Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I got to talk about this plane situation and the
plane crash with the chopper, and they said, as you
heard there in our newscast, they blame potentially a miscommunication
from the tower to the chopper to tell the chopper
to wait for the plane and then follow the rear
(00:22):
of the plane. Now, it's a very busy area over
the Potomac River next to the helipad where the helicopter
came from, and also the Reagan National Airport. The very
very interesting part of this is they said the reason
was for a second or so, maybe even less than
a second, the chopper pilot had it's their finger on
(00:48):
the button to communicate to the tower while the tower
was giving those instructions, which in a lot of ways,
if you have a two way radio, this is how
it works. You hit your button to let yourself talk
and we cannot hear what's coming back the other side
in that moment. Now, I don't know if just eight
tenths of a second is enough time to lose all
(01:10):
of your instructions there, So I'd have questions about that.
But there's got to be a better way to communicate
for these people, right, I mean a point eight second
of my finger being on a button to cut out
some of the instructions I'm receiving from the tower. That
shouldn't be enough for what happened to that chopper in
that plane. For that to happen.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
You and I have done a lot of radio and
we've done stuff like between Omaha de Moin. We consider
here at a studio in Omaha, and we can be
on the radio in Des Moines, and if that happens,
our producer can talk to us at the same time
we're talking on the radio. They can I could be
talking right now and going blah blah trump, blah blah, musk,
and then producer could be like, please stop talking, go
to break. If we have that capability here with the
(01:54):
silly little thing that we do, we don't have that
for air traffic control. H And how about this if
if you're especially if you're teaching someone how to fly
a helicopter, do we have to do that around commercial
air traffic? We run out of space someplace else where
you can go out there and practice. When I teach
my fifteen year old son how to drive a car,
(02:15):
I don't take him on I eighty for his first time.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, that that's a pretty good point. If you got
thoughts on this, I'd love to hear from you. Four
oh two five five eight eleven ten. Four oh two
five five eight eleven ten, Especially if you've got some
experience in flight or communications. This would be a great
conversation piece for you to jump into. You can also
email me Emory at kfab dot com. Emory at kfab
(02:40):
dot com. Thanks for listening to our show today. We're
talking to you about this helicopter plane crash situation from Washington,
DC last month where we had questions. There was a
bit of a briefing and they said one of the
reasons they think this possibly could happen is that there
was a communication malfunction where the tower was giving instructions
(03:00):
to the copter and the copter had their finger on
their microphone button, which stops audio coming into the copter.
Don't know how that science works or why, as we
talked about, it's not the way that ours works. We
can we can have somebody talking in our ear while
we're talking to be still on the radio the entire time.
So how is that not equipped in a military helicopter. Well,
(03:21):
we're talking about it. Four h two five five eight
eleven ten is the number, and we'll start with Mark
on the phone line today. Mark, welcome in.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
What's up.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Yeah, it's not likely. First off, I'm a pilot, so
it's not likely that the eight tenths of a second
makes the hill of beans or the difference. So they
in that press threefing which I did listen to.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
The whole thing, they said that.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
They had a problem with the altimeter, which shows a
height that they're flying at. And the way it works
is their TRAFFL Control says altimeters setting two nine eighty seven,
let's say, and then that regional jet would have been
given the same altimeter setting so that they both have
(04:09):
the same setting in the airplane, and then so they're
both reading the same essentially between the two airplanes. But
they said they have said there's some problem where the
data is erroneous, and then the other challenges. When you
set that altimeter, then it's flying like you know, it's
(04:32):
like plus or minus twenty five feet. Okay, So let's
say the altimeter setting is off a little bit in
the CRJ and it's reading fifth twenty five feet low
too high, and the other ones reading twenty five feet
too low. Then you know, you're now within fifty feet
of each other. And that route allowed him to fly
(04:53):
like one hundred feet, which is crazy. Most separation on
airplanes is one thousand feet. But then, but when the
helicopter accepted responsibility by saying, you know, we will maintain
VFR separation, it was only the helicopter's responsibility to maintain separation,
(05:17):
regardless of instruments, regardless of anything else. It was their
responsibility to maintain separation from the crg Now, what went wrong?
Why they didn't see it? Chances are they're going to say, well,
they're in night vision goggles, which is like looking through
a roll of toilet paper in that you don't have
(05:37):
a lot of peripheral vision. But either way, you know,
they weren't looking out of the plane because nobody said,
you know, oh darn, we're gonna you know, right before
they crashed.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
Right, you know, most of the most of the audio
you hear.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
You hear somebody say you know, I love you honey
before they crash or something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Right, they didn't even see it. It is kind of
what it kind of sounded like. They didn't even see it.
Was there a chance Mark I saw another helicopter former
military helicopter pilot was on television and they said, with
the backdrop of DC or the surrounding area, there's a
chance that they wouldn't have even seen the lights of
this thing until they were right on top of it.
Speaker 6 (06:19):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, especially when you're that low, you don't see lights.
I mean, there's lights everywhere. I mean when you're flying
even you know, you can see Omaha from the Kansas
Nebraska border. You can see the lights of the city,
but it's down low. As you get lower, you know,
it becomes more blurry, and you know, when you're flying.
(06:40):
It said they're radio altimeter was accurate, and so they
were flying two hundred and seventy eight feet and chances are,
you know, because they said there was a discrepancy between
the two.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
Pilots as to what the.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Altimeter setting on the pressurized timeter between the two one
said three hundred and the other one said four hundred.
But chances are they were like, oh, we're at two
seventy eight. Well, that number doesn't matter because the CRJ
is using the same thing. And then at some point
(07:16):
the CRJ was nose up for some reason and maximum
knows up. So they may have thought not said anything.
Who knows, right, But at the end of the day,
the pilot that accepted responsibility is the one that said
will maintain visual separation from the CRJ that that is
a common legal thing.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Hey, Mark, this is good stuff. Thanks for calling in
with your expertise on this. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
And that's why there is an accident on Miller Avenue
about one hundred and thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Okay, the good idea. We're about thirty minutes away from
our first traffic so we'll keep an eye on that.
Thanks Mark. See all right, let's go to Dave on
the phone line of four oh two, five, five, eight, eleven,
ten day. Have you got something on this helicopter?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (08:01):
I appreciate the last callers technical explanation, but the NTSB
needs to apply Ockham's razor to this, and OCAM's.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Razor says that the simplest explanation is probably correct. The
simplest explanation is that former Secretary of Transportation Buddha Judge
did not update all that safety equipment in these air
traffic control towers. I heard a congressional report about three
(08:37):
weeks before this happened that this equipment is forty years old.
I've also heard reports that other countries have vastly superior
safety equipment. And the other thing is it's been widely
reported that we're understaffed. I mean, Pete Buddha Judge was
too busy not building his electrical vehicle charging station around
(09:00):
the nation and combating racist highways. I mean, this guy
needs to be called before Congress and closely examined about
his abysmal failure which cast over sixty people their lives.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, I mean, Dave, I think that he's the I mean,
we could say that he wasn't actually the Secretary of
Transportation when this happened, though, so I'm not exactly sure
on that. And then just to like clarify the last
point there, I mean, the simplest explanation is probably the
right one. There's a chance that they just didn't see this.
(09:39):
And I think, why is this helicopter anywhere near the runway?
Would be like the thing that I would wonder, And
why is the military doing a night vision training exercise
with anybody? I don't even care how experienced they are
anywhere near one of the most busy airports with and
they have to be in a very small space to
get to that runway because they can't fly over Washington DC.
(10:00):
I have a lot of other questions besides trying to
pin this on the previous secretary of Transportation, but I
appreciate your thought on that still. I mean, it does
make some sense that that previous secretary of Transportation would
be responsible to try to update that stuff. But if
it's forty years old, and I don't know what the
(10:20):
lifespan on some of this stuff is, but you could
you could go back a decade probably and blame anybody
who is the Secretary of Transportation on that. There are
a lot of the things that I think are responsible
Before we get to that point, though. Robert's on the
phone line. Robert, Welcome to the show. What do you think?
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Hi, how you doing?
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I'm good?
Speaker 6 (10:38):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (10:38):
Night vision goggles? Yeah yeah, the first caller talked about
looking through some toilet paper tubes. Yeah, right on. Just
one additional there's so much light allusion when you're down low. Yeah,
it's like looking into the sun. If you have night
(11:00):
vision goggles and you're in a busy area like the
inside the belt line of Washington, DC. Yeah, that's just crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
You're blinded, so so.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
What do you think. I know they talked about the
night vision goggles being used at different points. Are those
things that you could like remove kind of like you know,
baseball players were like to flip down sunglasses where you
can kind of flip them up and down up. Okay,
So so they there's a chance that maybe even though
they had them, that they had them flipped up when
they were down low. Do you think that vision would
(11:32):
still have been a problem though, As low as they
were and as close to the runway as they were
to trying to determine if a plane was coming close
to them.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
It could be difficult. I'm not all that familiar with
the airspace as a pilot in the DC area, but
I can tell you having flown in and out of
rigging that's just if I was finying my private fix
screen aircrew, that would just be crazy. Yeah, there's so
(12:03):
many lights, it's easy you can hide a big plane
insight of all those lights. At that altitude.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Well, it certainly explains why they may not have seen it.
Robert really appreciate you being on the show. Thanks for
calling in.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, it makes sense to me when we talk about
it in that context, because I light pollution is I
think a thing that can be a little bit different
for us as we you know, talk about one thing
or another thing as regards to this. But darn man,
that as a difficult situation to try to reconcile with.
(12:39):
Just Hey, yeah, this helicopter is doing a training exercise
just right here. Michael is on our phone line at
four oh two, five, five, eight eleven ten. Welcome Michael.
What's on your mind?
Speaker 6 (12:49):
Well? Who? First of all, I'd like the comment that
we've got a lot of good technical things that popped
up from previous callers. I'm an old marine worked on helicopters.
I worked communications navigations, flew on a lot of sorties,
putting a lot of night flights. We use night vision goggles.
When this accident first came up, I was sitting with
(13:09):
a couple of other marines and the first thing we
said is what everybody on the bird all we're wearing
night vision goggles. You know, someone has said that they
were like looking through toilet paper tubes, but it's worse
than that. It's like imagine that you're driving along a
highway heading west and the sun is setting and you've
(13:30):
got to hold your hand up to try to block
the light out of your eyes so you can see
where you're going. Well, imagine doing that holding toilet paper
tubes up while you're trying to block the light. That's
what it's like when you get hit with any light
at night time. For the Army to have every single
individual wearing night vision goggles during this training operation is
(13:52):
just moronic. I can't believe that the Army has that policy.
We never did that. If if you have someone with
night vision goggles, you have someone with night vision goggles
pilot or cold pilot and the other one without, and
you also have an observer as well that can have
optional night vision goggles on or off, but you don't
(14:14):
potentially blind every single person in the aircraft. That's point
number one that has a moronic policy that the Army had.
In my opinion, we never did things like that in
the Marines. Unless I accuse have dropped tremendously sense of
time I've been in in the seventies and eighties. Feel
free to jump into.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Inter reupt well all just because this is good stuff.
And first of all, Michael, thank you for your service
to the country. You know, I mean what you and
so many people have done for this country. Needs to
be thanked every time that we have an opportunity. But
this is good stuff. Because different branches might have different policies.
Do you think that was a policy that the Army
(14:53):
has or do you think that that was a mistake
that was made by the people who were actually in
the aircraft.
Speaker 6 (15:00):
I have heard that was a policy of the Army,
and that is not the policy of the Navy or
the Marine Corps. When we sent our flights out. You
have one person with night vision goggles that they can
see things, perhaps too, but you never blind your entire crew.
If you get a flash or light, you blind everyone.
That's a problem. Now this was ancient, long ago. But
(15:20):
as far as the communication, the communication interruption I called
BS on that line, a fraction of a second or
miss one small communication shouldn't be a problem. That is
really sloppy air traffic control work. If you're running the
air traffic control tower, you shouldn't have to worry about
(15:40):
a few seconds here or a few seconds there. You
should have spacing that's good enough that if you have
an aircraft that is intentionally targeting another aircraft, you have
time to contact them and get them out. Of the
way to run everybody in that pact to not notice
something like that, you're either very sloppy or severely under step.
(16:04):
So that is a weak point. I say overall, this
thing was probably sixty five percent army fault, thirty five
percent air traffic controller part bolt. Now, as far as
the altimeter settings, someone had mentioned it before. When whenever
we fly into a region we have different air pressure
around the area, we have to contact and find out
(16:27):
what the settings are for that area, and we have
to make adjustments to our instruments so we know we're
flying at the correct altitude. But as someone mentioned, hey,
you might be twenty five feet off or or fifty
feet off or something like that. But still the air
traffic controllers need to be on top of that. The
civilian aircraft, I don't see any fault at all. The
(16:50):
things that they did, even if they're altimeters were a
little bit off, that shouldn't have caused this problem. Now,
the night vision goggles with everybody in there, that was
a major policy fluke or flaw that they need to
get rid of. They need to dump that. And you
mentioned before running it in a congested area. Someone said, yeah,
I wouldn't teach my kid to drive on AI eight Exactly.
(17:13):
If you need to run military operations so that your
team is familiar with this area so you can operate it,
you damn well better run it in times when there
are very very few airplanes around the area. You do
not run a military operation in that. And I just
it is unimaginable to me that they did it with
(17:35):
everyone where a night vision goggles goggles in a congested
area like that. So why the Army had operations in
a strongly congested area when there was a lot of
air traffic is beyond me. That is a very poor
policy to have everyone where the night vision goggles at
the same time when you could potentially blind everyone in there?
(17:59):
Is it? Now as far as communication interruption, like I said,
I called BS on that that's nonsensical. Yes, you can
get some interruption in your communications, but the air traffic
control needs to allow enough time for all kinds of problems.
So that was very sloppy air traffic control work with
extremely poor army policies. And now the altimeter may have
(18:23):
been a slight thing. Sure you may have had a
delay in communications. You know, when I was in it
used to be when we played war games that you
would have to have your observer crawl up into the
ceiling switched the radio over to communicate with the pilot. Yeah,
and the coal pilot, and he would lose sight of
the traffic. I actually designed the system to bypass that
(18:45):
by now it shouldn't be a problem. If there is
a problem with that, it needs to be fixed immediately.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
So yeah, yeah, it's a caval cates Michael. I just
I really appreciate this is such a great call, such
great information from you. Thank you so much for a
feeling to you know, to call in and give us
this info. And we really appreciate that today.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
All right, well, I will step down and anytime something
pops up in the area, I will give you a call.
I haven't talked to you, I haven't spoken to you
for a long time or.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Every so well, hey call more Michael. This is fantastic.
Thank you so much, and thanks again for your service.
But yeah, great stuff there. I trust people like him
way more than I trust myself on this. But if
we had to, or if we did a draft of
the things that we would have changed or things that
(19:38):
we thought were wrong with this picture in this specific situation.
I think the helicopter being there at all is like
the number one draft pick, right, Like, how how at
nighttime when it's pitch blackout, how are we doing a
military exercise? It's not even like one hundred percent necessary
(19:58):
in that moment. It's not an urgent matter. How is
that happening at all? Anywhere close to the runway of
the airport would be my first And how would they
not know that planes are trying to land in that
area to begin with? I mean we can get to
the night vision goggles and the communication later, just the
fact that they were there in the first place is
a bit weird to me.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
I agree, and especially since you think about towns like
Omaha and Wichita, you know, similarly sized towns and small towns,
big small towns. I've got family down there Emory, and
they know people who lost loved ones on that plane.
And I don't know what you could tell them. They're like, well,
you know, this was a little bit off and then
(20:39):
this happened, and maybe this What are you going to
tell them that has them say oh, okay, that's reasonable,
and is there anything.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
No, And it didn't have anything to do with their
pilots either they were just doing what they were normally doing,
and unfortunately this thing was there. A military helicopter was
just there and kind of ran right into it. I
just it's hard for me to imagine that this is
a thing that we even have to talk about. I
do agree, though we're not one hundred percent sure. I'm
(21:09):
not one hundred percent sure at least that they were
wearing the night vision goggles, if they have the capabilities
of being up or down at any point they were
outfitted with them. I don't know for a fact that
they were all down and everybody was blinded by the
light pollution at that level. You would think that people
that have been flying Blackhawk choppers for as long as
we're told that these people were. I mean, this was
(21:31):
a crew that Pete Haigseth said was pretty experience. This
was not beginner class here, and so I would have
a hard time thinking that they wouldn't have the ability
to make that adjustment if they were having problems with
the light pollution at that altitude in a place certainly
they had flown copters before, So I don't know. Man,
(21:52):
the communication thing, we can kind of go back and
forth on what was or wasn't heard by the copter itself.
I think the most likely scenario is they thought one
plane was the plane they were looking at, didn't even
know this other plane was coming, didn't get clarification from
the tower, and ended up flying right into it before
they could see it. And we've heard from other military
helicopter pilots there is a chance that they didn't even
(22:13):
see that thing even with the regular eyesight, based solely
on the fact that it blends so well in with
that surrounding area and it's just a really busy area.
I think there's just a lot of confusion there, and
the biggest problem was the fact that they were there
in the first place.
I got to talk about this plane situation and the
plane crash with the chopper, and they said, as you
heard there in our newscast, they blame potentially a miscommunication
from the tower to the chopper to tell the chopper
to wait for the plane and then follow the rear
(00:22):
of the plane. Now, it's a very busy area over
the Potomac River next to the helipad where the helicopter
came from, and also the Reagan National Airport. The very
very interesting part of this is they said the reason
was for a second or so, maybe even less than
a second, the chopper pilot had it's their finger on
(00:48):
the button to communicate to the tower while the tower
was giving those instructions, which in a lot of ways,
if you have a two way radio, this is how
it works. You hit your button to let yourself talk
and we cannot hear what's coming back the other side
in that moment. Now, I don't know if just eight
tenths of a second is enough time to lose all
(01:10):
of your instructions there, So I'd have questions about that.
But there's got to be a better way to communicate
for these people, right, I mean a point eight second
of my finger being on a button to cut out
some of the instructions I'm receiving from the tower. That
shouldn't be enough for what happened to that chopper in
that plane. For that to happen.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
You and I have done a lot of radio and
we've done stuff like between Omaha de Moin. We consider
here at a studio in Omaha, and we can be
on the radio in Des Moines, and if that happens,
our producer can talk to us at the same time
we're talking on the radio. They can I could be
talking right now and going blah blah trump, blah blah, musk,
and then producer could be like, please stop talking, go
to break. If we have that capability here with the
(01:54):
silly little thing that we do, we don't have that
for air traffic control. H And how about this if
if you're especially if you're teaching someone how to fly
a helicopter, do we have to do that around commercial
air traffic? We run out of space someplace else where
you can go out there and practice. When I teach
my fifteen year old son how to drive a car,
(02:15):
I don't take him on I eighty for his first time.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, that that's a pretty good point. If you got
thoughts on this, I'd love to hear from you. Four
oh two five five eight eleven ten. Four oh two
five five eight eleven ten, Especially if you've got some
experience in flight or communications. This would be a great
conversation piece for you to jump into. You can also
email me Emory at kfab dot com. Emory at kfab
(02:40):
dot com. Thanks for listening to our show today. We're
talking to you about this helicopter plane crash situation from Washington,
DC last month where we had questions. There was a
bit of a briefing and they said one of the
reasons they think this possibly could happen is that there
was a communication malfunction where the tower was giving instructions
(03:00):
to the copter and the copter had their finger on
their microphone button, which stops audio coming into the copter.
Don't know how that science works or why, as we
talked about, it's not the way that ours works. We
can we can have somebody talking in our ear while
we're talking to be still on the radio the entire time.
So how is that not equipped in a military helicopter. Well,
(03:21):
we're talking about it. Four h two five five eight
eleven ten is the number, and we'll start with Mark
on the phone line today. Mark, welcome in.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
What's up.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Yeah, it's not likely. First off, I'm a pilot, so
it's not likely that the eight tenths of a second
makes the hill of beans or the difference. So they
in that press threefing which I did listen to.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
The whole thing, they said that.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
They had a problem with the altimeter, which shows a
height that they're flying at. And the way it works
is their TRAFFL Control says altimeters setting two nine eighty seven,
let's say, and then that regional jet would have been
given the same altimeter setting so that they both have
(04:09):
the same setting in the airplane, and then so they're
both reading the same essentially between the two airplanes. But
they said they have said there's some problem where the
data is erroneous, and then the other challenges. When you
set that altimeter, then it's flying like you know, it's
(04:32):
like plus or minus twenty five feet. Okay, So let's
say the altimeter setting is off a little bit in
the CRJ and it's reading fifth twenty five feet low
too high, and the other ones reading twenty five feet
too low. Then you know, you're now within fifty feet
of each other. And that route allowed him to fly
(04:53):
like one hundred feet, which is crazy. Most separation on
airplanes is one thousand feet. But then, but when the
helicopter accepted responsibility by saying, you know, we will maintain
VFR separation, it was only the helicopter's responsibility to maintain separation,
(05:17):
regardless of instruments, regardless of anything else. It was their
responsibility to maintain separation from the crg Now, what went wrong?
Why they didn't see it? Chances are they're going to say, well,
they're in night vision goggles, which is like looking through
a roll of toilet paper in that you don't have
(05:37):
a lot of peripheral vision. But either way, you know,
they weren't looking out of the plane because nobody said,
you know, oh darn, we're gonna you know, right before
they crashed.
Speaker 5 (05:51):
Right, you know, most of the most of the audio
you hear.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
You hear somebody say you know, I love you honey
before they crash or something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Right, they didn't even see it. It is kind of
what it kind of sounded like. They didn't even see it.
Was there a chance Mark I saw another helicopter former
military helicopter pilot was on television and they said, with
the backdrop of DC or the surrounding area, there's a
chance that they wouldn't have even seen the lights of
this thing until they were right on top of it.
Speaker 6 (06:19):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah, especially when you're that low, you don't see lights.
I mean, there's lights everywhere. I mean when you're flying
even you know, you can see Omaha from the Kansas
Nebraska border. You can see the lights of the city,
but it's down low. As you get lower, you know,
it becomes more blurry, and you know, when you're flying.
(06:40):
It said they're radio altimeter was accurate, and so they
were flying two hundred and seventy eight feet and chances are,
you know, because they said there was a discrepancy between
the two.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
Pilots as to what the.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Altimeter setting on the pressurized timeter between the two one
said three hundred and the other one said four hundred.
But chances are they were like, oh, we're at two
seventy eight. Well, that number doesn't matter because the CRJ
is using the same thing. And then at some point
(07:16):
the CRJ was nose up for some reason and maximum
knows up. So they may have thought not said anything.
Who knows, right, But at the end of the day,
the pilot that accepted responsibility is the one that said
will maintain visual separation from the CRJ that that is
a common legal thing.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Hey, Mark, this is good stuff. Thanks for calling in
with your expertise on this. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
And that's why there is an accident on Miller Avenue
about one hundred and thirty nine.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Okay, the good idea. We're about thirty minutes away from
our first traffic so we'll keep an eye on that.
Thanks Mark. See all right, let's go to Dave on
the phone line of four oh two, five, five, eight, eleven,
ten day. Have you got something on this helicopter?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (08:01):
I appreciate the last callers technical explanation, but the NTSB
needs to apply Ockham's razor to this, and OCAM's.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Razor says that the simplest explanation is probably correct. The
simplest explanation is that former Secretary of Transportation Buddha Judge
did not update all that safety equipment in these air
traffic control towers. I heard a congressional report about three
(08:37):
weeks before this happened that this equipment is forty years old.
I've also heard reports that other countries have vastly superior
safety equipment. And the other thing is it's been widely
reported that we're understaffed. I mean, Pete Buddha Judge was
too busy not building his electrical vehicle charging station around
(09:00):
the nation and combating racist highways. I mean, this guy
needs to be called before Congress and closely examined about
his abysmal failure which cast over sixty people their lives.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Yeah, I mean, Dave, I think that he's the I mean,
we could say that he wasn't actually the Secretary of
Transportation when this happened, though, so I'm not exactly sure
on that. And then just to like clarify the last
point there, I mean, the simplest explanation is probably the
right one. There's a chance that they just didn't see this.
(09:39):
And I think, why is this helicopter anywhere near the runway?
Would be like the thing that I would wonder, And
why is the military doing a night vision training exercise
with anybody? I don't even care how experienced they are
anywhere near one of the most busy airports with and
they have to be in a very small space to
get to that runway because they can't fly over Washington DC.
(10:00):
I have a lot of other questions besides trying to
pin this on the previous secretary of Transportation, but I
appreciate your thought on that still. I mean, it does
make some sense that that previous secretary of Transportation would
be responsible to try to update that stuff. But if
it's forty years old, and I don't know what the
(10:20):
lifespan on some of this stuff is, but you could
you could go back a decade probably and blame anybody
who is the Secretary of Transportation on that. There are
a lot of the things that I think are responsible
Before we get to that point, though. Robert's on the
phone line. Robert, Welcome to the show. What do you think?
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Hi, how you doing?
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I'm good?
Speaker 6 (10:38):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (10:38):
Night vision goggles? Yeah yeah, the first caller talked about
looking through some toilet paper tubes. Yeah, right on. Just
one additional there's so much light allusion when you're down low. Yeah,
it's like looking into the sun. If you have night
(11:00):
vision goggles and you're in a busy area like the
inside the belt line of Washington, DC. Yeah, that's just crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
You're blinded, so so.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
What do you think. I know they talked about the
night vision goggles being used at different points. Are those
things that you could like remove kind of like you know,
baseball players were like to flip down sunglasses where you
can kind of flip them up and down up. Okay,
So so they there's a chance that maybe even though
they had them, that they had them flipped up when
they were down low. Do you think that vision would
(11:32):
still have been a problem though, As low as they
were and as close to the runway as they were
to trying to determine if a plane was coming close
to them.
Speaker 5 (11:42):
It could be difficult. I'm not all that familiar with
the airspace as a pilot in the DC area, but
I can tell you having flown in and out of
rigging that's just if I was finying my private fix
screen aircrew, that would just be crazy. Yeah, there's so
(12:03):
many lights, it's easy you can hide a big plane
insight of all those lights. At that altitude.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Well, it certainly explains why they may not have seen it.
Robert really appreciate you being on the show. Thanks for
calling in.
Speaker 6 (12:17):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, it makes sense to me when we talk about
it in that context, because I light pollution is I
think a thing that can be a little bit different
for us as we you know, talk about one thing
or another thing as regards to this. But darn man,
that as a difficult situation to try to reconcile with.
(12:39):
Just Hey, yeah, this helicopter is doing a training exercise
just right here. Michael is on our phone line at
four oh two, five, five, eight eleven ten. Welcome Michael.
What's on your mind?
Speaker 6 (12:49):
Well? Who? First of all, I'd like the comment that
we've got a lot of good technical things that popped
up from previous callers. I'm an old marine worked on helicopters.
I worked communications navigations, flew on a lot of sorties,
putting a lot of night flights. We use night vision goggles.
When this accident first came up, I was sitting with
(13:09):
a couple of other marines and the first thing we
said is what everybody on the bird all we're wearing
night vision goggles. You know, someone has said that they
were like looking through toilet paper tubes, but it's worse
than that. It's like imagine that you're driving along a
highway heading west and the sun is setting and you've
(13:30):
got to hold your hand up to try to block
the light out of your eyes so you can see
where you're going. Well, imagine doing that holding toilet paper
tubes up while you're trying to block the light. That's
what it's like when you get hit with any light
at night time. For the Army to have every single
individual wearing night vision goggles during this training operation is
(13:52):
just moronic. I can't believe that the Army has that policy.
We never did that. If if you have someone with
night vision goggles, you have someone with night vision goggles
pilot or cold pilot and the other one without, and
you also have an observer as well that can have
optional night vision goggles on or off, but you don't
(14:14):
potentially blind every single person in the aircraft. That's point
number one that has a moronic policy that the Army had.
In my opinion, we never did things like that in
the Marines. Unless I accuse have dropped tremendously sense of
time I've been in in the seventies and eighties. Feel
free to jump into.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Inter reupt well all just because this is good stuff.
And first of all, Michael, thank you for your service
to the country. You know, I mean what you and
so many people have done for this country. Needs to
be thanked every time that we have an opportunity. But
this is good stuff. Because different branches might have different policies.
Do you think that was a policy that the Army
(14:53):
has or do you think that that was a mistake
that was made by the people who were actually in
the aircraft.
Speaker 6 (15:00):
I have heard that was a policy of the Army,
and that is not the policy of the Navy or
the Marine Corps. When we sent our flights out. You
have one person with night vision goggles that they can
see things, perhaps too, but you never blind your entire crew.
If you get a flash or light, you blind everyone.
That's a problem. Now this was ancient, long ago. But
(15:20):
as far as the communication, the communication interruption I called
BS on that line, a fraction of a second or
miss one small communication shouldn't be a problem. That is
really sloppy air traffic control work. If you're running the
air traffic control tower, you shouldn't have to worry about
(15:40):
a few seconds here or a few seconds there. You
should have spacing that's good enough that if you have
an aircraft that is intentionally targeting another aircraft, you have
time to contact them and get them out. Of the
way to run everybody in that pact to not notice
something like that, you're either very sloppy or severely under step.
(16:04):
So that is a weak point. I say overall, this
thing was probably sixty five percent army fault, thirty five
percent air traffic controller part bolt. Now, as far as
the altimeter settings, someone had mentioned it before. When whenever
we fly into a region we have different air pressure
around the area, we have to contact and find out
(16:27):
what the settings are for that area, and we have
to make adjustments to our instruments so we know we're
flying at the correct altitude. But as someone mentioned, hey,
you might be twenty five feet off or or fifty
feet off or something like that. But still the air
traffic controllers need to be on top of that. The
civilian aircraft, I don't see any fault at all. The
(16:50):
things that they did, even if they're altimeters were a
little bit off, that shouldn't have caused this problem. Now,
the night vision goggles with everybody in there, that was
a major policy fluke or flaw that they need to
get rid of. They need to dump that. And you
mentioned before running it in a congested area. Someone said, yeah,
I wouldn't teach my kid to drive on AI eight Exactly.
(17:13):
If you need to run military operations so that your
team is familiar with this area so you can operate it,
you damn well better run it in times when there
are very very few airplanes around the area. You do
not run a military operation in that. And I just
it is unimaginable to me that they did it with
(17:35):
everyone where a night vision goggles goggles in a congested
area like that. So why the Army had operations in
a strongly congested area when there was a lot of
air traffic is beyond me. That is a very poor
policy to have everyone where the night vision goggles at
the same time when you could potentially blind everyone in there?
(17:59):
Is it? Now as far as communication interruption, like I said,
I called BS on that that's nonsensical. Yes, you can
get some interruption in your communications, but the air traffic
control needs to allow enough time for all kinds of problems.
So that was very sloppy air traffic control work with
extremely poor army policies. And now the altimeter may have
(18:23):
been a slight thing. Sure you may have had a
delay in communications. You know, when I was in it
used to be when we played war games that you
would have to have your observer crawl up into the
ceiling switched the radio over to communicate with the pilot. Yeah,
and the coal pilot, and he would lose sight of
the traffic. I actually designed the system to bypass that
(18:45):
by now it shouldn't be a problem. If there is
a problem with that, it needs to be fixed immediately.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
So yeah, yeah, it's a caval cates Michael. I just
I really appreciate this is such a great call, such
great information from you. Thank you so much for a
feeling to you know, to call in and give us
this info. And we really appreciate that today.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
All right, well, I will step down and anytime something
pops up in the area, I will give you a call.
I haven't talked to you, I haven't spoken to you
for a long time or.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Every so well, hey call more Michael. This is fantastic.
Thank you so much, and thanks again for your service.
But yeah, great stuff there. I trust people like him
way more than I trust myself on this. But if
we had to, or if we did a draft of
the things that we would have changed or things that
(19:38):
we thought were wrong with this picture in this specific situation.
I think the helicopter being there at all is like
the number one draft pick, right, Like, how how at
nighttime when it's pitch blackout, how are we doing a
military exercise? It's not even like one hundred percent necessary
(19:58):
in that moment. It's not an urgent matter. How is
that happening at all? Anywhere close to the runway of
the airport would be my first And how would they
not know that planes are trying to land in that
area to begin with? I mean we can get to
the night vision goggles and the communication later, just the
fact that they were there in the first place is
a bit weird to me.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
I agree, and especially since you think about towns like
Omaha and Wichita, you know, similarly sized towns and small towns,
big small towns. I've got family down there Emory, and
they know people who lost loved ones on that plane.
And I don't know what you could tell them. They're like, well,
you know, this was a little bit off and then
(20:39):
this happened, and maybe this What are you going to
tell them that has them say oh, okay, that's reasonable,
and is there anything.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
No, And it didn't have anything to do with their
pilots either they were just doing what they were normally doing,
and unfortunately this thing was there. A military helicopter was
just there and kind of ran right into it. I
just it's hard for me to imagine that this is
a thing that we even have to talk about. I
do agree, though we're not one hundred percent sure. I'm
(21:09):
not one hundred percent sure at least that they were
wearing the night vision goggles, if they have the capabilities
of being up or down at any point they were
outfitted with them. I don't know for a fact that
they were all down and everybody was blinded by the
light pollution at that level. You would think that people
that have been flying Blackhawk choppers for as long as
we're told that these people were. I mean, this was
(21:31):
a crew that Pete Haigseth said was pretty experience. This
was not beginner class here, and so I would have
a hard time thinking that they wouldn't have the ability
to make that adjustment if they were having problems with
the light pollution at that altitude in a place certainly
they had flown copters before, So I don't know. Man,
(21:52):
the communication thing, we can kind of go back and
forth on what was or wasn't heard by the copter itself.
I think the most likely scenario is they thought one
plane was the plane they were looking at, didn't even
know this other plane was coming, didn't get clarification from
the tower, and ended up flying right into it before
they could see it. And we've heard from other military
helicopter pilots there is a chance that they didn't even
(22:13):
see that thing even with the regular eyesight, based solely
on the fact that it blends so well in with
that surrounding area and it's just a really busy area.
I think there's just a lot of confusion there, and
the biggest problem was the fact that they were there
in the first place.
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