February 1, 2025
“Perhaps a boring 2025 is what we should hope for,” I wrote back on January 21. A week later, a Blackhawk military helicopter collided with a PSA Airlines regional jet maneuvering to land at Reagan National Airport. Both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River, killing 67 people.
Not a good way to begin the year.
As I understand it, the crew of the helicopter told air traffic control it had the regional jet in sight, and was asked to “maintain visual separation,” as we say. When this happens, the onus of avoiding a traffic conflict falls to the pilot, rather than ATC. Maybe that sounds a bit old school, and I suppose it is. But it’s a common procedure when operating close to an airport, and almost always a safe one.
So the big question is: why did the helicopter not do as instructed? It’s possible the pilots misidentified their traffic, confusing the lights of a different plane with those of the PSA jet. Or, They had the correct aircraft in sight, but misjudged their trajectories. Were they paying close enough attention? Were they reckless, negligent, or something in between?
Another question is why the regional jet’s collision avoidance system, called TCAS, didn’t save the day. For one, although all commercial aircraft are equipped with TCAS, military helicopters are not. For the system to work optimally, both aircraft need to be wired in, so to speak, with their transponders exchanging speed and altitude data.
Regardless, the most critical TCAS function, called a “resolution advisory,” or RA, which gives aural commands to climb or descend, is normally inhibited at very low altitudes. The collision happened at only 400 feet. The RJ pilots might have received a basic TCAS alert, but they would not have received maneuver instructions, and were likely preoccupied with aligning themselves with the runway.
DCA is a busy and challenging airport. There are twisty approach and departure patterns, and military copters are often transiting the airspace. It’s hard to know at this point what the takeaways of this crash might be, but the whole “maintain visual separation” thing may need to be reevaluated, especially for operations at night.
This was the deadliest U.S. aviation accident since 2009, when 49 people died in the crash of Colgan Air (Continental Connection) flight 3407 outside Buffalo.
PSA is an Ohio-based regional affiliate of American Airlines. Although wholly owned, it operates independently, with its own employees and facilities. Its pilots are neither employed nor trained by American Airlines.
Unfortunate as this accident was, it didn’t involve a major carrier or a mainline jet. And so, if nothing else, our 23-year crashless streak, which I discuss often in these pages, remains intact. And we hadn’t had a serious crash of any kind in fifteen years, which itself is remarkable. Making these points is, I hope, not in poor taste; the deaths of 67 people is still a significant tragedy.
PSA Airlines is not to be confused with the original PSA, a.k.a. Pacific Southwest Airlines, which operated from 1949 until 1988, when it was taken over by USAir.
As it happens, the old PSA was involved in an infamous midair collision over San Diego in 1978, in which 144 people were killed. In that disaster, which remains the deadliest midair collision in U.S. history, the pilots of the PSA Boeing 727 lost sight of a private plane that ATC had instructed it to follow, eventually colliding with it. There’s an irony in there.
Hans Wendt’s photograph of the stricken PSA 727, flames pouring from its right wing, is one of the most haunting airplane photos ever taken. Google it.
Neither was last week’s crash the first involving the Potomac River. Some of us are old enough to remember the spectacle of Air Florida flight 90, in 1982. The pilots of flight 90 failed to run their engine anti-ice system during a Janauary snowstorm at DCA. The plane took off, stalled, slammed into the 14th Street Bridge, then disappeared below the frozen river.
I was a sophomore in high school at the time. I remember our teacher wheeling a television into the room so we could all watch the rescue efforts. The heroics of Arland Williams and Lenny Skutnik.
No heroics this time.
