Disaster American Airlines Flight Collides With Blackhawk Helicopter Over DC - Several videos shared online showed footage of the collision and the aftermath of the crash.

An American Airlines passenger plane crashed into the Potomac River after colliding midair with a black hawk helicopter over Ronald Reagan International Airport in Washington, D.C., the Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday (January 29) via CNN.

Several videos shared online showed footage of the collision and the aftermath of the crash.

BREAKING: American Airlines Flight 5342 has collided with a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The military aircraft, identified as PAT25, is believed to be a Priority Air Transport mission, typically designated for VIP transport operations.

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[Thiletonomics]

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Is Zelensky literally wanking himself in Euphoria upon hearing news about these Russians dying so that Ukraine is that much close to "winning"? And are the pro-Ukrainian crowd cheering for these deaths too?

There was some Russian salt Tweet responses though:

 

[TowinKarz]

Conveniently forgetting the train that derailed and poisoned a town two years into his term as secretary of transportation. Whenever things went well for Trump in his first term the response was that he just inherited everything good from Obama, I remember people (well, mostly redditors so not really people) saying "it takes four years for a president's policies to have any effect!1!!" now it's the total opposite, everything that happens after the first second he's in office is categorically his fault. It's all so tiresome.

They were pinning egg prices on him while he was still President-Elect, if you want the absolute nadir of this line of thinking.

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They're stopping? Are you fucking kidding me?

Yes, for today, people aren't robots. Especially when you have to recover the remains of your fellow man.

It's not like they're not going to go back to work tomorrow.... lighten up.

 

[Hitman One]

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They're stopping? Are you fucking kidding me?

If the wreckage is unsafe then there's no point risking divers dying in the river. It's not like they're looking for any survivors.

 

[Gef Mongoose]

I'm not sure what anyone who wasn't on the ship's bridge that day is supposed to do about a fucking cargo ship hitting a bridge. You can't fight physics, the forces involved in that collision were incredible.

Bootygeeg should hang for the train crash and subsequent poisoning though.

It’s not about what Buttigieg could have done to prevent it (other than working on the infrastructure of bridges that are in need across the country, talk to any civil engineer about it).

It’s about Buttigieg acting like there weren’t any catastrophic events that occurred when he was the head of Transportation. And that if the roles were reversed, Buttigieg would most likely blame Trump and his admin for it.

 

[Hitman One]

It’s not about what Buttigieg could have done to prevent it (other than working on the infrastructure of bridges that are in need across the country, talk to any civil engineer about it).

It’s about Buttigieg acting like there weren’t any catastrophic events that occurred when he was the head of Transportation. And that if the roles were reversed, Buttigieg would most likely blame Trump and his admin for it.

I get you but you dilute the argument by bringing the ship into it because you'd need to have built some kind of magic super bridge to survive a collision like that. The derailment, poisoning and subsequent cover-up is the real black mark against the gay mayor and the Biden administration.

 

[HarblMcDavid]

The Black Hawk crew was using night vision goggles which would restrict their field of vision down to about 40 degrees so make of that what you will.

...I know NVGs have improved a lot over the years, but the impression I got was that using them to operate vehicles required a good deal of practice since at least older models would also fuck with depth perception as well as restricting field of view.

Even assuming the depth perception issue has been largely solved or mitigated as much as it can be (I suspect this is mostly related to PVS-7 style which is only binocular in output, but not input), why would you train with something that at best reduces field of view significantly right next to a major airport?

 

[Mikoyan]

I get you but you dilute the argument by bringing the ship into it because you'd need to have built some kind of magic super bridge to survive a collision like that. The derailment, poisoning and subsequent cover-up is the real black mark against the gay mayor and the Biden administration.

The pier protection could've been way better and that could've saved the bridge. But that's more on Maryland than anything.

 

[Breadbassket]

Update on Guantanamo Bay Operations and @SecDef Hegseth Addresses Tragic Mishap Involving US Army Helicopter

Hegseth says the Black Hawk crew was fairly experienced, had night vision goggles and was doing an annual night flying evaluation.

 

[Hecate]

I've setup an ADSB receiver before they are all usually taped to a pole outside some guys house(if he's not lazy and it's not just inside), something on the ground is probably blocking that direction, they pickup high flying aircraft very well but unless you have a lot of clear space they don't pickup low flying craft good at all. I couldn't get mine to pickup anything under 3000 due to obstacles.

Multilateration requires at least three and preferably many more stations to report a position. This should be a very well covered area but even if a number of stations heard its transponder the data is iffy, low precision and unreliable. It's the nature of the beast. Also the lower it was flying - in this case quite low - the iffier reception will be.

There's 2 flavors.

ADS-B where the aircraft transmits its own position, altitude, speed, tail number, etc. This only needs one station and typically updates once per second. It's required for all civilian aircraft in areas such as the airspace around DC. But some military aircraft may still not be equipped or have waivers to turn it off.

MLAT where the aircraft has a transponder which only transmits an identity code provided by ATC and the altitude. And it only transmits when a radar site(or TCAS) interrogates it. It needs multiple stations as was mentioned earlier as they each have to figure out when they "hear" the signal and do some math to determine where it probably is. It's slow since it only can work when a radar site 'pings' the plane, typically in busy airspace about once every 5 seconds, and accuracy can be questionable due to needing very accurate timing due to trying to do math on signals traveling near the speed of light.

In this case it seems unlikely that even having ADS-B would have made a difference as both aircraft were supposed to be doing "see and avoid" and the airliner's TCAS works perfectly fine using just transponder signals. It just would have given us armchair quarterbacks a better picture of the incident.

thanks for the detailed information, legitimately useful and kinda makes me wanna setup a station

 

[Al from Dadeville]

Whatever the reason is, there are definitely lefty retards cheering that this happened in Trump's America. They're probably wishing some politician they don't like died on one of them.

I know I’m being a dumb tophat fag, but in a perfect world the plane and helicopter would have been loaded up and piloted only by politicians. I don’t care which ones or which side. The actual collision is awful, I feel like so much bad shit seems to happen all the time that I’m past the point of even being able to chuckle at edgy jokes about it.

 

[Mikoyan]

legitimately useful and kinda makes me wanna setup a station

NP! Getting synced in mlat (used to) require a bit of effort. It's not hard to set up a good station though. let me know if you need any tips.

 

[Google.com]

thanks for the detailed information, legitimately useful and kinda makes me wanna setup a station

They are very easy to setup, if you are in a desirable area the tracking sites might send you one for free. If not its like $100 of parts, just need a raspberry pi and an antenna. When you do get one up whatever site you end up contributing to will give you free premium access.

 

[Deer Warts]

Does the NTSB automatically have "rights" to the Black Hawk wreckage and data recorders?

Is there any scenario in which the military (the army, in this case) can refuse to cooperate with a civilian investigation?

 

[quaawaa]

The Black Hawk crew was using night vision goggles which would restrict their field of vision down to about 40 degrees so make of that what you will.

The NVGs pilots use have a 97 degree field of view:

 

[quaawaa]

Reddit's non-car transportation enthusiasts are here to remind you that this tragedy is nothing compared to the horrors that cars inflict upon us every day:








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Regarding the automod comment, they made a whole post talking about the same thing:



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[Hunter Hearst Helmsley]

Driving is fun. Even trains have their charm. A commercial airliner is not fun.

 

[It's Little Alex Horne]

If I might expound a bit more on the loss to the figure skating community:

Most of the skaters on the flight were teenagers, coming back from a Development Camp held after the 2025 US National Championships. These kids had not reached senior competitions as far as I know, nor were they "mega-athletes" on par with Michelle Kwan or Tonya Harding (who even the average schmuck would know).

The reality of figure skating is that most of these kids would not have been gold medalists or world champions, but that hardly means they had nothing to contribute to the sport. Even if they decided they couldn't hack it in seniors, they were all still young enough to change course and make something of themselves in another way. But we'll never get to know now. The cruelest thing about the death of a young person is the sheer loss of potential.

Another facet to the tragedy is that of Maxim Naumov, who has just lost both parents at the age of 23. Can you imagine losing both your parents at such a young age? Naumov has also just been selected as one of three male skaters to compete for the US in the 2025 Four Continents Championship. For context, Four Continents is an equivalent competition to the European Championships. It's a lower "tier" than the World Championships, but even being selected to go is still meaningful. There is plenty of competition for those three spots in the US.

Now, Naumov has competed in Four Continents in 2023 and 2024, so this wouldn't be his first time at the competition. But still, how could you effectively compete after losing your parents in such a way? Maybe he has the strength to do it. I wouldn't blame him if he didn't.

 

[Vesperus]

Why in the name of fucking sanity would you train in night goggle use over the nations capital in a fucking approach corridor with civilian traffic!?

YOU STUPID FUCKING BASTARDS

 

[Starved Artist]

It’s about Buttigieg acting like there weren’t any catastrophic events that occurred when he was the head of Transportation

16 years without a major accident. plethora of wacky minor accidents.
4 years under Buttigieg without a major accident and a handful of minor accidents.
Two weeks, TEN DAYS under Trump, staff fired from an already understaffed office and we get the worst Major Accident in sixteen fucking years.
Buttigieg was working with a skeleton crew because the standards to work there are pretty much decorated ex military, and very few people fit that , but gutting an already gutted office? This is entirely Trumps fault.

 

[It's Little Alex Horne]

Why in the name of fucking sanity would you train in night goggle use over the nations capital in a fucking approach corridor with civilian traffic!?

YOU STUPID FUCKING BASTARDS

Literally? "Nothing ever went wrong before". I'd bet a thousand bucks that was the reasoning. I also imagine there was a lot of "normalization of deviance" in the procedures surrounding helicopter flights around DCA, that led to the holes in the "Swiss cheese model" lining up, and resulting in the deaths of 60+ people.