All he had to say was “there have been no signs, thus far, of any attempts on exit from the aircraft by passengers or crew. No sign of opened doors or exits on the airframe….” Keep it simple.
PSA CRJ-700 AA midair collision
- Thread starter swakid8
- Start date
All he had to say was “there have been no signs, thus far, of any attempts on exit from the aircraft by passengers or crew. No sign of opened doors or exits on the airframe….” Keep it simple.
smack300
Well-Known Member
I do hope this makes the FAA look more closely into the drone/VTOL world that many are trying to desperately push themselves into congested airspace. Our current setup is not good enough to have all sorts of different aircraft sharing the same air. A rework of airspace and a push for actual next gen ATC is needed. Too many things lined up and it finally happened. Tailwinds to the families. I saw the FA had his daughters wedding coming up in a month. Pain.
They were likely heading back to DAA following whatever they had done up near the P56 area possibly. Tragic for all involved.
MikeOH58
Well-Known Member
One of my childhood friends is a bigwig at Archer and I had the same thought this morning.
Roger Roger
Bottom of the list
Oof. Bummer. Potential for even more distraction
Unfortunately, the one aircraft without a CVR. And is the one cockpit that investigators really needed one to get a picture on what the workload, situational awareness, potential distraction(s), and overall CRM was.
Screaming_Emu
Well-Known Member
Kingairer
'Tiger Team' Member
I will be very interested to find out a few things. 1) Under SOP, is DCA allowed to circle an airplane to 33 while helicopters are transiting south on Route 4? If they are, is it just a judgement thing of whether it will be a conflict or not? 2) What did the Twr controller envision happening in scenario. Did he get task overloaded once the 60 accepted MVS and just forgot about them until the CA? Did he anticipate the helicopter being further southbound by the time the RJ got to the shorline? God, the absolutely poor timing of all this is just maddening. A little wider, or a little higher/lower/faster/slower etc and none of this happens.
If it was a Mike model (and don’t know if it was), they have voice recorders.
Was assuming an L model. I was thinking maybe V model, but those got cancelled. Could very well be an M though.
Yeah, no idea.
inigo88
Composite-lover
The VASAviation radar displays are clever fakes. I’ve heard he takes ads-b data and puts a fake STARS skin over it to make his videos.
@SurferLucas posted the actual Falcon replay earlier in this thread (which apparently came from Twitter?). In that replay the inbound airliners are tagged up with a “V” and the helo is tagged up with a “4”, and you can also see the scratch pads and CAs lighting up correctly. So based on that it seemed like DCA local was working two positions.
Wardogg
Meat Popsicle
Another hard part for me is the safety record of the airlines I’ve taken for granted. I’ve never worried about sitting in the back of anyone’s metal while commuting to or from airplanes. Even with the close calls as of late. I’ve never worried. This is a fluke of epic proportions. But still. 16 years is a long time. 2/5 of my children were born after 2009.
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
Let’s be careful with this one. In the KLEX Comair crash, NATCA made a mess by making self-serving claims about staffing the morning of the accident.
Cherokee_Cruiser
Bronteroc
NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
The V tag is probably the approach/final controllers tag in the Tracon, and the 4 is the towers. If positions are combined up all tags he’s working would be the same as whatever position they’re combined to (in this case the 4).
BobDDuck
Island Bus Driver
Not sure if things have changed since I was still flying out of DCA (12 years ago...) but there was no restriction on route operations no matter which way aircraft were landing. Also, as long as the helo was on the published route and at the correct altitudes, they didn't need clearance to operate. They were required to check in with tower for traffic advisories (normally on UHF so we would never hear their side of the conversation) and that was it. Unfortunately, rotor traffic was just part of doing business there. I did get broken off a MTV Visual 1/Circle 33 approach once (maybe in 2009?) because rotor traffic flying down the river low level but in the wrong place but other than that it was just see(ish) and avoid. Countless inhibited TAs, all the time, but mostly if traffic was called out by ATC, we were told they had us in sight, which was never comforting but normalized enough I don't think anybody gave it anything thought.
Side note... I've got just over 100 hours in that plane. Her sister ship (708) was a demon plane that caused problems from the Friday she rolled off the assembly line in Mirabel. Fortunately she ended up in Star Alliance paint and picked up the name Casper, so you'd see her coming a long ways away. But 709 was always a good jet and I have no bad stories or memories from flying her. Terrible end for her and the crew and pax.
inigo88
Composite-lover
Fair point, I actually don’t remember the specifics with the LEX crash, but wasn’t he the only one in the tower at the time?
My statement was based on:
1. The DC helicopter chart shows two frequencies, CT: 119.1 and HELI: 134.35.
2. The leaked ATC radar replay video has the arriving airliners tagged with a “V” and the helo tagged with a “4”.
However, it’s not uncommon to work positions “combined” especially if things aren’t busy. So we shouldn’t automatically draw any conclusions from a controller working two positions combined, I was just saying circumstantial evidence suggests they were. (EDIT: I was wrong. Read @NovemberEcho ’s post.
)