Crash at Reagan National Airport, DC. Small aircraft down in the Potomac.

NYT did a 3D recreation. The cockpit view heading seems a bit off to me, but is still useful to show the other possible aircraft that could have been mistakenly identified as the traffic called out, especially through the soda straw of NVGs.

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dtuuri said:
Without a reference to back that up, I disagree. Look at the ILS or LOC Runway 1 approach for example. "Runway 1" is in the title, but other runways are included via the circling minima section. On the CVFP they could've specified runway 1 in the body of the chart like they do on other CVFPs, but they used "airport" instead. Same charting concept to me as IFR SIAPs.
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Where are the circling minimums on the Mt Vernon plate? And on an instrument approach, aside from circling, when can you land on a runway other than the one specified in the procedure title?

In any case, the airlines have clearly been doing the 295 thing forever, so clearly the FAA is OK with it.
Velocity173 said:
I agree that the application of visual separation seems a little too routine between controllers and PAT. PAT is allowed to initiate visual separation after being issued traffic. The problem that I have, based on the audio I’ve heard, it seems tower is using an incomplete form of pilot applied visual separation.

It was brought up earlier about how the RJ wasn’t given traffic on the H-60. Weren’t told that the H-60 was maintaining visual sep on them either. It could be buried in the audio but I didn’t hear it. Now, if their courses aren’t converging, it’s not necessary. In this case, it sure looks like that their courses are converging when the traffic was issued to PAT25. Just like in the PAT11 vid from the day prior, traffic was issued to the airliners on PAT11. That doesn’t appear to be the case with the PAT25 accident. Also, it sure sounds like PAT11 is just mumbling “request visual separation” without even saying “traffic in sight.” Could be just poor audio but I wonder if that was common omission in their phraseology.
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This. There's a backup to everything in aviation, and with traffic this close under visual separation, the backup is that both aircraft have each other in sight. It's far too easy/common to misidentify which target you're supposed to be avoiding visually to allow that to be the sole thing keeping aircraft separated, and it appears that the military and ATC have been doing exactly that for a long time. Normalization of deviance.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
This. There's a backup to everything in aviation, and with traffic this close under visual separation, the backup is that both aircraft have each other in sight. It's far too easy/common to misidentify which target you're supposed to be avoiding visually to allow that to be the sole thing keeping aircraft separated, and it appears that the military and ATC have been doing exactly that for a long time. Normalization of deviance.
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No 121 pilot I know would ask for visual separation, and about 50% will report traffic not in sight even if it is — so that ATC does not attempt to offer it. This Army operation had a vastly different safety culture.

Should changes be made to visual separation policy at the ATC level?
a) require both aircraft to have each other in sight in order for visual separation to be issued to either
b) only allow visual separation between same category/class
c) only issue visual separation to non-converging traffic (e.g. traffic behind or following other traffic)

I think any of these would improve safety without decreasing traffic flow into busy airports.
 
Ed Haywood said:
IMO there is a lot of incredibly good analysis and expertise, interspersed with periodic injections of stupidity from a minority of participants. So, better than your average Internet forum, where the ratios are reversed.
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I don’t disagree. I do think some of the idiotic posts are very contrary to how we normally do business. I was thinking henning had returned but in a less amusing version.
 
Rcmutz said:
Interesting. AA 5342 being low on the horizon May of just blended into the ground lights. The other two aircraft would stand out more.
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:yeahthat: Not only that, but also little to no relative movement apparent because the aircraft are converging. Surprising a similar accident hadn't happened before now.
 
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dmspilot said:
No 121 pilot I know would ask for visual separation, and about 50% will report traffic not in sight even if it is — so that ATC does not attempt to offer it. This Army operation had a vastly different safety culture.
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Agreed. I wouldn't be surprised to see ATC being a bit less deferent to the military traffic as well. It's one thing to say "OK, it's visual separation and it's on them now", but it's an entirely different thing to start there and then see a fireball out your window.
dmspilot said:
Should changes be made to visual separation policy at the ATC level?
a) require both aircraft to have each other in sight in order for visual separation to be issued to either
b) only allow visual separation between same category/class
c) only issue visual separation to non-converging traffic (e.g. traffic behind or following other traffic)

I think any of these would improve safety without decreasing traffic flow into busy airports.
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And I think we're likely to see some changes like this.
 
Ed Haywood said:
IMO there is a lot of incredibly good analysis and expertise, interspersed with periodic injections of stupidity from a minority of participants. So, better than your average Internet forum, where the ratios are reversed.
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Definitely better than FB I can tell you that. A few of my friends are posting their analysis of the accident on FB. I’m just not gonna do it because there’s far too many non aviation friends who 1) will never understand and 2) try and interject politics into the discussion. This is the only place I’ve posted an opinion on it. No way we’re all gonna agree on what happened but I think we’re on the same page that the DCA area could use some closer inspection on how they operate with helo routes and fixed wing.
 
I probably missed it...surely someone here has figured it out by now....
I'm curious
this route is defined, right? location, route width, max altitude, etc...
so
given the 3 degree glideslope, and whatever tolerance there is in the papi low to high indication.
and also given whatever the route width is for that helicopter route
assuming an aircraft is on the low side of the glideslope
and assuming a helicopter is at the upper altitude limit for the route and on the Western most edge of that route corridor, how much vertical separation is there?
 
Brad W said:
I probably missed it...surely someone here has figured it out by now....
I'm curious
this route is defined, right? location, route width, max altitude, etc...
so
given the 3 degree glideslope, and whatever tolerance there is in the papi low to high indication.
and also given whatever the route width is for that helicopter route
assuming an aircraft is on the low side of the glideslope
and assuming a helicopter is at the upper altitude limit for the route and on the Western most edge of that route corridor, how much vertical separation is there?
Click to expand...

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