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The Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger plane on Wednesday night was on an annual proficiency training flight, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Thursday.
In fucking active air ways?
The explanation I saw that the Blackhawk pilot got confused about which airplane he was supposed to be paying attention to kind of brings up the obvious question of "why the hell were they flying through the approach corridor of a major airport?" I normally try to refrain from backseat quarterbacking subjects I don't have expertise in, but it seems obviously reckless.
You don't need to be an expert when its so obvious. If I see a derailed train, I don't need to be a locomotive engineer to know its not supposed to be off the tracks. The helicopter flew into airspace every pilot and non pilot knows you don't fly into.
They used airways they were supposed to. They were in DC HELO Route 4.
ah yes i can tell by the lines and such
The lines are a shitshow, of course. DC airways are hellish (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Helicopter_route_chart%2C_Washington%2C_D.C._LOC_90683484.jpg) and confusing, but the thick blue lines are for where helicopters should fly, the circles are for navigation, and the grey lines are roads and such.
oh my god.. i always thought it would kick ass to fly a chopper but not if you have to fly like this
You can't fly a chopper, all you can do is not crash one
What's also really dumb is like....you're a helicopter. You can just sit there and hover. No need to be moving anywhere while planes are taking off. You can literally stop and float, go up or down, backwards...any direction other than forwards (including no direction at all).
This whole thing is like if a person driving a car didn't know you had brakes or taking your foot off the accelerator slows you down and drove through a four-way stop without stopping.
someone should tteach Californians about the neat trick of stopping at stop signs
I don't understand why we have to have these schlemihls fucking around in hundred million dollar equipment and incinerating a billion gallons of kerosene when surely flight sims are really fucking good in this year of our lord 2025
Sims have come a long way (and they are used for some training) but they'll never be able to fully replace actual flight time. Obviously they shouldn't need to be flying in an active approach path, but as long as pilots are a thing they'll still have to have regular flight hours to keep up with certification and all that. Washington DC airspace is a total mess and the base the heli took off from is across the river from KDCA, and right next to the most common RNAV approach for runway 33 which seems like a horrible spot for training flights.
Maybe this is some long covid consequence or something. I heard an anecdote on here awhile back that people with long covid are just sitting at stop signs in their cars and getting confused at what to do next.
Add in the fact that most people with long covid don’t even realize they have long covid and we start getting more freak accidents like this.
I’m not saying that’s what this is but who knows it could be
Not exactly where I'd put civilian airport but technically it was there first. Why the DoD/Air Force can't take a detour that completely avoids coming even close to descending/departing planes for training 
Look up the DC HELO chart, route 4. There's a route that runs right by the approach corridor for runway 33. It mandates at or below 200 feet in that section and the Data suggests the collision occurred at 350 feet, but that is internet ads-b data and not reliable for that level of fidelity. But yes, you can fly helicopters straight through the path of an active airport if they're talking to atc.
To add on to this: Here is the ATC recording from the time of the collision, though the military is on UHF and this is only VHF so it's still a bit tricky to fully decipher what happened
Skip to around 16:30 to get to the involved aircraft
The CRJ is Blue Streak 5342 and the black hawk is PAT 25
https://archive.liveatc.net/kdca/KDCA1-Twr-Jan-30-2025-0130Z.mp3
The heli was instructed to visually pass behind the CRJ, but beyond that it's unclear how they managed to fuck it up so badly
not too proficient if you ask me
I usually drive my wife to the train in the mornings. She usually listens to NPR morning edition for quick updates. We bitch about how lib they are in the car.
This morning she woke me up and NPR was already playing, it happens sometimes. I hear about this collision. The first thing in my head and out of my ADHD mouth at 6:40AM was "Shit, Iran finally got SpongeBob".
My wife was a figure skater as a teen and now plays Women's hockey. She's still into figure skating as a sport. In the car she elaborates on how crazy the crash was because it was full of figure skaters and she was just watching figure skating Nationals. She has a ticket to Worlds this year. I felt kinda bad about "SpongeBob" but I still think it was a good bit without any context.
That's a really funny joke comrade I laughed out loud at it
You're in good company. My ADHD does the same stuff and it took years of working front-of-house and general aging for me to finally keep those thoughts in my head.
It's been the opposite for me, the older I get the more support I need. I was unmedicated until I was 30 and gave up the ghost.
My fiancee is also a figure skater, we watched the event the other day together. Really really sad.
We need a Laken-Riley act for dissolving the military after this.
Everyone knows only rightwingers identify as helicopters so this is clearly their fault
have a reddit gold kind gentlesir!
Trump is on CNN right now blaming woke dei and people with mental problems on the crash, oh fuck yeah.
Try not to blame marginalized people challenge: IMPOSSIBLE
We really are just speed running german style fascism from the 30's weimar but transplanted to today with G*mers at the helm instead of weird germans obsessed with hinduism.
Oh! Don't forget dei = people missing limbs and with dwarfism.
I wish I was making that up. Because apparently those issues make people not geniuses or something.
How long until the chuds blame this on DEI and WOKE in the military?
They already have
How long until ~~the chuds~~ reasonable people blame this on ~~DEI and WOKE in~~ the military?
We'll never hear this angle from the imperial news.
The Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger plane on Wednesday night was on an annual proficiency training flight
Proficiency: medium-low
You're allowed one mistake on your final pilot exam. Nobody said anything about the magnitude of said mistake.
This is deeply saddening to have more casualties from the US military.
But who the fuck is alive to remember this event from 80 years ago? You know some shitstain at CNN heard of this event during their weekly quiz bowl and tried their hardest to make a tie-in. 
Just a dumb idea, but maybe the US military shouldn't be doing their training near one of the busiest airports in the country?
it wasn't DEI, it was Havana Syndrome
the trueanon rules for life are never wrong 
EDIT: actually nvm the helicopter was just troops, they're free to get on as many helicopters as they life
Either of the pilots may be incompetent. So two high-profile USAF crashes, first was latest F-35A blunder.
The helicopter pilot apparently said they had the traffic in sight and then ran into it.
the sight was getting bigger and bigger but he didn't know what that meant until it was too late
Are you implying that the helicopter pilot survived this crash, only everyone on the passenger plane is dead?
Wait- so is SpongeBob dead?
the real question is how did the houthis manage to pull this one off?
They did soon as word hit that it happened.
It seems that model of copter is always in some sort of accident.
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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