Midair Collision DCA

bomber996

bomber996

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Lots of reports out on Twitter (X), reddit, airliners.net, etc... of a midair collision at DCA between a PSA Airlines CRJ-700 and a police helicopter. None of the major news sources seem to have picked up on it yet, so judge for yourself. This is likely to be a quickly developing situation.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1884786140504334344

https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/1idbcqa/dca_closed_due_to_collision


CC TV footage of the supposed midair -
https://twitter.com/x/status/1884791040890089602

National ground stop to DCA due to "OTHER/EMERGENCY".
 
Hearing about this on the radio and a guy is bringing up poor staffing as a factor. Crazy CRJ and a police copter.
 
CoffeeIV said:
And you guys want to get paid more lol.

Media and Republicans going to crucify us. Entitled fucks.

Dca fucked up opposite direction, crossings, and now this. They are repeat fuck ups
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Plane did appear to be landing runway 33. Reference the departure from 1 as shown in the CCTV footage.
 
Anyone able to find the ATC recording on LIVEATC? I'm not sure what frequency it would be on. I didn't find it on the DCA tower archive.
 
TushingPin said:
I also didn't hear the PAT respond... but from my understanding typically the helicopters are on a different frequency than the arrivals.
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Exactly I’m so curious what the copter said..

Spoony90 said:
Kinda surprised it didn’t RA. As sensitive as that equipment is
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It won’t RA unless the copter has ADSB correct? And looks like the military copter maybe wasnt broadcasting ADSB data..
 
TCAS was around well before ADS-B, so that doesn’t matter, but both A/C need to be broadcasting transponder signals for JIA to receive a TCAS RA. It’s possible the helicopter was primary only, in which TCAS won’t work.

[edit] Someone on Reddit said TCAS Auto inhibits under 1000AGL, so no RA in that case.
 
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no RA below 1000’ and no aural TA below 500’ on TCAS. The helicopter reporter *a* plane in sight and asked to maintain visual and was told to pass behind. Possible they didn’t expect to it to turn for the circling manuever or maybe had the wrong in sight or maybe were wearing NVG’s and misjudged. I don’t know if mil helo’s have CVR’s or if we’ll ever know for sure.
 
Maybe with heavy winds (strong headwind for the plane and slight TW for the helo) and night time the pilot just misjudged the closure rate. It's definitely harder to accurately determine at night but you've got to mess up pretty bad to see the other aircraft and end up at the exact same lateral and vertical position.
 
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