Please forgive the effortposting and powerleveling. I flew at PSA Airlines, the wholly owned subsidiary of American that is the actual airline that operated N709PS, the incident CRJ. I knew one of the flight attendants, I have flown N709PS, and I have operated a lot out of DCA.
I have done the ILS 1 Circle 33 before and it's a bit of a tricky maneuver. One that we did regularly, along with Republic, but not many other airlines would accept due to the higher risk. 1 is just shy of 7000' which is easily doable, even with crappy line pilot technique, but 33 is only 5200' and so you have to really be on your game and not fuck up. ATC would usally offer it to us because then they can squeeze out another departure on 1 prior to your arrival, or reduce the spacing with the aircraft behind you. The controllers at DCA are some of the best in the world, but there's only so much you can do limited to just one runway. Despite the slightly higher risk, PSA almost always accepts because it helps the operation and you get to the gates a lot quicker that way, since the gates are right by where you turn off when landing 33.
In order to circle to another runway, you have to break off your approach and manuever visually low and slow, which is not something the average airline pilot does on a regular basis. By the time of the collision, both pilots would be looking ahead and slightly to the left to gauge whether or not they were high or low. Compounding the problem is that there is no approach with vertical guidance to underly the manuever to 33, nor is there a VGSI visual glide slope indicator, and over the Potomac at night they would essentially be in a black hole of featureless terrain. Again, both pilots of the CRJ would be doing essentially nothing other than keeping their aircraft flying and desperately staring straight ahead even though they were turning. And, in the left turn, the right wing would be high further blocking their sight off the right of the aircraft.
Circiling is inheritly a visual manuever that can only be performed under VFR, and as a visual maneuver, the pilots are unfortuanely responsible for terrain and traffic avoidance, despite them being virtually unable to see the other aircraft. There was no instrument approach being used to runway 33, so the approach path did not need to be protected. Military aircraft around the Potomac usally give a courtesy call to DCA tower, but they aren't required to and the controllers don't really issue instructions to them such as "Remain east of the Potomac." Since they were circling, and thus ATC was not responsible for seperation, the tower controller was probably issuing a takeoff clearance or visually looking runway 1 and its approach path and not the aircraft circling 33.
Who knows what the fuck the helo was looking at, obviously not the extremely busy airport off the left, or for aircraft doing something absolutely routine at that airport. The military crashes basically every month. I personally think they were the most responsible and negligent, but that's neither here nor there. They weren't paying attention playing in the street.
When we discuss accidents and incidents inside the industry, we refer to the swiss cheese model. Meaning in every flight, or really anything in life, there are bubbles of risk that are always present. Our job is to mitigate risk, by making sure the holes in the swiss cheese don't all line up so the accident goes through the cheese, so to speak. There were many holes in this cheese, from five people all looking the wrong way at the worst time, a tired crew, a stressed controller, a circling approach, a routine day that lowers your awareness and lulls you in to a false sense of security. This is the first real accident since 2009 in Buffalo, which was the end of another regional airline, Colgan. The NTSB will be all over this, the end of the safest streak in aviation history, in the safest part of the world for flying. Americans don't die in plane crashes...
I ended up sperging over this because I never have anything valuble to contribute to the farms.
Tell your friends and family you love em. I was friends with one of the flight attendants who was working this flight, his name hilariously and now sadly was Ian Epstein and he was very warm friendly person. His terrible wife divorced him a couple of years ago and he just started dating a very lovely person and was finally happy the last time we spoke
