Of helicopter crashes and deadly mishaps
Conspiracy Theorists Take a Breath
I was trying to refrain from commenting on the aviation disaster that happened off of the approach end of Runway 01 at Reagan National Airport (DCA), but I keep getting asked about it, so this is my general response. I am not an NTSB investigator, but - compared to probably 99.9% of the population - I’ve got some not insignificant experience with aviation mishaps, including fatal ones.1 I am not claiming to have seen it all, but I have seen quite a bit and I do have some relevant experience.2
First things first: the fact that we have civil aviation is a miracle all by itself. Flying hundreds of people through the air at 30,000 feet (MSL) in a pressurized steel tube is not natural. That this country pioneered, refined, and then perfected (relatively) cheap and SAFE travel for millions of people every year is its own separate miracle.
On the other hand…
Military aviation is a far, far more dangerous cousin to commercial, civil aviation. Military helicopters commonly fly: in formation with other helicopters, at night, in low light conditions, using night vision goggles, carrying passengers, often who are armed with rifles, and or in an aircraft that has its own weapons and sensor systems.
Please have a read of the results of our investigation into the fatal crash between a Cobra and a CH-46 helicopter during the “Purple Star” exercise in May 1996. A combination of factors related to visibility while flying using NVGs, which have roughly a 40º Field of View, as well as background lighting that can wash out the goggles, likely led the pilot of the Cobra and 46 to completely miss seeing each other until it was too late.
It is easy to forget that the Blackhawk, and helicopters generally, travel anywhere from 130-150 kts; at the same time, the jet here was maneuvering to land on a different runway than what was the duty (if I have been informed correctly from what I’ve read), unquestionably at the busiest and most difficult time during the flight (landing), traveling at similar speeds as the helicopter, but at 90º to the helicopter’s flight path. Add to it the light pollution from monuments and the city around DCA, the difficulty of Reagan’s notoriously short runways, and the traffic along the Potomac VFR corridor which, IIRC, is 200’ AGL and below, and…
…It is not that difficult (at least for me) to envision a scenario where the jet does not see the helicopter at all because the crew does not expect to have to deconflict with traffic while they are in tower controlled airspace and about to land. They have the proverbial “right of way” as much as it is possible to have such a thing in aviation.
The helicopter appears to have been high by ~200 feet and while it sounds like a lot, it really isn’t that much. I’m not saying the helo wasn’t in the wrong, that he or she wasn’t well-above the established corridor that anyone who flies in the area knows about, etc. What I am saying however, is that at night and on goggles, depth perception is very difficult. You don’t have the same “sight picture” looking through that green-shaded image as you do day VFR. Night vision goggles are not magic - they do not turn “night into day” and they don’t change the limitations of the human eyeball at night. Goggles use technology to enhance ambient light and produce an amazingly clear image - albeit a very small one. And the images we have all seen show a helicopter taking zero evasive maneuvers before it smacks broadside into the jet.
That was exactly what happened during the Purple Star crash and we - the members of the Aircraft Mishap Investigation - were faced with exactly the same question: how the hell did they not see each other?? And, for what it’s worth, in that case there was also 200’ of altitude separation built into that air plan that should have vertically deconflicted both helicopters, as well as a one-minute time difference that was supposed to prevent them even being in the same area at the same time. Notwithstanding all of those precautions, as well as the professional, and unremarkable, rehearsal flights that preceded that fatal night, somehow four pilots and two additional aircrew in the two aircraft did not see each other - and it resulted in 14 dead.
So, for the moment, let’s let the conspiracy theories take a rest. I’m not saying there doesn’t exist the possibility of some other malfeasance, but that’s not the place to start with these things. No matter what you think you’re “seeing” on that video, until you’ve flown a helicopter on goggles at night in a busy metropolitan area like DC either aided or unaided, you really don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. As my own experiences in the Fleet show - and I’ve documented here for anyone to check - military aviation is not like civilian aviation. Here we have a tragic intersection of the two.
If anyone wants to check my aviation disaster CV, I not long ago finished writing and publishing 17 or 18 pieces here on substack regarding my experience with aviation mishaps: from the time I was in the training pipeline at Pensacola, through my time as an investigator on what was one of the deadliest helicopter training accidents in USMC military/history, to my time as a prosecutor working on the Cavalese cable car tragedy. I have also been the subject of an aircraft mishap board after my own crash as an AH-1W pilot.
As an example, the engine pack in an H-60 is the same as in my old aircraft, the AH-1W. Both aircraft used two T700-GE401s, though they’ve both since moved onto the more recent and upgraded version of the same twinpack.
My little brother, Army helo crew chief then pilot, and I, Army helo crew chief, were talking through the scenarios the night of the mishap. So many factors to consider.
In the Blackhawk, the crew chief (CC) sits on the right side, because the tail rotor is on the right and you want to keep an eye on that. The CC seat faces 90* to the normal axis of flight and is affixed to the floor and ceiling, which makes it very hard for the CC to work airspace surveillance out the left side. The pilot in command (PIC) typically sits on the right side of the cockpit, though that can be switched to give the copilot (CP) some right seat time - it’s a different experience flying in a different seat.
Under goggles it is, as you say, not like flying in the day; it’s like flying in a green tunnel. Yes, you can see better than unaided (in many situations), but it is definitely not the same.
Who was sitting where? Was the PIC in the right seat? Was the PIC on the stick? Was the CC on the right? Who was handling radios, and from which seat? Was the crew googles down, or unaided at the time of the midair?
There are so very many things that combinations of those question can lead to go wrong, that you don’t need any of the factors I’ve seen speculated to make this mishap.
Under goggles. CC right seat, no view of the conflicting traffic. PIC right seat, on the stick, CP left seat working the radios in a very busy traffic pattern. Climbing right turn, thinking they’ve got the traffic in sight, but looking at the wrong plane (remember the last minute change of runway for the jet). Nobody in the helo is picking up the traffic, their view is tipped away from the danger, and they’re slightly too high. The jet is in a descending left turn, looking at the runway, and they heard the helo say they had them in sight. Their view is tipped away from the danger.
Now run all those combos above, and you don’t need social justice to get you to a midair.
Just read a great new piece of evidence that this midair was a conspiracy: the helo was at the proper altitude just six seconds before, therefore remote control or suicide crash or DEI.
A long time ago, I crewed a flight to take a bunch of infantry scouts across Cook Inlet to do grunt things in the snow. It was very windy, a few days earlier, we’d had 109mph winds in Palmer and about 1/3 of the shingles were ripped off my roof and 70ft of my backyard fence blew away into the forest, never to be seen again.
Winds were sustained 30kt on the field and higher aloft. The scouts were loaded for bear, their gear piled between and on them so high they couldn’t have lifted a cheek to fart. It was a moderately bumpy ride outbound, but once we’d unassed the grunts, the birds were several thousand pounds lighter and it was a rough ride home. We pulled out of the LZ and started climbing up to cruise altitude. At about 300 ft AGL, we got hit with a downdraft.
The pilot yelled, “holy shit!”, and I came up out of the seat and crunched my head into the ceiling. We dropped 100ft in about 1/4 of a second. If we’d been at 100ft AGL when we hit that down air, we’d have augured in.
Unwittingly climb 150-200 feet in six seconds, under goggles on a windy night in a busy traffic pattern over a lit city? Baby food.