re: Looks like a plane hit a Helicopter at DCA airport

So sad for those souls on board both the plane and the heli. One of my main fears in flying still remains - collisions taking off or landing. I just wonder why a heli was in the vicinity of DCA, a busy commuter AP, when there are multiple places in the DC area for a heli to take off and land. I would question why in the eff it was there?

Godspeed to all involved.

Pilots make mistakes l. Maybe saw another aircraft and thought that was the one atc told them to look for. Something like that maybe.

Heard on the police scanner, “need to open up the morgue now”.

Just horrible.

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The investigation will be interesting. The plane was on final approach and would be trusting the way is clear. The helo flying directly into what should be an easily visible plane in controlled airspace is baffling.

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Knowing that airplanes have automated landing paths and approaches, it makes sense the plane didn’t adjust path. Probably never saw the Blackhawk coming.

I know from working as a military aircraft maintainer in my past that on takeoff, aircraft have two forms of automatically flown flight plans for takeoff patterns.


1). Standard flight plan uploaded by software to the flight control computers.

2). A “base escape” or “egress” mode that gets the aircraft out of the airspace ASAP (loaded in the same fashion as item 1 here).

Seems plausible that both would have been in autopilot and unaware of their presence… but the wildcard remains that the helo clearly should have seen it and adjusted, especially with how good those pilots have to be at emergency flight scenarios to protect the VIPs.

Not to mention the timing of the helo takeoff would be the most unlikely event in all of this, matching up perfectly with both altitude and the requisite speed.

Why the frick would any helicopter pilot fly literally perpendicular to a major airport approach?

This is insane.

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Why the frick would any helicopter pilot fly literally perpendicular to a major airport approach? This is insane.

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Probably a low altitude helicopter corridor coming in or out.

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Flying low in DC you are going to see a lot of lights that might be confusing. That town is lit up, especially all the monuments.

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Hearing this too. Sounds like the helicopter should have been about 200 ft lower than it was

Per Reuters, 3 soldiers were on the helo