re: .

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Thank you. It sounds like NVG are insanely stupid things to wear in a Metropolitan area, much less near a major airport.

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First, I want to reiterate that I have never had a set of aviation NVGs on in my life, I have been in helos with the crew using them but that is as close as I got.

Second, if my experience translates at all there is a point where aided is worse than unaided in areas with more lights and more light pollution but when you are close to that point sometimes it is hard to decide which is actually better. I have flipped them up and down multiple times trying to get the best view sometimes I might have thought unaided would be better but even with the extra static and watching out I could see things aided I couldn't see unaided. I would guess there are times in that flight corridor where one would be better than the other and it might change rather frequently even in the same flight. I do think the bigger issue in this situation was likely to be the limited field of vision. You learn to accept that handicap on the ground since the US usually has a large night vision advantage so it more than makes up for the limited FOV but it takes time to get comfortable with the idea.

It would be really nice if we had an actual helo pilot with a lot more relevant experience could comment since my experience may not translate well at all.

We need BHP back

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It would be really nice if we had an actual helo pilot with a lot more relevant experience could comment since my experience may not translate well at all.

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Your overall summation is pretty accurate. So, here's my prospective... I have 100's of NVG flight hours, all be it, 30 years ago, with PVS-5s. With the lights of the city, those PVS-5s would have been useless and I would not have attempted to use them. The newer ones would definitely be better, and the crew may have been required to use them regardless for the purposes of this flight as an NVG "Checkride."

I can say in my 40+ years of flying I have lost visual on an aircraft many times in the ground lights of big cities, especially at low altitude when you're at the same altitude. I believe the crew had IDed the wrong aircraft and the CRJ they hit was lost in the city lights.

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Thank you. I interpret your post to mean 3 is normal, but not normal for busy airspace at night. Correct?

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Just to clarify I don't know what the usual crew would be on a heavy-traffic corridor like that but IME 3 was normal in most situations.


I ran into a comment deep in the bowels of a YT comments section that I thought was interesting especially if the self provided CV is accurate:

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@rotorwash636
12 hours ago
I am a 60 instructor who used to fly these same DC helo routes. Some important context to add about normal ATC operations in DC and how the affected the outcome of this disaster.

Andrew's expectation coming through the tidal basin would have been for DCA to have him hold for 33 traffic at haines point. This is almost always what tower does with helicopters when traffic lands 33. This is EXTREMELY important to understanding why the crew never spotted the CRJ.

DCA tower does expect helicopters to ask for visual separation for commercial fixed wing traffic, but there is a nuance to this. DCA tower almost NEVER puts helicopters in a position where they need to physically deconflict with the airliners on their own.

DCA almost always just gives the helicopter instructions to deconflict. Most often in the form of a hold, sometimes in the form of a speed change. In years of flying there, I only saw this done for traffic landing at RWY 33. Sure you have to speed up and slow down to sequence between aircraft for wake turbulence, but it is by exception that you actually are in a position to physically avoid an aircraft.

Calling visual separation isnt functionally for you the aircraft in DC airspace, its for the controller so he doesnt have to keep calling traffic.

The fact that you ALWAYS call visual separation as a helicopter, but almost always get denied and receive holding instructions for traffic landing 33 means that the crew were almost certainly punked into looking for traffic landing 01.

This is NOT to say that the crash is DCA towers fault by any means. Altitude deviation, missing "33" in the first traffic advisory, misidentifying the target CRJ, and bad luck/timing all played a roll in this tragedy.

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These seems to support my hypothesis that the CRJ being diverted to 33 set up the conditions for the massive failure. It does not remove the responsibility from the helo crew but it helps to make sense of something that on the surface didn't make sense and this was prevalent enough for people to start with the did it on purpose nonsense. If this has merit then it is a case of making assumptions based on the way things are usually done and everyone knows or eventually learns you can't predicate operations based on assumptions especially when failure can result in mass deaths.

a perspective


Management defines the parameters to be trained on

management provides the training resources

Employee follows training parameters


The armies , [management]failure here is is far more likely the root cause of the accident.

The employee , [pilot] failed and paid with her life. But will they classify this event as a knowledge deficiency or execution deficiency.



I have been involved with a number of major industrial mishap investigations and the tendency too many times is to dump on the tools in hand person

So sad So sad

I wouldn't leave out adding more flights in an already-overcrowded airspace.

Plus, wasn't ATC short-staffed?

Failure isn't always an orphan.

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Again though, the designated route was extremely well documented and known to be 200 ft altitude ceiling.

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The quoted part of a post just above yours says that ATC data showed the helicopter at 200ft, it obviously wasn't. What are the chances of mechanical failure/tech issues in regards to the helicopter's accurate altitude?

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you are such an utterly worthless piece of trash...


Could someone explain to me as if I'm retarded why me saying that she's adorable and I hoped it wasn't her makes me a terrible person? It's not registering.

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as if?

That post on its own doesn't make you a terrible person, your entire posting history makes you a terrible person. You have long proven his assessment of you to be accurate. I'll throw in 'scum', 'troll', 'incel', 'attention whore', and 'self-loathing homosexual.'

The negative reaction to your post might possibly be due to your implication that the scale of loss, in your opinion, is based upon the attractiveness of the deceased. An immature, emotionally stunted, and callous opinion to hold, much less express publicly. But completely on-brand for you, due to your lack of social intelligence and previously highlighted status as human garbage.

Cheers, mate.

A mechanical (analog) altimeter cannot be trusted to be more accurate than +/- 100 feet, IME. Plus, that assumes the pilots got the latest altimeter setting from AWOS/ATIS/yadayada or whatever. I was/am still religious about that (I still fly RW), but not all are.

UH60 A/L both have a radar altimeter. I never flew Mikes, Im not sure what they have. I know that in the As the radar altimeter was not totally reliable over water.

Under goggles, its not hard to lose SA and let your altitude drift up/down depending on your cockpit workload.

das wut i got