I’ve seen the charts on defined helicopter routes, the charts provided by a professional pilot and that route was being followed. They are supposed to depend on vertical separation and it seems as if the helicopter was higher than required by the route. This may not have been as clear from the typical top-down view of…

The ATC recording and transcript was shared within the hour on r/aviation and the tower can be heard instructing the helicopter to maintain visual separation and proceed behind the aircraft. Clearly, that didn’t happen, but as to why, we’ll have to defer to the experts to sort through the mess.

99% is the helicopter’s fault. Approach and departure is so regimented at DCA, the AA flight was certainly exactly where it was supposed to be. There are helicopters EVERYWHERE around DC, at all times, and they possibly need to be tightened up. As they say, every aviation regulation is written in blood. And the vast…

Fox News would be nuclear right now.

There’s absolutely no way he was even in the room when the first statement was written.

Thank God President Passenger Princess felt the need to chime in with a conspiracy theory.

I did watch the replay on ADS-B Exchange and I agree. It looks like they had been using the river as a reference which unfortunately was also the final to RW33

From the Audio, ATC directly told them to go behind the CRJ but I am not sure if that was too late or even if the helo actually had the CRJ in sight since the airport is in a very busy area with a lot of light pollution that low.

Aircraft was on an approach to a different runway than usually used, so helicopter pilot may have fixated on wrong aircraft on approach. He told ATC he had the plane in sight, but speculation is he had the wrong plane in sight.

But non-political government agencies like the FAA definitely need to have their budgets cut, right?

Comments on other boards indicate TCAS notifications are off under a certain altitude on civilian aircraft. I don’t think military helos have TCAS.

Speculation is that he was focused on another aircraft that he thought was the aircraft he was supposed to be avoiding as the crash aircraft was on a different approach than most approaches.

That and the heli wouldnt have uh the TCAS system either.  The plane does but it im not sure would work if the other craft doesnt have it too.  Im not super versed on how the system functions if it can work without the other system to issue a directive.

And as we speak, trump froze all new air traffic controller hires. And there was already a shortage. This is what electing a dumbass with a whole cadre of religious nutters ( project 2025) gets us. 

Probably unrelated: https://apnews.com/article/coast-guard-homeland-security-priorities-committees-trump-tsa-d3e4398c8871ada8d0590859442e092c

It seems that the Blackhawk pilot was told to keep visual of the jet like they are required to in DCA, but for some reason crossed into the landing path of the plane. Truly horrific.

Shut the fuck up Donny!

I saw somewhere else that it was a training flight on a VFR. My offhand guess is they were off-course and it didn’t get corrected by ATC.

A tragic air traffic control error at Reagan National would certainly be something. 

I have lived and worked in this area most of my adult life. I was here when 9-11 happened, in fact on the Pentagon property that morning about 15 min before the incident. We’ll learn more, but I’ll just say that there has been a very noticeable uptick in helicopter traffic in recent years. For me it became most…