Originally Posted by CBrF3

This is one aspect of this accident that almost no one has acknowledged (that I've seen, at least) or identified as contributing to the mishap. And it drives me crazy. As a DCA based PSA pilot up until a few months before the accident, I can vouch for the fact that among the myriad of information in our company pages, I had never seen that helo route depiction, nor had anyone I ever flew with spoke about its existence. The picture that would've spoken 1,000 words in building an accurate mental model of potential risks in an already busy airport was never provided to us. At best all we ever knew was what tower sometimes said, "helicopter crossing the river east to west at XXXX altitude, has you in sight" as you're busy watching your profile and airspeed while flying the River Visual or circling to land 33. Basically - impossible to acquire visually while remaining stable.

Years ago I became very interested in the organizational and management issues that contribute to accidents, as I was in the front row to a fatal crash involving members of my unit. There were cultural and management standards that laid the groundwork for that crash - never acknowledged except in private discussions among people who had more intimate knowledge of the event and the culture. So I'm especially critical of the components that aren't as glamorous or easily identifiable to point to and say, "A ha!", but are significant contributors nonetheless.

And you're right. There was already widespread reluctance to accept a circle to 33 under marginal conditions, nighttime being one of them. Unfortunately the winds favored 33 that night and likely tipped the scales to accept the circle.

If nothing else this accident should remind us to evaluate what our company norms are and how much risk we accept as standard. For example, how often do we accept taxi clearance in a rushed environment and the FO goes heads down doing checklists, changing runways, etc?

Originally Posted by 60av8tor

So summing up my babbling above, yes it can be - especially when you’re very focused outside in a disorienting environment, which is the case at low-level, at night, under NODs, with a lot of ambient lighting and traffic mixed in.

None of this is to take away from them making errors that caused a horrible tragedy, but I’ve read a lot of dissertations from “experts” that very obviously come from somewhere other than experience in the platform/environment. And that’s where those presumptions get a bit tiresome.

Originally Posted by Adlerdriver

I have no helo time. I know how the physics of forward flight work and the simply fact is that the higher one's ground speed, the more quickly a momentary deviation of pitch can affect altitude. Said differently, the slower you go the longer it takes a unnoticed vertical flight path change to manifest itself and become a problem. If the collective aspect of rotary wing flight adds such an additional magnitude of difficulty to holding altitude, then I stand corrected. If two qualified pilots can't keep a UH-60 on altitude, it must be really tough. I guess we're lucky we don't lose UH-60s on the daily if they are expected to operate IMC. Or are they just VFR only?
I have flown with NVGs frequently in the vicinity of a major city and it was not an easy experience. We typically found it safer (and required) to remove them once we got within the approach environment for that very reason. I certainly would never use them to call a visual on traffic I was expected to de-conflict from. But maybe the ones in use by this UH-60 crew were more advanced.

Originally Posted by Adlerdriver

The bottom line is that this integration of a visual helo route and inbound traffic to DCA was an absolute abortion. It should have never been set up as it was. That lays at the feet of any agency involved in the creation and maintenance of this procedure over the years. But there is certainly a measure of responsibility on the actual operators and controllers who had intimate knowledge of this as well. My guess is that most airline pilots had no clue that acceptance of a circle to 33 MIGHT put them passing 75' over the top of a helo at the correct max altitude on the visual route if the timing was right. If they were aware of that possibility, I doubt any of them would have accepted the clearance. Could they have found that out? Sure, if they knew to look for the information in the first place. Most probably had no clue that there even was a visual helo route passing under the final for 33 unless it was spelled out in their company provided charts. My Jepps don't have many details on the helo routes even now after this tragedy has occurred. The helo pilots using the visual route likely had much more SA on how it integrated with the DCA approaches and if any group of pilots had enough pieces of the puzzle to start waving the BS flag, it was them.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

Bottom line while the PAT crew made some technical errors, they were not behaving in an unprofessional manner and were accomplishing their assigned mission in the manner to which they were accustomed, and the manner in which the SYSTEM had defined.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

Bottom line while the PAT crew made some technical errors, they were not behaving in an unprofessional manner and were accomplishing their assigned mission in the manner to which they were accustomed, and the manner in which the SYSTEM had defined.

The SYSTEM comprises a variety of agencies, but only one had the PRIMARY duty to ensure safety of civilian traffic, and also the data and tools to do so: Boeing.

Just kidding PNWFlyer, this one was obviously on the FAA. They even had staff complaining about it for YEARS.

In addition to everything else going on, the allowable altimeter variation on PAT was very wide relative to the operational limits to which they were subjected.

And I don't believe the IP called traffic in sight just to get ATC off his back, I *assume* he was looking at the other airliner's lights (on goggles).

Ask yourself this... if they just blamed the helo crew and washed their hands of the whole thing, would anything actually change? Other than all of us being extra paranoid when talking to Potomac?

Originally Posted by John Carr

The IP seems to have the SA, in both the vertical and the lateral, the student doesn't seem too have any. The IP seems to not be assertive enough. If they're BOTH operating in that area with that unit, they should BOTH have the SA/be familiar.



Is something your gf/wife utters when she's not getting her way. Doesn't seem something that should be said on a training flight.

BOTTOM line, they WEREN'T where the SHOULD HAVE BEEN. And as mentioned, should have known the built in/inherent risks of the flawed system with which they were operating in.

Originally Posted by clearandcold

If they would have said searching or negative traffic would they have been allowed to continue on the route or would ATC have held them or turned them off the route?

Originally Posted by CBreezy

You're reading a whole lot into two words without knowing anything about either crew or the unit culture.

And also assinging an absurd amount of blame on not knowing things that appear to have been hidden from operators in the area. No sane pilot is operating into a corridor like that where they could die if they deviated 100 feet vertically or 1000 feet horizontally