Regarding last night’s mid-air at DCA, there are 2 Youtube channels that I most often go to for information.

The first is Juan Browne’s Blancoliro channel. Here is his video on the crash from late last night. Juan is an American Airlines (although he never mention’s his employer in his videos) 777 First Officer, a fairly active private pilot, and I believe that he also has his Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic’s license too. I’m sure that Juan will get back to this topic with more information later.

The second Youtube source I turn to is VASAviation. A guy named “Victor” runs this channel, and he basically scoops up the audio and ATC “scope” presentations from public sources and combines them. Here is his video on the mid-air. The data blocks on the ATC presentation show the aircraft’s call sign, with the first 2 digits of the altitude underneath, and the aircraft type (CRJ=Canadair Regional Jet). Victor’s video shows the CRJ flying north over the Potomac to an approach to Runway 1 at DCA, then being offered to land in what is known as a “circling approach” to Runway 33. To do that, the CRJ would break off his approach to Runway 1, and turn to the right (towards the eastern bank of the Potomac) to align himself with Runway 33. The helicopter is flying the opposite direction….over the river, but southbound. He was supposed to fly behind the CRJ, and well…..you know the rest.

To further explain the VAS video, the radios in Civil Aviation commonly use the VHF radio band while the military most often uses UHF. Depending on the mission, some military aircraft may have radios capable of more than UHF…..they’ll have VHF or even HF. The controller in the tower will be listening and speaking on both UHF and VHF radios simultaneously, but it may be the case that the CRJ and the helicopter were not hearing each other.

As I said in my post in yesterday’s thread, I don’t know if the helicopter had TCAS, and I should explain that a little further. We most commonly referred to the TCAS as “the fish-finder”. Depending on the aircraft, it is either a scope on the console between the seats or it is presented on one of the instruments on the dash in front of the pilots. The TCAS tells the pilot when another plane is intruding into the flight path, and then when a collision is imminent, it issues instructions to prevent this from happening. The TCAS will only tell the two (or more, God forbid) planes to either climb or descend…it will not direct a turn. Here’s an important point that Browne brought out in his video….when you are below 1000′ above the ground, the TCAS will not give you these climb or descend commands. This was the case in DCA last night. And again, I’ll repeat from last night that I don’t know if the Army’s helicopter has, or uses TCAS. Here is a short video on a TCAS “Resolution Advisory”…RA…. As you watch that, note the scope shown in the bottom right of the screen. This is where you see the conflict, and the resolution.

TCAS came into aviation after the 1986 Cerritos mid-air. You can read more about it here.