D.C. Plane Crash!

Her name and some info was released yesterday.
Biden White House Social Aide Identified as Third Soldier in Black Hawk

 

Ura-ki provided some very good perspectives. Thanks.

Anyone who has used night vision knows you have tunnel vision similar to looking through a couple toilet paper tubes. Peripheral vision is low to nonexistent. To see something to your side, your head has to pivot so you are looking almost directly at it. Given there was also a near miss of a military helo and AA regional jet just 24 hours earlier at close to the same location forcing the jet to go around, why the hell did the risk assessment for the training flight not insist on a second crew chief providing additional eyes on both sides of the helo? Seems like a command miss as a contributing factor as well.

I’ve been involved in numerous ultralight aviation accident investigations and often it’s not just 1 thing that went wrong but a set of 3, 4, 5 or more things that stacked up together resulting in the accident. Remove just one of those factors and it would have been a nonevent. Seems that might be the case here as well.

 

Any news on why the one pilots , and families social media was scrubbed from the internet ??
That's not normal is it ?

 

about the pilot in command

Collin Rugg on X: "JUST IN: The third soldier aboard the Black Hawk that crashed into the American Airlines plane has been identified as Capt. Rebecca Lobach, who previously worked as a White House aide in the Biden admin. Lobach, 28, served as an aviation officer in the Army. “We are devastated https://t.co/7IaS5Ln0ex" / X

 

Yeah why were asses not put through the wringer and the squadron grounded?

 

They ground the CV22 any time one lands hard enough to break something.

 

I heard a radio interview with another Blackhawk pilot who said a 200 foot maximum elevation above water was scary in daylight.
With night vision it would require a skilled pilot to maintain that elevation, and they said "a change of 200 feet in elevation takes seconds."

 

I have extensive experience with the Black Hawks, especially night flying in Goggles! First thing, both pilots have a display in front of them with a pair of altimeters, one is usually a steam gauge, the other is a digital radar altimeter, and that's for EACH pilot in their respective displays, there is absolutely ZERO excuse for any of the three crew to NOT see those instruments, no matter which version of airframe they are flying!
An experienced training pilot would also know that nods over a high density population is a very dangerous evolution, and would likely have instructed the trainee not to use/rely on them in such a case! Having them for later in the flight once your out of restricted airspace would be standard!

This was all a serious problem just waiting to happen, and their is no excuses what so ever for this to have ever been been accepted operating procedures!

Night flying is it's own special kind of challenge, there is no reason for them to be flying in that airspace under any conditions, let alone at night, and then allowing this, again, not good at all!

Bottom line here, that airport should not even be there, and certainly not transiting military aircraft through their controlled airspace, period! Unfortunately, for change to be made, something bad had to happen, and unfortunately, now that it has happened, change will be slow and fought by many who have no skin in the game! All those elites who rely on DCA for its convenience need to STFU and put safety first, and so they are going to have to deal with the new order of things further away from their little fiefdoms!