The Team House - What We Know About the Mid Air Collision w/ Dr. Randy Mahoney | EYES ON PODCAST

Episode Date: February 2, 2025

Today we are joined by Dr. Randolph Mahoney; Dr. Randolph Mahoney is a retired widebody Captain for a major US airline, having recently completed 37 years of service.  He is also a former Naval Aviator, Naval Aviation Safety Officer, and Naval Flight Instructor. In both his civilian and military roles, he has participated in mishap investigations,  and  helped develop safety and training programs.  He holds FAA certificates as an Airline Transport Pilot, and also has commercial pilot privileges in aircraft and helicopters, as well as being a Certified Flight Instructor and Advanced Ground Instructor.  Having flown extensively in the National Capital Area, he is very familiar with Reagan National Airport and operations there.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseFind Andy Milburn here: ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023https://amilburn.substack.com/https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operationshttps://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialhttps://open.substack.com/pub/amilburn/p/journal-of-a-plague-year?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=emo6q&utm_medium=iosFind Mick Mulroy here: ⬇️https://fogbow.com/https://www.loboinstitute.org/https://x.com/MickMulroy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_apphttps://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.sociBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Aizan. We got a full house today. Mick Mulroy, Jason Lyons, Andy Milburn, and of course, Dr. Randy Mahoney. Dr. Mahoney is a retired wide body captain for a major U.S. airline, having recently completed 37 years of service. He is a former naval operator, naval aviation safety officer, and naval flight instructor. In both his civilian and military roles, he participated in mishap investigations and helped develop safety and travel. training programs. He holds FAAA certificates as an airline transport pilot and also has commercial pilot privileges in aircraft and helicopters, as well as being a certified flight instructor and advanced ground instructor. Having flown extensively in the national capital area, he's very familiar with Reagan National Airport and the operations there. Randy, thanks a lot for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Yeah. What happened? You tell you. I lost man. You're the expert. I mean, you've seen what happens. First of all, funny story. Randy used to live right next to me. And he used to have a helicopter, which is one of the reasons why he asked him to be on as an expert. And he used to fly when we did our Lobo technical courses up here. And so it kind of got out that we actually had a helicopter, which we thought was super cool and never disabused anybody. Yeah, Lobo was an helicopter. But it was really really.

We're super lucky to have him. Great friend. Wish he still lived in Montana. But I think he can really enlighten us at a time when there's a lot of, quite frankly, BS out there about what did or didn't happen and all that stuff. So hopefully, I know, actually, that we'll just stick to the facts. Absolutely. You know, the first thing, and you probably already heard this. I haven't watched the news very much.

gone into some of the sources and looked at the raw data and it's kind of stayed away from the instant analysis because it's not really helpful. There's an old saying in mishap investigations, and professionally we call these mishaps. We don't call them accidents. An accident is where a tree falls on you. You know, that's in the law that might be considered an act of God. I don't like to throw things on God, but there's usually a cause. But in aircraft mishaps where you have a damage and or loss of life, it's considered a mishap. And a mishap is always, always a mixture of many factors. And the saying in mishap investigation is that if you think you know the cause in the first day or the second day or the first week, you don't know.

know the cause because there can be some evidence before you that certainly points in one direction or another, but the thoroughness of the investigation, which we're very fortunate in this country, to have a very professional and very robust investigational apparatus. And when that comes out, you really see the entire event in totality. and we look at root cause. We look at, yeah, we know, at this point, we know two aircraft came together where they shouldn't have been. That is undisputed and will continue to be undisputed.

We know a little more than that. But that's what we know at this point. A lot of it is speculation. But some of the facts that are, that we know that are surrounding this mishap are still facts. We can make some educated guesses as to probability. Will these prove out what we think at this point, our hypothesis. But a hypothesis has to be proven or it has to be unproven. So with that, I can go into what we know if that is going to be helpful. I can kick it off. I mean, for the for the folks that have spent a lot of time flying in out of Reagan as a non-aviator.

I mean, it's it seems to me two, two things that kind of set the stage here. And, you know, obviously, correct me if I'm wrong here, Andy, but it seems very unusual that the route that you fly in that's so restricted based on all of the significant, you know, areas located on the path, you know, CIA headquarters, Pentagon's White House, Congress. there was talk about shutting it down before after 9-11, obviously. And then the other thing that I've noticed is there's always been helicopters flying up and down, Potomac, taking VIPs, this place and that place, you know, starting with the president. It seems to me as a guy who's been going in and out of there for over two decades, that that's increased substantially. I don't know if everybody thinks they need a helicopter now to fly him around.

He used to be the president and like the secretary of defense maybe. and now, you know, all the way down to like the assistant secretaries or something, we're flying on helicopters. I don't know, but that's my personal observation. So I have to back it up. And so I'd start with, is there any other place in the country that you're aware of, Randy, where they have this level of helicopter traffic on the direct, or it seems to be, in close proximity to the flight line of one of the front, the most used runways in the United States?

Is that anywhere else in the country where this exists? And does it exist primarily because the people in Washington wanted to exist? Mick, I think you hit the nail on the head there. There are areas of very high mixed traffic density, which is you have airliners, you have helicopters, you have private aircraft, and you have other airports in close proximity. a lot of areas that are crowded. But I don't know of any area other than the national capital region.

And this is, excuse me, the area from Reagan National Airport in a five-mile radius that is as dense and is permeated with flight operations, mixed flight operations, all the time. So I think it's fair to say that, again, I can't, I can probably pull up some of the statistics, but I think you're absolutely right that there is a great deal of mixed traffic. And with that is the absolute necessity to set flight to flight corridors and what we call, and the FAA, they call them letters of agreement, which is that certain operators will use the certain paths and will fly.

at certain altitudes and not deviate from that. So with that, they are much more assured of aircraft separation. And that's the real key. That's what the controllers are doing. They're separating aircraft from each other. And it's worked very well, even with what appears to be an increased density of helicopter operations. And it's certainly apparent. I can't prove it. I can't give you numbers. but, you know, as an observation, I think it is, it's accurate. And you can understand from a personal security standpoint that, and traffic congestion, other things that motorcating somebody through and across Washington versus being able to helicopter them is certainly faster.

And for some operations, it, the level of. security may be warranted. I don't know. That's that's on them. But the amount of helicopter operations in that area, I think, are, they certainly are dense. And it appears that they have, they have been increasing since 9-11, you know, with probably good reason. But that that just means, again, that separation criteria and making sure that aircraft are separated, that you separate the helicopter traffic from the fixed-wing traffic in and out of Reagan. And we know, as a matter of fact, it's already been reported that there's been this slippery slope of increasing airline operations, daily operations at Reagan, because people love,

understandably, they love flying into the national airport. They don't want to go to Dulles. And they want, they want to be able to go direct to Denver. They don't want to, the old days, you can only go so far. But that's been extended. So now you're having more longer range flights out of there and an increased density of airline operations. So that just adds to whatever mix there is. Yeah, I was reading that the airport was designed for 15 million passengers. I don't know if that's annually and it's now handling 25 million. You know, I know there's, I mean,

there's multiple, multiple factors. That's one of the, probably that contributed to this. But undoubtedly to, you know, that increase, plus what Mick was talking about, close proximity of helicopter operations. But you normally see them, but they're always flying pretty low, you know, along the,

along the river, right? I mean, they seem to be held to particular corridors, I'm imagining it was, what, below 500 feet or something? That is exactly right. There are some published helicopter routes, and the reason they're published is, again, so that we have these letters of agreement and these expectations for this traffic along the Potomac River. And to your point, below 500 feet, actually, it's It is very, very specific. For example, this helicopter appears to have been looking.

I did see his what's called his ADSB, which is automatic dependent surveillance broadcast, which gives us a position of an aircraft every second. And I looked at that data and also gives us their reported altitude. He was doing what he was supposed to, initially. He was, for example, if you're flying from north to south, let's picture National Airport is on the west side of Potomac River. Potomac River kind of divides Washington from Virginia. And you're flying south. Now, what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to

fly south along the eastern shore of the Potomac. That way, you don't conflict with, it's called P56, which is the prohibited area around the White House, the Washington Monument Capitol Building. So you're not going too far to the east, but you're also staying on the eastern part of the river. So you're staying away from National Airport. The pilot was flying that route. And when you hit Memorial Bridge, Memorial Bridge, for those you're not familiar with Washington, is about a mile to the north of the airport boundary of national airport. When you hit that point, you must be at 200 feet and below.

It's very carefully stated, and it has been used that that altitude restriction has been there for decades, and everybody who flies that route knows this. They're very specific altitudes, and one of them is once you, if you're southbound, and that is called route one, And if you're on Route 1 and you're southbound, once you reach a beam Memorial Bridge, you must be at 200 feet or below. And then you continue along the eastern shore of the Potomac until you pass the Anacostia River. And then you actually kind of merge onto what's called Route 4. And that looks very similar.

It just follows the coastline. It follows the shoreline of the Potomac River on the eastern side. The other side of the river is National Airport. And on the eastern side, you have joint base bowling, used to be bowling airport space. You have a lot of other national assets and facilities on that side of the river. So you fly it right over the river, right over the shoreland. And there's an admonition that you must maintain 200 feet or below until you reach the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. And that's about four miles south of the airport.

The reason for that 200-foot ceiling on your helicopter operation is so you do not conflict with traffic arriving at National Airport. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes at. free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers, but this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house.

So I'm not sure if you would know or not, but given the congestion and the traffic, is there, Are the pilots that fly these things, are they normally senior or is it any pilot can fly it? Or everyone has to learn it, I suppose, at some point, these routes. That really speaks more toward the individual services that are operating helicopters. Of course, a civilian helicopter could do the same thing. But to even fly within 30 nautical miles of Washington, you're under a completely different set of restrictions, because of national security concerns. So that cuts off a lot of people, number one.

But number two, if you're doing helicopter operations, that's going to be under, the FAA won't set specific standards for that. But the individual operators, in this case the Army, but also the National Park Service, D.C. police, Maryland police, all the public. operators there and certainly HMX-1, the Marine Corps special transportation for supporting the president, they are going to have, you know, rules that, yeah, you follow, you follow what the FAA has set out here because this is the way we separate aircraft. So to your point, it's, it's unknown,

whether these people were more junior or more senior, but you do have to rely on, and I think it's reasonable to rely on the fact that they're not just going to turn anybody loose in a helicopter flying in that area. They're either going to be a pilot who is under instruction from a instructor who certainly would be familiar or somebody who has already demonstrated competence. And who knows? Now, this is speculation, but perhaps the reason that this was reported to be a training flight was they were getting a new pilot familiar with that route. That could have definitely been. But certainly nobody's just going to get into a helicopter and just look at a chart and go, yeah, this is what we do. It's going to be a lot more stringent because of the

exposure and because of the very congested nature of that area and the absolute requirement to adhere to both the root and the altitudes. Thank you. So on the root and altitudes, Randy. So it's been reported that they were out of the corridor you described. I don't know if that's accurate, but just for the sake of the question, and that they were at 300 feet instead of the required 200 feet. First question is, as a helicopter pilot, is that that would be something that would be very evident, I would think. You would know your attitude at all times. That's first question. Second question is, although we've heard the discussion between the air traffic control and the helicopter, is that something that they should have noticed and said, for example, you're,

you're required to stay below 200 feet, you're at 300 feet, you need to fix yourself kind of thing. Because, I mean, I've listened to the, just like most of America's, listen to the traffic back and forth. And that was at least from the thing I heard never discussed. So the two for you. Yeah. Yeah, okay, you've hit on, Mick, not unsurprisingly, you have hit on the heart of this matter at this point for the facts that we know. You've hit the two very, very important points.

One of them is that it appears from, and my source is just the ADSB data, which is raw data. That's not somebody's opinion of it. That's what is, it's what comes out. It is a position and it is an altitude. And I've seen that. And anybody can see it. It's public data. From a root standpoint, it appears that they were where they were supposed to be.

They were near the eastern side of the Potomac. Now, you don't, for example, for noise, they don't want to be flying. over the shore. And the route really doesn't go over the shore. I mean, it's not that you couldn't do it. It wouldn't be any major violation, but, you know, a Black Hawk is pretty noisy. And so they prefer to stay over the water, but just barely over the water. So they would be over the eastern shore of the Potomac. And it looks like, from looking at the ADSB data, that's kind of where they were. They were right over there. So I don't think they were in the wrong, place. But here's the problem. There is a, there's a system that the FAA has, and it's called a conflict

alert. And what it does, it alerts a controller if two targets that are in his airspace, there are on a collision course and are co-altitude or approaching co-altitude. In other words, There's the same altitude and the target's tracks will converge. Before that happens, they will get, depends on the speed, a number of seconds, a red, well, now it's red. It used to be monochrome, but it says CA, which is conflict alert, and it's an audible as well as beep. And then the controller who is responsible that airspace would look at it and would immediately call out to that traffic one way or the other. and I noticed when I was looking at the ADSB data, and they were at 200 feet pretty consistently from Anacostia South.

And that's not that far. You know, it's a mile, a mile and a half. However, in just a few seconds before impact, there was a vertical diversion. And the altitude reported was 300 plus. Now, it wasn't, the thing averages. It doesn't do 325 feet. It's like 300 feet, 400 feet, 500 feet.

They were above 300 feet. So they had to be at 300 feet or very close to it. And probably not over 350 feet, but 300 feet. That produced a conflict alert. And it may be helpful for me to, to just to show you a few things about the communications where they occurred and just before impact. Would that, would that be helpful for you? Absolutely. Okay. Now also, there's a very, and this is to your point, Nick, you know, what has been reported or at least has been, you can get

the audible on it, which is from a scanner. You know, there's a civilian somewhere listening on airport scanner and some of this is recorded and available on the internet. But that was all VHF communications. And let me explain the difference between VHF and UHF communications and aircraft. Civilian aircraft and those that generally operate in, you know, civilian airports and so forth, are on a VHF band. And that's from about 118. to 135 megahertz.

And that's where your Cessna's all the way up to your 747s, they're all on that same frequency band. And in different places, they will have aircraft on different frequencies. But the common thing is, if you're in a airliner and you're approaching Reagan National and you're within five miles of the airport, you are going to be on a tower frequency. So it's called a local controller, who's the guy. guy in the control tower who is monitoring the traffic within five miles of the airport. They'll be all on one frequency, and I forgot what it was.

I used to know it. It's like 118, 25 or something. But don't quote me on that because I have to look it up, but it doesn't matter. They will all be on the same frequency. However, military aircraft generally operate on a UHF frequency, completely different band, like 225 megahertz. But the tower, of course, has both the military frequencies as well as the civilian frequencies. And if they're on that frequency that they need to be within five miles of the airport,

if it's a military aircraft that only has uniform, that only has UHF capability, and many military aircraft only have that, more and more are getting dual. But remember, that's additional radio, additional maintenance. additional weight. Most military operations, all that I've ever done, all use the UHF radio. So it's not unreasonable that a helicopter operating in there coming out of Fort Belvoir is talking on UHF because he may have some tactical reasons why he is and but he is now talking to Washington Tower on his UHF radio. So he in the Tower are talking. There's problem there. However, and this is going to be important, I think, in the investigation. No civilian

airplane is going to hear what that helicopter says. They're only going to hear one half of that conversation because when that tower controller hits his transmit button, he is transmitting on UHF, which goes out to UHF traffic, military traffic in this area, and he also goes out VHF with the civilian traffic in his area. It's a co-operation. It's a co-operation. It's co-es frequency. So in this case, the transcripts that came out were only from the VHF side. You never heard the military aircraft responding. Wasn't heard at all. It was certainly heard and it was recorded, but most, you know, a civilian scanner is not going to be tuned to that frequency and isn't going to pick it up. So initially, we only heard one part of this conversation. And I was going, wait a minute,

Why are we not hearing acknowledgement when the Black Hawk is told to do things? The reason was he or she was operating on uniform on UHF, and the rest of the traffic and what came out originally was all VHF. So I hope that's not confusing, but here's what happened. And I got both of them, fortunately. So here is what happened on a minute prior to impact and an impact. 58 seconds prior to impact. Let's set up the picture.

You have the Blue Street 5342, and that is the regional jet that is coming from the south to the north. Now, he's following essentially. which leave the Potomac River, and he's coming up over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which in Washington, we know that's where the, I think it's 395, crosses the Potomac, and it's an important landmark, and it's about five miles out. So the first thing we have is Blue Street 5342, about a minute and 30 seconds prior, says as you cross the bridge, changed runway 3-3, 3-3 cleared to land.

Now, there are two runways at Washington. That's 0-1. Zero-1 is north. Think of it as just directly north. And then runway 33, which crosses that runway, and it's on the airport, it's not located anywhere else. And it crosses it, but it is actually a line to the northwest. That is heading of 330 magnetic 330 versus 0.

010 degrees, which is roughly north. So what they did, the controller very reasonably had a departure that he needed to get out. And there are just too many airplanes stacked up on finals. So what he does is he says, hey, can you take runway 3-3? And the pilot looks at it and he says, sure, we have, it's safe for us, we can do that. And he says, okay, after you cross the bridge, change to runway 33, runway 33 cleared land. So when he crosses the bridge at five miles, instead of just going straight to the airport, he's going to make a slight right turn. And he's going to set up so that he is in a good position to turn gently and then be aligned with runway 3-3 landing to the northwest.

Okay. That's the picture. So Blue Streak is now crossing the bridge and Pats 2-5 or excuse me, Pat. Yeah, Pats 2-5. which is the call sign for the military Blackhawk. And Washington Tower says, only on UHF, by the way, so nobody else is hearing this. Patch 2-5, traffic just south of the Woodrow Bridge at CRJ. He's at 1,200 feet setting up for a runway 3-3. Okay? He's calling out this traffic. Now, he's not even, at this point, Pats is just by the Anacosti River.

He's not even close to the airport yet. But he's letting him know, hey, this is going to be your traffic. So you need to start looking out for him because you have to maintain visual separation with him. So he calls him out and says, hey, by the way, Pat's 2.5, traffic just south of the Woodrow Bridge, CRJ at 1,200 feet setting up. Pat 2.5 replies, Pat's 2.5 has the traffic in sight. Request visual separation. completely reason. He says, I see that traffic is what he's saying. I see that traffic way out there.

I see him. And I want to maintain visual separation with him, which is correct. Absolutely. And so Washington Tower comes back immediately and says visual separation approved. Completely normal, completely reasonable. In other words, he says, hey, there's an airplane over there. You want to start looking at that. for him. And Pats 2-5 says, yep, I see him out there. I want to stay visually separated from him. And the tower says,

okay, Roger, visual separation approved. That's exactly what you should do. Just applaud. That is the way you keep air separated. Randy, when he in practice, what does that mean? When he says

visual separation approved, does that mean that the responsibility for separation becomes that pilot who has said that? Yes. Yes. Because he will be, in other words, the civilian aircraft is, civilian aircraft is operating under a different set of flight rules also. He's operating in what's called IFR or instrument flight rules.

And in this case, the tower controller is responsible for all traffic. again within five miles. So he's talking to both of these, both of these targets. He's talking to civilian airplane and he knows what he is going to do. He's going to make a circling approach to 3-3. And that's set in stone. A helicopter is more maneuverable and is VFR traffic, which is visual flight rules. So the helicopter is obliged to see and avoid. And when he is in the purview of this local controller, see and avoid means. that the controller is going to call out traffic to him that he needs to see and avoid. And if he doesn't see him, let's say, for example, he says, he points the traffic out and he

says, you know, the traffic south of the bridge, past 25, past 2.5 does not have the aircraft in sight. Okay. The tower may tell him, okay, hold where you are because there might be a conflict. But he didn't say that because he said he has it in sight. He has it in sight. Okay, perfect. We have an aircraft that sees him. He sees him. He's more maneuverable. He is also a helicopter. He's on this route. Maintained visual separation. And then he's visual separation approved. So he is going to see and avoid because he does see them. And he certainly is maneuverable enough to avoid him. So he is now responsible for that separation, even though the tower, if the Tower sees something wrong, he's going to step in and say something. But he is now responsible because

he said he saw the traffic and he sees the traffic and he will avoid it. Can you address, Randy, the idea that he may have been looking at another aircraft, the helicopter pilots might have been looking at another aircraft. So they thought they were obviously visually separated, but they weren't. And then the aspect of using night vision goggles in an area like, this in a city with, you know, I'm again, not a pilot, but I've used nods a lot. Very difficult to distinguish, you know, lights when you're in a city. But anyway, if you could hit those both. Yes. And again, as usual, you have hit the seminal points that I think are going to be very focal to this investigation. The, there was traffic that was departing,

runway one to the north. And they, according to the data, that they were airborne at this point. Now, also, I didn't know until yesterday, whether the Secretary of Defense confirmed that the pilots of the Black Hawk were using nods or night vision goggles, night observation devices. That, as I understand, is a very common doctrine in Army aviation at night. Because I'm sure for a number of reasons, one of which is that if you're operating over very low-light areas like desert, you have a loss of contrast. You can't tell where it up is. And it's very reasonable to use nods in those environments.

They very, very easily could have. have mistaken the aircraft that departed from Reagan National that was actually taking off. And this gets into it a little bit later when he's told to pass behind that aircraft. If he is focused on that aircraft and thinks that's the aircraft he's supposed to be flying, or excuse me, he's supposed to be avoiding, then he certainly wouldn't have seen or probably would not have seen the other one because there's something called anchor bias. What it is is if you're told to look for traffic, and you see traffic in that area, and your brain sees it and says, yeah, I'm locked on.

I know that's the traffic. Yep, I'll follow them. I'll pass behind him. It's happened to me. I've done this before where there were multiple aircraft in an area, and I'd look and I'd see, and maybe my first officer would help me and see it as well. And I'd see it and said, yep, we've got them in sight. But that was another aircraft that was close by.

and my mind would be on that aircraft the wrong one until, whoa, what is that? Oh, that's the airplane we're supposed to be passing. Not an uncommon error. And when you're in visual separation, it's one of those things that, you know, until you're absolutely sure that you know that you're looking at the right aircraft, you don't fall in sight. But then again, if that's the only one you see and you think it is, that's, That's a very easy mistake to make. The thing that I didn't know was that they reportedly reported about Secretary of Defense,

they were using night vision devices. They were using NAS. And anybody who's ever used those wonderful, terrible things knows a couple of things about operating with those. And one of them is that they give you a very different, sense of perception and particularly depth perception where it is different. I mean, your brain gets used to it and you can fly perfectly well with them, but it is different. The other thing is a concept called dazzle. And that's where, remember, these are light amplifying devices.

And if you have, for example, landing lights from aircraft, these are one million candle power bulbs or LED arrays that are extraordinarily bright. And I just can't imagine getting hit with one of those wearing nods because I'm sure there's some more sophisticated suppression since when I flew them, but it certainly can produce at the very least a distortion. The other thing with nods is that your cockpit scan, in other words, your out-of-lawful outside, inside scan is going to be different because you really lose a lot of peripheral vision and seeing things, for example, like your altimeter, other things, you certainly need to scan that,

particularly at night, but you're going to have to move your head to do that because your field of vision is going to be much more narrow. So those are really important points. Again, just turn this timeline down because I think this is going to spur this discussion a little bit. Remember, the last thing we talked about was that Pats 25 reported the traffic in sight, visual separation approved. 20 seconds prior to impact, there is a conflict alert, which the controller in the tower immediately sees. and you can even tell in his voice, his stress level goes up. And he calls on the military frequency, on the uniform frequency. He says, Pat 2.5, do you have the CRJ in sight?

Pat 2.5, we have the CRJ in sight, request visual separation again. 15 seconds prior to impact. Tower says, pass 25, pass behind the CRJ. Pat 2.5 says affirmative, and that was the point of impact. So there was, you know, 15 to 20 seconds prior, there was already, hold on a minute, we shouldn't have a conflict with this traffic. But the ADSB shows that they had already climbed between 200 to 300 feet or possibly more at this point, which puts them in exactly the same altitude as this CRJ who is descending to land on runway 33. And those last few seconds, I think, are going to be a major focus of this. You know, why did these two airplanes get in the same airspace at the same time?

The civilian aircraft, the airliner was doing from the track and from the altitude readout was exactly where he was supposed to be and doing exactly what he was supposed to do. Again, we have a cockpit voice recorder and a flight data recorder from them just to, you know, it'll help verify and help support the facts of the minimal data we have now, but he was where he's supposed to be. And at this point, at least judging by his data, I mean, it's clear that they came together at a point that they had a collision. But make you hit on these points that are going to be absolutely similar,

not just to the investigation, but to the more important point of this, the reason we investigate mishaps is we want to find out what happened in explicit detail. And then we need to find out what the root cause. In other words, was there, there's always a chance. of causation in mishaps. In other words, this happens, this happens, this happens, this happens, this happens. For example, if the airliner was only going to land on runway zero one, he wouldn't have been out there. But that's part of the normal operation of the airport. We used runway zero one and three, we use one, we use one a lot more and we use three three, but we use three three a lot. But

circumstances were such that, yeah, he needed to use three three, the good controller wanted to put him on 3-3 for traffic separation. And, yeah, had it not been for that, there has been talk about shutting down runway 3-3 because it is shorter and it is only used by airplanes that are more capable to use it because you've got to stop pretty quickly on it. And it's reasonably safe. But there's been talk of that. So that's going to be a discussion.

there'll be discussion about using nods in this area, you know, whether that was contributory or not, that's going to be a discussion. Visual separation, perhaps they may think about changing some of these routes to give more space between helicopter operations in the airport. Again, these are things that you look at after the fact and after you get all the facts in. But there are some really important points in this that I think that if there's any good to come out of this horrible tragedy, is that we're going to learn things from it. And hopefully we're going to act on those things and make it even safer than it is, and it is safe. Randy, if they had kept, you mentioned the variance in height, if they had kept below 200 feet, would things have been different? I know that's a very narrow margin for error, but nevertheless.

It is, but there would not have been a conflict because that is, you know, that is with good reason on allowed altitude. It's the upper limit of the allowed altitude, but it's allowed on that route. And even with that, they would have been separated by about 200 feet. Now, normally we worry about 200 foot separation of vertical separation of aircraft tremendously. However, helicopter to airplane, a little bit different because the helicopter is so much more maneuverable than the airplane. And it's also slower. So he can maneuver to stay away from that jet, which is much less maneuverable.

and no, you know, had he been 50, even 50 feet, but that's more than we certainly would want to do. But if he had stayed at 200 feet, the RJ was not lower than he was supposed to be, there would have been probably about 150 to 200 feet vertical separation, which, yeah, that's less separation than I would like, but it is a, appropriate and legal for that area. And that's why we separate him by altitude. Now, had he strayed, talking about lateral separation, had he strayed outside his route in addition to the vertical era?

At this point, it doesn't look like it. And it didn't look like he strayed away by much, because looking at where the aircraft fell and where the crash site was, it was within, I don't know, a hundred feet of the lateral edge of where that root is. And the root is, the root's defined by a blue line. And it doesn't really, there are some, there's some leeway for that. So you can go to one side or the other a little bit, but not miles. But that's the route that you're supposed to be on.

But at least at this point, it appears. to be, he was within the lateral limits, if not very slightly out of it. But I don't think, I think that the vertical separation is going to play a much larger role in this than the lateral separation. And obviously, if he had picked up the right aircraft, which may be another factor of error here. And, you know, to the point you were discussing earlier about not, in addition to death perception in addition to dazzle. If you're at, if you're flying relatively low, I imagine. I mean, you've got the backscatter of lights from the city itself, right?

I mean, trying to pick out an object against that, even if you're not on a moving platform yourself is, is incredibly difficult. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because if I could pick one of the more visually conflicted areas in the the country. New York City would be one of them. Washington, D.C. would be at least in the top three, because you have everything from monuments that are lit up brightly to normal lights, to aircraft lights, to the Potomac River, which is dark, right in the middle of this thing. and it is a, it's a visually confusing area.

Absolutely right. And then when you're wearing nods, and you get, in your periphery, you get a million candle power bulb coming from an aircraft, his landing lights. It would just, I can't imagine a worse place to operate. I would hate that. But then again, if there,

And again, this is going to be an important question about should they operate with nods there because there is a positive safety reason to use those because you can see a lot of features that have low light conditions, such as the surface of the water. You can see that with the knots. However, it's going to produce a lot of visual conflict because of the other light. So that's a balance, and I think that will certainly be looking. at and carefully addressed. In 2015, I was the CEO of the Marine Raider Regiment, and we lost seven Marines

plus the Army lost a black court crew in a crash in Farther, actually, in Destin. And a couple of things, you know, it stand out. I mean, it was poor weather, a decision was made to fly, et cetera, et cetera. But nods were a factor in that, too, in the backscatter against the city and disorientation. But one of the things that came out that I've noticed has also come out here in the post-crash discussions are, you know, how experienced were the pilots, et cetera, et cetera. Well, both in that case in 2015 and apparently here, the pilots were very experienced. But I think most people, and I haven't flown a helicopter, most people don't understand that with all the experience in the world, it's very, very easy to make an error. And, you know, 99% of the time, it has no consequences.

But just simply to say, well, how could this happen? Because they were experienced is, you know, to me rather a kind of vacuous statement. I mean, flying a helicopter is hard because it's what I'm saying, especially 9. And it's the reason why I don't do it. It is. Or no one wants me to do it. That it is hard. And, you know, we also have to look at, and I'm not in any way belittling or otherwise minimizing a horrible event like this.

But our national airspace system in the United States with U.S. aircraft is unarguably the safest in the world. It doesn't mean it's perfect. And it doesn't mean that we don't occasionally have mishaps and sometimes very bad mishaps, such as this. But the system does work, but it is one that is and must be always analyzed. It has to be examined. It has to be changed where we can change things and make them safer. And we used to have, and this is the thing about mid-air collisions, it used to be when I started flying airliners,

it was either radar would point it out, or you'd see it visually, or you have rules to separate instrument aircraft. But there was nothing in the cockpit that would tell you the presence of another aircraft. Nothing, zero. And they developed a very, very good, system. Now it's the system's called T-CAS or traffic collision avoidance system. And this works

really well when you're above a thousand feet. It is inhibited at low altitudes only because it it can't if it sees aircraft on the ground at an airport and you're going toward it, if you didn't inhibit it, it would think there was a conflict between you and them because you're going to be coming close to them. So it is inhibited under a certain altitude. But in normal altitudes that we operate at, I tell you, that system has saved thousands of lives because it will actually generate a conflict resolution advisory

and it will communicate with both aircraft and in real time, we'll separate the aircraft. They'll make one go above it and one go below it. And it has, because problems happen we don't expect. And we're using this wonderful technology and automation to help us prevent these things. There may be in the future, there may be an upgrade to this or an addition to it that may help at low altitudes. of course, both aircraft have to be equipped with it. So, you know, technology eventually will help us with this as it did with our TCAS system that has, again,

documented, saved thousands and thousands of lives. And this is just an area where you get below a thousand feet in the landing configuration that is, it would be very rare to have a conflict in this area, extremely rare. And it just, just happened to be everything lined up perfectly in this congested airspace in a small area with two dissimilar aircraft doing dissimilar things. And I think when it's investigated and recommendations come out, I think the important thing is we won't have a report for this for at least 12 months, probably 24. there will be recommendations that the National Transportation Safety Board will make.

And they make recommendations to the FAA. Congress watches this very carefully as well. And some of the recommendations may be equipment. They may be procedures, probably equipment and procedures. And the thing is, we need to learn from this. And when those recommendations come out, we need to listen to them. And we need to, if it costs money, I think they're the, the, value of having a safe national airspace system is it's a cost that we need to we need to pay

we need to pay that because we really can't afford in this country that still has the best in the world we can't allow it to fall back we need to pay attention to those recommendations Randy unless the other gentlemen have questions along this topic I just wanted to segue really quick, and I know it's early, it just happened, but wanted to see if you have any preliminary thoughts on the crash in Philadelphia last night. That was, I've seen the video of it, and unfortunately this morning, I found the facts are just heart-wrenching. This was a, we used to call it lifelight. This is a jet aircraft that is used to transport medical patients from one place to another. And of course, Philadelphia has a very renowned children's

hospital. And I don't know the facts of what the patient needed or where they were going. But I understand the patient was on board. She was a child. Her parents and a few other people, family members, I think, as well as the in-flight medical people and the crew were on board. and it happened shortly after takeoff. It was a Learjet, which Lear Jets are an older airplane. It's a great airplane. I've flown them. And it has a pretty decent safety record by itself.

Many Lear Jets, and I don't know about this one, are a little older than some of the modern. jets, but they actually are overrepresented in the air ambulance category, and I'm not sure why maybe those were some of the first to become, put big doors on them and so forth, and equipment to support medical patients in flight. But I do know that there are a number of Lear jets that are air ambulances. There are other ones to assess the citations and others. But Learjets are represented in that. I don't know.

It's very unusual because the weather wasn't bad. And from what I saw, it was a relatively high-speed impact. And that could be any number of things. But it didn't, fortunately, it didn't happen over water or over, somewhere where we won't be able to start putting all the facts together. And likely it does not have, it may, but I don't think it does. They usually don't. It probably does not have a flight data recorder or a cockpit voice recorder.

However, there's a lot of other data that we can determine from a very careful investigation of the mishap. but very sad. My heart goes out to those people and just can't imagine anything worse. But were they connected anyway? No, except my grandmother always told me bad things happened in threes. So that's, it was just, I think it's a bad coincidence because there certainly doesn't appear to be anything

that could possibly connect these two misacts except time. understand. Thank you. Yeah, and it's important, obviously, to point out just the human tragedy of both, right? 67 people perished, including children in the incident at Reagan, and then I think six died in this. So to Randy's point, obviously, it costs to improve the safety and security of U.S. aviation, but it's, you know, in my opinion, worth every penny. Just think of the devastation this has caused. So I just want to say thanks because I invited Randy.

By the way, Randy's also a medical doctor. So if you feel an little inadequate. I had that to us. But thank you. Thanks, Randy. Appreciate it. I think hopefully when this podcast gets around, it really does help people be educated what actually happened.

So I'm super, super appreciate you taking the time. It's my honor. Absolutely. great having you on yeah it was a pleasure uh randy thank you um rand did you have anything where you like to plug or anything like that i mean good question yeah the only thing i would plug is sort of as as george hw bush said stay the course um pay attention to the facts stay with the facts don't start moving off into the the the taking the exit to

imagination town. Let's stick with the facts. The facts can be kind of boring and the investigation is long, but I have a lot of confidence that we are going to come out with a very thorough investigation and some good recommendations.

And when the recommendations do come out, this is the only plug I made. When they do come out, to take the five minutes, it's to send an email to your congressman and your senator saying, hey, I saw those recommendations. I think they're pretty good. I think we need to fund that. That I think will help immensely. Because boy, when Congress has to fund something because the people are demanding it for safety, it will often get funded. But if you say nothing, these things break into the next news cycle.

So once the recommendations, when the NTSB come out, support them. Good point. Yeah, very well said. Very, yeah, these are going to be more shilling types of plugs. I'm sorry, Randy. All of our links in description, Mick Mulroy, Fogwell, Longbow, you want to find them. It's down in the description. Andy Milburn, when the tempest gathers his book, link is in the description as well, Jason

Lyons. Any and all links are in the description. and the best way to keep this show going is patreon.com slash the team house. Randy, thanks again. This is incredible.