’s not supposed to be there, and we’ve recognized that the human eyeball and speeds and distance at which recognition to action can be taken simply do not provide the safety margin necessary to mitigate risk. We’ve done testing with this and you simply can’t see the stuff that’s going to be there at any distance and that was day time knowing where the thing was.



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I don't have the ADSB function enabled or paid for so...idk. The planes have actual TCAS. It happens a lot landing at SJC or doing low passes at NUQ but not much elsewhere, and not when ForeFlight isn't on. I'm not an avionics nerd, but the TCAS in the Cessnas I fly have conflict resolution audio. It'll both call out "traffic" and give instructions. Keep in mind some of these 172SPs I fly have VNAV. I don't use any of that crap, I don't think I've even touched the AP on a Cessna in many years but I get how it works.

Is there any chance you could take a photo of the avionics in that airplane? I’m curious to know what setup it has with that capability.
 
When it comes down to it, in my opinion, there probably shouldn’t be a helo corridor that close to that circle to land runway at DCA.

Considering the operating altitude of helicopters mixed in with low level maneuvering of a civilian aircraft circling to land, there’s not enough time to react.

My brain keeps applying that mix to other airports like having a corridor near the last turn on the Park Visual to LGA where you’re down turn, turning and then something pops up unexpectedly on TCAS, that it’d go any better:

Screenshot 2025-02-25 at 05.53.43.jpeg

Again, not commenting on anything causal about DCA procedures, just spitballing and thinking about applying the blend of low level traffic and non-standard approach paths to another airport I have (well, HAD) some familiarity with.

(Note, it’s been so long that I didnt realize it had changed and have gotten so official and dumbed down! :) )
 
When it comes down to it, in my opinion, there probably shouldn’t be a helo corridor that close to that circle to land runway at DCA.

Considering the operating altitude of helicopters mixed in with low level maneuvering of a civilian aircraft circling to land, there’s not enough time to react.

My brain keeps applying that mix to other airports like having a corridor near the last turn on the Park Visual to LGA where you’re down turn, turning and then something pops up unexpectedly on TCAS, that it’d go any better:

View attachment 82301

Again, not commenting on anything causal about DCA procedures, just spitballing and thinking about applying the blend of low level traffic and non-standard approach paths to another airport I have (well, HAD) some familiarity with.

(Note, it’s been so long that I didnt realize it had changed and have gotten so official and dumbed down! :) )
I certainly didn’t think, risk mitigation wise, that that’s an unreasonable approach, and then we got some weird rant with personal insults thrown in.
 
I’ll take a peek. I just got up and haven’t put my mod hat on yet so I haven’t read the totality of the thread.
 
When it comes down to it, in my opinion, there probably shouldn’t be a helo corridor that close to that circle to land runway at DCA.

Considering the operating altitude of helicopters mixed in with low level maneuvering of a civilian aircraft circling to land, there’s not enough time to react.

My brain keeps applying that mix to other airports like having a corridor near the last turn on the Park Visual to LGA where you’re down turn, turning and then something pops up unexpectedly on TCAS, that it’d go any better:

View attachment 82301

Again, not commenting on anything causal about DCA procedures, just spitballing and thinking about applying the blend of low level traffic and non-standard approach paths to another airport I have (well, HAD) some familiarity with.

(Note, it’s been so long that I didnt realize it had changed and have gotten so official and dumbed down! :) )

You’re applying risk analysis to mitigate the specifics of the incident, not the wider threat that has and still exists post any change to procedure in the accident that sparked review.
To put it another way, what if the approaching aircraft had gone below approach path attempting to correct, or if there had been a non allowed air vehicles/hazard in the approach corridor either deliberately or accidentally, the results of the accident would be the same catastrophic end when those objects meet violently in space they expected the other not to be in.

The Helo corridor under the approach corridor is existing as a single failsafe system (ie everybody will be where they are supposed to be) and we “mitigate” a second failsafe by pretending see and avoid is adequate to provide separation from the existing air traffic. Clearly that is not the case given the circumstances of this incident and I’m highlighting the fact this will only get worse as the unmanned presence increases exponentially.

Do we want to get ahead of a real problem for once, particularly when we all acknowledge the necessity to evolve the way we handle airspace control? TCAS is older than most of the pilots flying with it. Technology has evolved to not only perform better but to be significantly cheaper/lighter/smarter, but people have to be willing to adopt it. But hey unaided see and avoid has worked up to this far right?


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Note, it’s been so long that I didnt realize it had changed and have gotten so official and dumbed down! :) )
That RNAV X-INDUSTRY to 31 is really cool, and the handful of times I've watched them do it while commuting it seems to damn near exactly parallel the ground track for that visual.
 
That RNAV X-INDUSTRY to 31 is really cool, and the handful of times I've watched them do it while commuting it seems to damn near exactly parallel the ground track for that visual.

That one gives me the willies but that’s probably because I have to rely on the Guppy’s autopilot for it.
 
You’re applying risk analysis to mitigate the specifics of the incident, not the wider threat that has and still exists post any change to procedure in the accident that sparked review.
To put it another way, what if the approaching aircraft had gone below approach path attempting to correct, or if there had been a non allowed air vehicles/hazard in the approach corridor either deliberately or accidentally, the results of the accident would be the same catastrophic end when those objects meet violently in space they expected the other not to be in.

The Helo corridor under the approach corridor is existing as a single failsafe system (ie everybody will be where they are supposed to be) and we “mitigate” a second failsafe by pretending see and avoid is adequate to provide separation from the existing air traffic. Clearly that is not the case given the circumstances of this incident and I’m highlighting the fact this will only get worse as the unmanned presence increases exponentially.

Do we want to get ahead of a real problem for once, particularly when we all acknowledge the necessity to evolve the way we handle airspace control? TCAS is older than most of the pilots flying with it. Technology has evolved to not only perform better but to be significantly cheaper/lighter/smarter, but people have to be willing to adopt it. But hey unaided see and avoid has worked up to this far right?


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Thanks.

However, it’s a poor mix of traffic even in

(Hot damn, I’m on break and it just got turbulent, WTF are those two dudes doing up there, looking for clouds to run into? :) )

… day VMC. Spotting traffic, and the right traffic, at night is challenging at congested airports and we’ve had a large number of people seeing the wrong aircraft at other airports.

TCAS is dated, yes, but even if we shift to a system where we can have RAs below 1000 feet or even software that predicts conflicting paths during maneuvering would probably make the system worse., take ATL when all three landing runways are running parallel operations - by merely turning base it’s going to scatter aircraft like going pspspspsps to a bunch sleeping cats.
 
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