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Full Episode
Questions continue to abound in this horrifying tragedy outside Reagan National Airport where an American Airlines flight coming from Wichita, Kansas was struck by a Blackhawk helicopter. By the way, Blackhawk helicopters are not small helicopters. I'm not talking about like a news helicopter. This is a big helicopter. It is a transport helicopter. It typically carries... VIP guests and such.
And apparently the helicopter was swirling at possibly above 200 feet, which is usually the limit where they are testing in terms of the height and struck basically in the side. This American Airlines flight killing everyone aboard 67 dead. A horrifying scenario, obviously. Flight 5342, a Bombardier CRJ700, had 60 passengers and four crew members on board.
The three troops on board the helicopter were apparently conducting a training flight and likely wore night vision goggles. That may be relevant because if you're wearing night vision goggles, this could mean that perhaps you're... Vision to the sides is not nearly as good. Was this an air traffic control problem? Was this a pilot error issue? All of that is still very much up in the air.
There have been near misses in the past. And the first question I think that a lot of people are asking is, why the hell are Black Hawk helicopters operating at night in an area where passenger jets are coming in? That's totally insane, obviously.
And there are some strange oddities about this particular flight path because it turns out that normally, apparently, runway one is the one that is typically used to accept incoming flights into Reagan National. Air Traffic Control had called this flight, the CRJ, and told them that you should instead take runway 33, which brought them across the Potomac.
And then the helicopter struck them as they were coming across the Potomac. But apparently near misses of this sort tend to happen a lot more often than expected. According to Reuters, U.S. commercial pilot Rick Redfern was preparing to land at Reagan Washington National Airport about a decade ago when he spotted a bright red Coast Guard helicopter hovering about 50 feet above the Potomac River.
Air traffic control promptly warned the helicopter pilot to stay clear. Redfern said he used evasive maneuvers to avoid it and avert a potential disaster. That was in daytime when visibility was clearer. And it's almost unthinkable that this happened considering how sophisticated the machinery is, how sophisticated our ability to see planes in the air even at night is now. But
To attribute it to anything other than accident at this point would be to move beyond the available evidence for sure. A collision on Wednesday night between the Blackhawk military helicopter and American Airlines subsidiary CRJ700 regional jet has stirred haunting memories for Redfern and other pilots who have faced challenges at landing at Washington Airport.
Apparently, planes approaching the airport must navigate a precise and narrow flight path to avoid restricted airspace around the nearby White House and Pentagon. That turn from the eastern side along the river to turn into runway 33 is very, very tight, said Redfern. It is unclear what caused the crash.
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