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by highcountess 509 days ago
Military flights do not fly ADB hot outside of the DC FRZ. It was also clearly exactly following flight route 4.

There are a few locations in that area it could have been coming from. Anything else would have made no sense flying through the FRZ from/to Belvoir.
1 comments
reaperman 509 days ago
What is "flight route 4"?
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matheweis 509 days ago
The FAA publishes supplemental charts specifically for helicopters in areas with high concentrations of helicopter activity: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/productc...

Specifically the Baltimore-Washington route chart was relevant for these flights: https://aeronav.faa.gov/visual/10-31-2024/PDFs/Balt-Wash_Hel...

If you find the DCA airport on that chart, you’ll find routes 1 and 4 which roughly correspond to the helicopter’s flight path.

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Animats 509 days ago
Right.

Helicopter was on Helicopter Route 4, per the map, apparently on course.

Aircraft was on approach to Runway 33, apparently on course.

That helicopter route crosses the approach to runway 33.

That's controlled airspace. How did they both have clearance to be there?

We'll know more tomorrow as all the audio and radar recordings are examined.

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hluska 509 days ago
This comment was written by a US Coast Guard helicopter pilot. It gives a lot of information on how the two aircraft should have been able to share the space and some speculation on what went wrong:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1idba8i/comment/m...

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Animats 509 days ago
That makes sense.

A helicopter instructor suggests that possibly the helicopter pilots, who were told to go behind an aircraft that was landing, were looking at the previous aircraft that was landing.[1] That's just speculation at this point.

[1] https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2025/01/29/reagan-national...

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GoblinSlayer 509 days ago
They could use the car autopilot solution: simply negotiate your coordinates with nearby traffic instead of trying to parse malformed visual data.
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agsnu 509 days ago
They were almost certainly both cleared to maintain visual separation.
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deepersprout 509 days ago
> They were almost certainly both cleared to maintain visual separation.

DCA TWR: PAT25, traffic just south of the Woodrow Bridge, a CRJ, it's 1200 feet setting up for runway 33.

PAT25: PAT25 has the traffic in sight, request visual separation.

DCA TWR: Visual separation approved.

Audio of MID-AIR CRASH into Potomac River: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiOybe-NJHk

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