“Every aircraft crash happens on the ground,” said the Navy captain, commanding officer of my first training squadron down in Pensacola. This was over 40 years ago, and the boss was giving a pep talk to a room full of eager young ensigns and Marine 2nd lieutenants, all assigned to the Navy flight training program. 

Looking back, we were a motley gang, an assemblage of recent grads from officer candidate school, ROTC, and the U.S. Naval Academy. Despite our various origins, we shared a couple of commonalities: excellent physical condition and the ability to pass a battery of tests on math, physics, aerodynamics, engines, navigation, and more. 

In other words, we were trainable, and the Navy was about to teach us how to fly. But first, and before anyone even kicked a tire on a real airplane, came the overarching focus on safety-safety-safety. If something is unsafe, don’t do it; especially, don’t fly. Every aviation mishap has a chain of causality. Each crash has its tale. It begins on the ground.

Recovery effort adjacent to Reagan National Airport. Courtesy Agence France-Presse.

It’s not just that something awful happens out of nowhere, and an airplane plummets from the sky. It’s more earthly than that. For example, perhaps the machine was poorly maintained, but nobody noticed the problem during inspections or preflight checks. Or the pilot didn’t allow for weather, properly plan the route, or eye the fuel gauge. Maybe the pilot was tired or wasn’t ahead of things, which is a big, hairy problem when moving at high airspeed. Thus, you can die fast. 

And sometimes, stuff just happens. People make mistakes. There’s what we call “bad headwork,” usually preceded by a lack of preparation or training. Then things spin out of control into a “kaboom” moment. Maybe you can save yourself with some sh!t-hot pilotage, or maybe not. But why tempt fate, right? 

The takeaway from that introduction to Navy flying was always to be careful, know your equipment and procedures cold, stick to the basics of aviation and navigation, keep your head in the game, communicate, and pay attention to details because not paying attention can quickly kill you.

Focus on Safety

Nothing has changed since I heard that talk in 1982. Indeed, I suspect something like that safety lecture has echoed off the walls of flight schools since the days of the Wright Brothers. An old saying in aviation is that “these lessons were written in blood.” Just be sure it isn’t your blood or the blood of people in the back of your bird.

The thing is, though, that the human mind tends towards what psychologists call “recency bias.” Things are the way they are because, well, that’s the way they have been, and it’s how they ought to remain. And so it shall be, right? (Spoiler: no.) 

We could use this idea to explain why, say, the stock market will always go up, at least until it doesn’t. But in this note, let’s focus on how, nowadays, people are convinced of the general safety of commercial flights. Yes, there are crashes and fatalities, but not that many and not too often. And in the U.S., there hasn’t been what’s called a passenger flight “midair,” a commercial jet hitting another airplane up in the sky, since 1986 and the AeroMexico Flight 498 crash near San Diego.

AeroMexico Flight 498 crash, San Diego, 1986. San Diego Tribune.

But despite the relative paucity of mishaps, the immutable laws of probability are still out there. Math is unforgiving. And with enough flights over enough time, something, somewhere will go wrong. And the fact is that many things can go wrong in an airplane. More broadly, some might even say that the universe wants to kill you. (Spoiler: yes, it does.)

So, the idea is that aircraft pilots should always be ahead of potential problems and keep everything under positive control from one end of a flight to the other. And obviously, that didn’t happen last week when an Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines passenger jet, killing 67 people, all well within the approach limits to Reagan National Airport, across the river from Washington, D.C.

Now Comes the Investigation

A high-profile investigation is underway, and no less than President Trump has already offered a few thoughts. But based on my many years of Navy training, I’m reluctant to get ahead of the formal inquiry. Let the experts do their thing, right? They’ll comb through the debris and much else, then come up with a report. Undoubtedly, the aviation community will learn quite a bit, and the world will have some answers.

At the same time, though, it’s not unfair to point out that something is wrong with an airspace system in which this kind of midair event could ever set up, let alone occur. And it’s never too early to discuss what’s wrong with flawed systems and processes. 

Reagan National Airport (DCA, in aviation acronym) is a busy facility that handles an average of about 900 daily flights. Obviously, it serves the U.S. capitol region and, as such, enjoys extra-special oversight from political authorities. It’s fair to say that DCA receives more scrutiny than, say, the South Succotash Regional Airfield in Flyover Country. 

Meanwhile, the airspace around the U.S. Capitol Region is super busy, with Dulles to the northwest, Baltimore-Washington to the northeast, various smaller airfields serving private and corporate aviation, and more than a few military sites. From ground level up into high altitudes, this part of the country is routinely crisscrossed by all manner of departing and inbound flights, both domestic and international, civilian and military. 

Now, add to all of this the fact that this region of airspace has more than a few air defense systems integrated into the overall scheme. I won’t go into details except to say that if you try to fly over the White House, somebody will shoot you down. 

If you’ve ever flown in or out of Reagan National, it all seems pretty routine. You board an airplane and take off, just like at LAX, if not South Succotash. Inbound, you board an airplane somewhere, and a while later, you land at DCA, walk off, and hail a taxi or jump onto the Metro. To most travelers, traveling to or from DCA is just another flight in the remarkably safe U.S. air traffic system. 

Then again, there’s much going on within that traffic system that most passengers don’t see, not the least of which are all the helicopters flying around Washington. Military, to be sure; lots of them perform (let’s be honest here) a taxi service for bigshots. Also, federal, state, and local law enforcement helos, plus more than a few medical flights, news collectors, and other private flights. 

This brings us to last week's fatal crash. It involved an Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, an aircraft that has been around for over 40 years in multiple models, including a workhorse Navy version. The beast is nothing mysterious; it’s reliable, flies well, and has qualified many tens of thousands of U.S. and foreign pilots over the decades. 

And there’s nothing unusual about how military helicopters fly up and down the Potomac River basin. It’s a low-level (i.e., near the ground) mission route that dates to the 1950s. Over the decades, countless locals and visitors have seen and heard those military birds whump-whumping to and fro. They serve all sites ranging from the Pentagon to Langley CIA headquarters, to innumerable other facilities with helo pads on the roof or in the parking lot, and even downtown Washington, D.C., and the White House lawn. 

So, helicopters and DCA flights are a normal part of the Washington, D.C. aviation ecosystem, but what the hell happened last week? Because colliding a helo with a civilian airliner on final approach to a major airport is not supposed to happen. 

Again, I’ll pull my punches here. We’ll await the final report of the investigation, but it’s no stretch to say that the pilots of the American Airlines plane likely did nothing wrong. They were aviating, navigating, and communicating. They followed procedures on a designated, precisely laid-out approach route toward a scheduled landing under constant and positive radar coverage and air traffic control (ATC), like 899 other flights into DCA on an average day.

From what’s in the news, ATC was handling both the airliner and the helo. Per protocol in the busy D.C. region, there ought to have been two controllers, one for each kind of aircraft. But on the night of the crash, there was only one. Hmm… Still, that one ATC person was talking on the radio with all involved. Based on the audiotape of calls, ATC apparently thought that the Army bird would clear the airliner. 

And then we have that Army helicopter. One pilot had about 1,000 hours of flight time, and the other about 450 hours, or so they tell us. A crew chief was also onboard, whose job was to monitor communications, check the windows for traffic, and slap the pilots on the helmet if they started to do strange things.

Frankly, 1,000 hours of flight time is good but not great. Yes, it’s several years’ worth of flying, but it’s just not a lot of flight time in the big scheme of things. For example, 1,000 hours is barely enough to get in the door of a regional airline for an interview, where the takeaway is that they might be interested but want to see at least 1,500 hours. And no major airline would hire a 1,000-hour pilot. You’d be hard-pressed to find a 1,000-hour commercial pilot, let alone one who ever logged a landing at DCA. 

And 450 hours is not much flight time in any aircraft, especially a tactical bird like a UH-60. To be blunt, 450 hours is not a lot of time in any airplane above, say, a Cessna 152, and even that doesn’t make anybody into a Cessna ace. In other words, at 450 hours in anything, you’re just beginning to become comfortable with the flight regime in general, and that’s before you get into the intricacies of a complex military aircraft. 

Let’s say that a pilot finishes Army flight training with about 200 hours of flight time. So this particular pilot had what? About 250 hours in the UH-60, but over what period? Well, that’s not public information yet.

No, it’s not public, but I suspect the pilot’s logbook will show a minimal routine of qualification flights to maintain proficiency. As in, maybe 10 or so hours per month, which is barely enough for currency and basic airmanship. And that paucity of hours is absolutely not what you want in pilots who fly low-level, night missions up and down the Potomac River basin, through DCA-controlled airspace, perhaps while wearing night vision goggles which distort everything. However, we don’t know about night vision right now. 

If we don’t want low-hours pilots flying around DCA, how else can someone build up their flight time absent these training missions? Hey, try flying somewhere else. It’s a big country with many Army bases and military operating areas. I hear that the 101st Airborne is hiring over in Kentucky. Get your hours out in the operational world. Don’t put nugget aviators into the DCA flight pattern. 

A Culture That Wants It Both Ways

Okay, I’ll refrain from further comment on the personnel side of this event. Let’s allow the crash investigators to dig into the background and preparation of the ATC controller, the pilots, the aircraft's condition, the radars' calibration, altimeter settings, etc. 

But it’s not unfair to take a swipe at the Washington, D.C. political culture of entitlement. That is, the city and region are home to powerful forces that want an airport nearby, meaning DCA, so they can fly in and out without a long commute from, say, Dulles or Baltimore-Washington. Indeed, decades ago, in the 1960s-70s, the Washington Metro was designed and built to serve DCA and take people straight downtown into the maze of federal buildings. 

By comparison, most other large cities don’t have a taxpayer-funded metro to the airport. Yes, some have rail transit, but most don’t, not even ultra-busy locales like LaGuardia or JFK. Nowadays, most cities of any size have moved the main airport far out of town. Denver comes to mind with its new airport out in the distant prairie. 

Meanwhile, Capitol Region airspace is filled with military aviation, certainly those low-level flights up and down the Potomac River basin. For reasons of geography, these flights directly cross the landing paths into DCA, and only strict altitude limits and positive air control reinforce the notion of “safe” operations. That, and lots of disciplined training and paying attention. 

Does it all work? Well, it works until it doesn’t. And it’s fair to ask how safe the overall layout is, certainly after last week’s midair. 

Some Systems Outlive Themselves

Like all aircraft crashes, last week’s midair stands alone in its own way, a tragic event with horrific casualties. Yet it also falls into a certain pattern of other occurrences that highlight how quite a few long-established government systems and processes have broken down, if not outlived themselves. 

For example, two years ago, a train derailment spewed toxic gas across East Palestine, Ohio, and the federal government offered a slow and ineffective response. Was that because people don’t know how to handle train accidents? No, it’s because the government agencies responsible didn’t do their job. 

More recently, floods devastated North Carolina last fall, and again, the feds were all but absent; hmm… perhaps they could have used more military helicopters down there for training, yes?

Last month, we saw the LA fires, which highlighted failed public safety preparation and slow responses by federal, state, and local governments. Heck, the reservoir intended for water to fight the fire was empty, and the LA fire department had hundreds of fire trucks laid up for long-overdue maintenance. Is this how the government is supposed to work?

Now we have this midair near DCA, and based on what we know, the systemic failure speaks for itself: Too much risk was stuffed into a small volume of airspace. And along came those unforgiving laws of probability.

There are many lessons here, and not just for aviation. These apply broadly to life everywhere, and not just to flying airplanes. It’s all about how you manage your affairs, so as not to crash and burn, as we used to say in the Navy. 

And on this point, I’ll sign off. Thank you for subscribing and reading.