sherpa

What you stated was that "they were doing many night flights all the time..." These are individual quals, so there is no info on whether or not this particular person needed an qual. The rest of your post indicates a lack of knowledge. No harm there, but I'm not going to spend more time on transponders or TCAS, when they are turned on and off and the algorithms involved. Not hard to do, but not worth my time as it will all come out eventually.

What you have done is posted an opinion as fact. Currency requirements apply to individuals. I have no idea who was involved, but if an individual needed to satisfy a currency requirement, they would generate a sortie to accomplish that. Total "all up rounds" are a required, reported performance stat in the military, including aircraft and personnel. If you had an airwing on a carrier, and only 20% were qualified at night, you'd have a serious problem. I have no idea about helo flying with night vision goggles, but I assume it is similar. I just wonder how those two aircraft tried to occupy the same airspace at the same time, being under full ATC control and known flight paths.

I have no reason to delete anything.

Not to cause a fork in the road, but you brought it up. Simple question. Are you in any way aware of who was running PATCO at that time, and what they we were offered and demanded? That is beyond the issue of breaking the law.

The military, and all aviation for that matter, has currency requirements. As a carrier aviator, I had to have a certain number of carrier landings, both day and night, in a certain period. The night vision thing is clearly similar.

Great question. TCAS runs by an algorithm that discounts/eliminates various modes at various altitudes near ground. During flight, it provides a traffic advisory, which is informational, and if the situation isn't resolved, and is bad, a resolution advisory, which actually tells you what to do, and displays the suggested command on the vertical speed indicator. Ten mins or so are spent on this issue and response in every simulator training period. While you don't turn the transponder on takeoff until just prior, there would still be so many that it would alert to that it cancels them out.

Not going to be anything in that. They got rammed.

Have I ever claimed he was the only one? Ever? He is simply a useless pos that was inserted into a major Secretary job and failed miserably because he was worse than useless. That is my claim. Simple. He now seems to be defending his uselessness by trying to jumpstart a moribund career by using this tragedy. He disgusts me.

This is not a subject I am comfortable with, and quite reticent about, but I am absolutely knowledgeable about. The FAA, especially during the last four years, and before, is an organization all about quota hiring and promotions. It suffers morale problems from this, and Buttigieg was a disaster. Got the job as payback from Biden for getting out of the primary system, back when the Dems used to allow one. Simply horrible.

No offense, but you're way off target. This is done every day. This is the droppings of a despicable clown trying to fertilize a political career. Hated by FAA employees. Hated by the airlines. Useless. A self promotional, ignorant moron.

Good. I cannot believe the media/youtube/political vector nonsense about this. I have been in and out or Reagan hundreds of times, initially as a narrow body captain, then as a commuter to NY, Miami and Chicago, to fly bigger airplanes, mostly in the jumpseats while hitching a ride on many carriers, and I am extremely familiar with the way it operates. It is disgusting to me how those "outlets" can put this crap out. Purely commercial and horrible.

Ya. If they point out traffic and ask if you have it in site and you say yes, there is no way to determine if they mean the same traffic. The point is that the helo was responsible to see and avoid, and the tower controller was responsible for allowing monitoring both in the same airspace, and relying on the helo to avoid.

Not necessarily. The helo guy could have been flying in a corridor and altitude profile that was standard, but if landing on 33, that corridor should have been shut down. No matter what, unless there was intentional disregard, that is the tower's airspace, and should have been controlled to the point of deconfliction This guy is a youtube geek who is a civilian pilot background and who specializes in being very fast with this stuff. I watched this for 15 seconds, until he made his first mistake.

Good question. What should have happened is that the tower controller should not have let the helo in the final approach airspace for runway 33. That is a "circle to land" runway, which means that you start the approach to runway 1, and are sequenced in that traffic then do a quick dog leg to the right, and a left to align with the centerline of 33. The helo was obviously in that airspace. That is OK as long as he is well below the flight path of a landing RJ. When that happens, or there is other activity, the tower will clear you land with a caution; ie., "caution low level helo traffic," or "caution low level wind shear reports," or anything you need to know. Either way, the two aircraft should have never been in that airspace at the same time, and I guarantee that the RJ was flying a standard profile to land. To answer you question directly, what I would have wanted to hear is, "go around, helo traffic on final," or land on rwy 1, but I'm guessing they had somebody in the way for takeoff or inadequate separation for landing, so the main runway was not an option. Either way, unless there was a direct violation by the helo guy, this is a tower screw up.

ATC is a complicated term for the non aware, but the "tower" is responsible for the immediate low altitude area. At some distance, you are handed off from approach control, who sequences you with other traffic, to the tower, which controls takeoff and landing. This airspace would have been in that purview. Flying an airliner involves trust in these guys, and getting bopped within a few miles of the runway is completely unacceptable. I'm not aware that the helo guy was disregarding ATC, but I am immediately reminded of something an instructor told me when going through basic Navy jet training. He said that at one time or another, a controller will try to kill you, and that happened a few times over a 40 year career flying off carriers and doing the airline thing. This Reagan thing is screwed up airspace, and if there is a systemic problem, it needs to fixed. But, one way or another, those two aircraft should not have met, and that is an ATC thing, unless there was a direct disregard from whoever was flying them.

They weren't conducting a training exercise. They call all standard flights "training missions, " because they are. Nothing unusual about this. Cooperation among military and civilian aviation folks is standard and thorough. Nothing secret about any of this.

Si.

Ya, the Reagan area is really congested, but corridors are in place to prevent traffic conflicts. I'm not familiar with what helo operations are in place to de-conflict, but having a helo operating at the same time on the approach path to runway 33 is nuts. Helo ops from the Pentagon and other stuff up and down the river are very normal, but well below departures, . The entire airport is a bit weird. When the Pres leaves the WH on Marine 1 on his way to Andrews or back or wherever, they stop all takeoffs and landings at Reagan. Takes about 20 mins. Landing to the south, because you fly very close to the WH, (that area is called prohibited area 56), you have to do a series of turns over the river and only get the the runway centerline very close to touchdown. Quite sporty in a 757, which is the largest airplane allowed to land there. Taking off to the north, you have to do an immediate left turn to avoid it. The place has other quirks. For instance, the employee parking lot is on the south end of the airport, on the river. To scare away birds, they have an audio of predatory birds and distressed birds, along with shotgun sounds that plays in a loop all day from that parking lot. Know what they have at the north end of the airport? An area which is a bird sanctuary. Does that make sense to anyone not in the Federal Gov?

I have posted in the Off the Wall forum, as this is not political. But one thing absolutely certain, and of political nature about the FAA. They are an immensely quota hiring and promotion organization. They have also spent an incredible amount of time, energy and resources on stupid non productive projects, like de-gendering pronouns in the aviation lexicon and forcing their people to attend all kinds of stupid training regarding social issues.

That post you are referring to pure display of stunning ignorance.

A few initial thoughts. It was not an American Airline flight. It was American Eagle, which is a different company that uses the Eagle name, and is a feeder to AA. The Eagle flight was lining up to land on runway 33 at Reagan. 33 is a short runway, and during good weather, the regional jets, (small), use 33 while the regular airliners use runway 36, which is longer. That means that they were operating the two runways at once, and a single tower controller was handling both. The tower controller would be responsible for ensuring separation. The helo pilot would be responsible to "see and avoid," in this instance. The regional jet crew would not be responsible for someone in the final approach path. That airspace is quite complicated, with lots of military helo activity, but never should they be at any conflicting altitude when on or near the centerline of a runway final. Helicopters are very hard to see at night. They are very slow and look like vehicular traffic in a high density city area. The point is that the helo should never have been there, and is responsible for "see and avoid." The tower controller is responsible for keeping the final approach path clear.

I don't have a "side." The claim of raging alcoholic is idiotic. You still have not defended your idiotic claim that he never did anything "in his life." Does anyone else view this forum and getting more and more useless and stupid?

Seriously? The guy graduated from Princeton, served in special forces in Iraq, earning a bronze star, was an analyst for Bear Stearns, and a few other things. Perhaps your resume should have gotten you the Sect. of Defense job.

Not the one about he and seven (I believe), other progressives had a big discussion at their Thanksgiving dinner. Boy, that would have been fun. I had a meal with my family that day. No politics, just fun. How foolishly non political of us.

You have achieved goof status. Not interested.