Sure, now you just need a media ecosystem that is going to run with this instead of blaming the crash on DEI hires or whatever batshit nonsense message the GOP wants to push.
are you purposely misreading my post? not trying to be rude, but I dont think this is remotely how anyone thinking rational could interpret my post. like, youâre projecting some argument i didnt make and then arguing against that point. that isnât really fun or fair for the person on the receiving end and kind of makes you seem like an unserious dumbass.
no, I havent looked at passenger lists. should someone? probably. I didnt though, because itâs fodder for stupid ass posts like this. the fact is that the cause is not known, but will be soon. like how that is even slightly unclear from what I posted is beyond me. ignored.
I cant tell what level this is on but yes the whole Trump thing increases the odds this is somehow related violence some.
And just to be clear I donât know what happened. Maybe it was just an accident. You need a whole lot more here to coincidentally happen for this to be an accident than your typical plane crash though.
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I interpreted your post the same way. 
Seeing on Bluesky that planes typically stay on the Virginia side of the river and helicopters stay on the Maryland side. 33 is the runway number.
I just finished Drowning, which was pretty solid, in the genre, and potentially new enough that you hadnât read it yet, if you were looking for something new.
I couldnât tell what level that post was on, either. Sometimes sarcasm just doesnât translate online.
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there are only two plausible narratives here. Either the newly crowned hegseth defense is hopelessly incompetent, or the military decided someone needed to die on that plane.
No, I donât think I am misreading your post. Iâve implied this before but Iâll come out and say it: You are dangerously close to being consumed by some stupid on-line conspiracy, either fed to you or of your own design. I care about you and would hate to see that happen to you.
Sister said that US military is exempt from following air traffic controllers instructions for some reason. Possible they werenât even tuned to the frequency and were ignoring all instructions.
Side story, while my sister was training in the UK to be a helicopter pilot she said that frequently unforecasted and without warning clouds and dense fog would just appear rapidly and you would lose near all visibility. Most helicopters do not have radar and all flying is done visually.
She was out of air traffic controller space, but got an optional recommendation from the nearest airport to raise her altitude one time and as she started pulling up, before she even fully reached the new altitude a plane flew directly past where she was.
thanks for your feigned concern, but, you seriously misunderstand what I post here and why I do it. I said there are two plausible narratives and you chose one and came up with a whole thing I didnt say. It says more about you than it does about me. Personally? I subscribe to the first narrative, this is the new incompetent hegseth defense. incomptence is usually a much better explanation than anything nefarious - my post was in response to clovisâ speculative claim about ATT. Iâm a nerd with aircraft accidents, and from my nerdist view, think ATT is the least possible explanation because thereâs been so very few historical fuckups there in the US - so wanted to chime in that thereâs really only two narratives here - you correctly pointed out the second one is ridiculous, but now youâre making it out like that was the entire point of my post. I cant seriously tell the degree you are concern trolling here and honestly dont really care - and Iâm not interested in playing the game people like to do on here where you then make up a whole thing about what someone is actually saying or what they meant by it.
if you are trolling, good job, you got me to type all that out, if not, I guess I need to work on my communication skills, because this is concerning.
Iâm going with âthe whole sharing of flight pathsâ is stupid as the ultimate cause.
I think he meant itâs obvious this was not intentional.
Kind of but not really. But aside from numerous technical caveats that would be getting off subject Iâll just say tower is never going to try to separate by altitude in this spot. The route the helicopter was on is already restricted to 200â max, which is recklessly low in any other context, so tower will never give instructions to go to a lower altitude. Even if they wanted to tell the helicopter to literally skim the water the airplane will be low enough on approach to make that extremely uncomfortable separation.
Theyâre not going to tell them to go higher either. The airplane needs space above in case they need to abort their approach and go around, not to mention just having enough space in case their approach is a bit higher or longer than standard. And the helicopter was tasked with maintaining visual separation, which makes sense as theyâre more maneuverable and in cruise flight vs a jet that has slowed to near stall speed and needs to maintain a pretty tight path to land on a short runway. You want the aircraft seeing and avoiding to be lower because cockpit visibility is a lot better looking up than looking down. And >99% of the time helicopters are cruising lower than jets so it makes sense to keep them that way unless you have a really good reason to switch them up. And by the time you have that reason itâs too late to coordinate it. Thatâs the reason the helicopter route is restricted to 200â, with nearby routes allowing higher the further away you get from the airport. It keeps helicopter traffic separated from jets in nearly all cases outside of the jetâs short final.
Bottom line, lateral separation is the only way to deconflict in this spot.
The technology youâre thinking of isnât radar but it displays similarly for pilots. Also not a night requirement and shouldnât be (should be day and night). There is a requirement as of 2020 for civilian aircraft to be equipped with the half of the technology that broadcasts your own information so other aircraft can see you on their âradarâ. But thereâs no requirement to have the side that lets you see what everyone else is broadcasting (again there should be, but this is an expensive upgrade for a small airplane).
The Black Hawk doesnât necessarily broadcast anything because government aircraft are exempt from the requirement. Older Black Hawks arenât even capable. I believe the Army has upgraded theirs to have the capability to broadcast but it can be turned off. As far as I know the unit who had this accident is in the habit of leaving their broadcast on, at least for training flights. I used to fly with an organization that insisted theirs remain off and itâs fucking stupid. So the airplane likely wouldâve âseenâ the helicopter on their âradarâ but that doesnât do much good when theyâre trusting the helicopter to avoid them and DC runs traffic tight enough and the resolution on these things is broad enough you have to ignore the alerts.
Whatâs really stupid is Black Hawks donât have the receiving end of the technology or at least no capability to display it to the pilots. So the helicopter wouldnât have had any âradarâ showing the airplane or any alerts outside of ATCâs warnings. Maybe an iPad with a moving map showing traffic, but youâre not looking at that flying 200â off the Potomac and itâs not giving you aural warnings. I flew Black Hawks for 15 years and now fly much cheaper civilian helicopters but I have the âradarâ display now. I wouldnât say it saves me cause I survived without it for 15 years but there are multiple times a month where it gives me useful enough information Iâm glad to have it. In fact just a few days ago I was thinking âI canât believe I flew so long without this and itâs dumb that there are still people flying around without it.â So keeping in mind clovisâs valid point that we canât know what caused this accident, would it have been avoided if we could drag the militaryâs fleet of aircraft into the 21st century? Almost definitely, yes.
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clearly. like no one should take my posts exactly literally, how thatâs not been clear for 20 fuckin years is beyond me. i will admit the post had some dramatic flair but that was on purpose. my god. sorry anyone for derail. there is something unusual going on here, is my only real point - I think its incompetence. the spin will be similar to what I posted on the one side, but the military has a heavy incentive to act like theyâre competent, so who knows how itâll go. Iâm interested and will step aside here in this discussion. whoever that ooter was with the massive aviation thread probably has good insights.
Thanks for all that. You are the poster I wanted to see their opinion on all this the most. My original post was what amead said. That it was intentional. But it appears people who know what they are talking about think likely not so I should defer to them as my knowledge of these things is basically zero.
The biggest two questions i have are regarding the altitude and trajectory of the chopper. You say the ceiling was 200 feet. What was it doing at 350 feet? And also what we can see in the video. We know the pilot was aware of the plane. Why do we not see any real deviation in speed/course in the video? Couldnât the helicopter have simply slowed down or even stopped and let the plane pass? Should the ATC have told the chopper to do this instead?
100% Dems should be politicizing this, but this is why they will always be losers. They are probably afraid that the helicopter pilot turns out to be trans or something.
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Dems should pretend that Biden was on the flight
I guess Trump is doing a presser this morning. He will likely devolve into âBiden left me this mess⌠our military was weakened blah blahâ and will win the narrative.
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You do you boo, Iâm done.
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Here it is:
