January 30, 2025 • 12 mins
A HORRIFIC PLANE CRASH KILLED ALL ABOARD And it wasn't just a plane crash, it was an in air collision between an Army Blackhawk helicopter and an American Airlines commuter jet coming to DC from Wichita. It was full of American and Russian figure skaters and there were no survivors. Thankfully these things happen VERY infrequently but this one is weird because an Army helicopter was involved. If you're the prayerful sort please pray for the families who will be grieving their loved ones. And tell everyone today how much you love them.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It appears that at black Hawk helicopter collided with a
commuter jet that was flying from which Dal, Kansas to Washington, DC.
And just to get a better handle on this, I
was like, who can I call? Who can I call?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, the wine Yogi's a pilot. Many of you may
not know that. Crystal off On so has spent a
long time being a pilot in the Air Force. And
so I was like, you know what, win Yogi, put
on your pilot hat and let's have a chat about
what could have happened, what might have happened, and what
it's like to fly into Reagan in the first place.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hi, Crystal, Hi, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I'm doing good? So for the audience's sake, they know
you love wine, they know you love yoga. What did
you fly in the Air Force?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I see that casey Un thirty five was my major
weapons system. I also flew a beach Jet four hundred,
which is also a Mitsubishi thirty which is more of
a lear jet type, so I'm certified in that. And
I also flew the T thirty seven, which was a
training acrobatic aircraft, so I was certified in that. And
then I ado through little puddle jumpers before I ever
(01:02):
went to pilot training for to see of the Air Force.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So you've flown a few planes, and have you ever
flown in and out of Reagan in DC.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I haven't. You have to have a special certification to
go into Reagan. So usually when we were flying, whether
it was DB's or we had something that was taking
us in that general area, we normally were flying for
the Air Force into Andrews Airport space simply because you know,
if there's an air Force base nearby, you tend to
(01:33):
avoid the civilian just because you know the Stilian airports
are going to be so much more busy, busier, so
if ever you can, you try to avoid that.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I have flown through.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
That airspace because I have flown into Andrews which is
in Maryland, and I have flown in Atlanta's airspace, in
Denver's airspace, in Dallas Fort Works airspace.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I've flown all over the.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
World and various ico to the International Airspace Controlling Agency
kind of like the International FAA. So I have flown
in a number of places where it's variant. Mexico City
is a place where a wild kind of way to
approach in just pimply because of the way the nav
(02:19):
navigational aids are set up and the busyness of the
airport itself.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Now, I know that you and your husband, who is
also a pilot, have been looking at this since last
night and really sort of analyzing this, and it appears
and all of this is speculative, right, we don't really
know exactly what went wrong, but it appears that a
commuter jet was coming into land on an airport that
it did or a runway that wasn't the primary runway
(02:46):
at Reagan because it was a smaller aircraft. And at
the same time, a Blackhawk was doing a training flight.
And we do know that the Blackhawk pilot at one
point said I'm watching this plane. But now there's speculator
that he was watching a plane that was taking off
instead of a plane coming in. And from your perspective,
(03:08):
knowing what little we know, now, what are you guys
kind of spitballing or guessing could have gone wrong here?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So in this particular case, and if you've watched the video,
you can kind of see the bright lights of an
aircraft that was departing off of the main runway.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And so at that point, if the.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
CRJ, So that commuter aircraft, if it is turning onto
its final approach, it very well and again I don't know,
but it very well could have had its belly based
off of its turn profile towards that helicopter. And if
you've ever watched airplanes landing at night, you notice that
most of the lights are towards the front and down
(03:53):
towards the runway as you're approaching the runway, so that
you can get that visual of the runway. Night time flying,
your depth perception is very different. Anyone who has ever
gone hiking in the woods knows you think you need
to list your foot so high, and maybe it's not
high enough because that depth perception is really lacking in
(04:14):
nighttime conditions, so you typically don't necessarily have those glaring
lights on the belly of an aircraft. So that helicopter
pilot very well may have been looking across seeing the
other aircraft on departure, and that's when they did not
take any evasive actions to avoid the aircraft that was
(04:37):
actually kind of turning into their flight path.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I mean, it's possible that he just didn't even see it,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
It is very possible the other thing that happens is
when you're we aircraft have what it's called traffic collision
and avoidant system. The acronym is Tea calf. Even when
I was flying twenty five years ago, we had Tea
calfs and that is a warning system that and I've
had a near midair as well, and that's what they're
(05:05):
called as midair's. When I had maybe jets, we were
out over the Atlantic, very dark, and you're not necessarily
lighting up like you have just your normal light time
because you're not in a landing configuration. And so I
thankfully had a lot of speed because I was on
(05:26):
my way home back to Charleston to go land for
the night. We were done, and I had a lot
of smash that built up so that when I got
my collision avoidance, I was able to climb immediately and
it will kind of tell you to do that. So
I was able to lead off and get a massive
amount of airspace between us and the queue fighters that
(05:46):
were converging on us. And when as soon as I
called in, one of the things that I did as
I went ahead and reported it and I had them
pull the tape so that they could figure out where
the break in the seat when events first began, just
to make sure that we weren't doing anything wrong as well.
And so that's what I canted everybody as we're kind
(06:08):
of going through this. I was also a flight safety officer,
so I was trained in how to go through mishaps
by the Air Force. We have to wait to figure
out all of these details. Since it was a nighttime incident,
the visuals that we get on video are not going
to be obvious as evident. And you know, flying when
(06:32):
we were talking about this this morning, when you are
flying at night, one of the things in a cockpit
is the listeners aren't aware is you don't have lights
on because the more light that your eyes are exposed to,
the closer your pupils will dilate down. Versus when we
keep when you're flying at night, you use red lights,
(06:53):
so because you want your pupils fully dilated, when you're
going into an environment like Washington, DC at that time
of the night where everything is lit up and you
have all this light pollution happening, it is very difficult
to necessarily see everything that might be happening outside of
your cockpit because your eyes are now inundated with all
(07:15):
of this light, and it can be a difficult transition
if perhaps the helicopter pilots were not facing something super
bright and then they're turning into that direction where you
have all of this light. Solution, who knows what was
happening in their cockpit And we're really not going to
know until they figure out air speed and they're going
to get all the information from the black box, altitude,
(07:38):
the recordings that they were having, the conversations that they
were making with Tower, the people, the tapes from Tower itself,
and goes through your process of interviewing everybody involved, and
so I know there's a lot of information out there.
I would just caution everybody just to let Ntspeed do.
It's a job that the Army do. It's investigation, and
(08:02):
then hopefully we will be able to avoid this in
the future. I personally think Reagan should have been shut
down a long time ago, and maybe this will finally
be the impetus to shut it down.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
I've talked to so many pilots who say, when you
ask them what airlines do? What I always ask pilots
when I was a flight attender, like, what what airports
do you love flying into? What airports do you hate
flying out of? And Reagan was always on the list
because there was too much that could go wrong and
if you were going to be targeted by a terrorist,
chances are you're going to becoming that Reagan. That was
(08:32):
their thinking back in the nineties, right, you know they're
doing that somebody else on the text line. Multiple people
have asked us why was that black Hawk helicopter anywhere
in the vicinity of the landing taking takeoff area of Reagan.
I think this stuff happens all the time. I mean,
we have multiple aircraft flying around in different airspaces all
the time, don't we.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
You do, And quite honestly, if they felt that they
were given clearance that perhaps cross that approach end of
that runway, if they thought that they were going to
be coming in to maybe land after the aircraft that
they thought they had a visual on. Again, I have
no idea because I have not heard that particular interaction
(09:15):
with tower.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
But you have that all the time where you're.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Expected to stagger out. I've had to do it myself
flying Saudi Arabia, where the aircraft ahead of me had
to go around because there was an aircraft on the
runway and even though she was cleared to land, our
tech data said the casey went thirty five could not
land with another aircraft on the runway because we don't
have reverse thrusters and we have no ability to avoid.
(09:41):
We take up the whole runway the wingtips. And so
she went around and I had to offset with her
and get visual with her, just to watch everything happening.
And there is in such a condensed airspace, especially with Regan.
For the listeners that may not be aware, but you've
probably heard it repeated by all these experts going on TV,
(10:06):
you have limited corridors because of the capital that you
have to avoid flying that life flying up the Potomac
is one of that. You know, that usual kind of
approach that you're going to come into. You you'll shoot
your approach to the main runway and if you're a
smaller aircraft, circle around to the adjoining UH runway through
three that they're talking about where this incident occurred.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And so you have to.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Understand that not only is it extremely busy, there's a
lot of chatter going on in the radios, and typically
when you're flying, you have the pilot in command, the
person who.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Is physically flying and then their co pilot or first
office navigators run in the checklist.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
It's more and more with with GPS, navigators are kind
of a thing of the path. Yeah, your navigator is
is satellites, but you're having somebody else talk on the radios,
get the clearances, dial in which heading they want you
to take, making sure that you're clear to land, all
of these types of things while they're running their landing checklist,
(11:10):
making sure that the gear is down and they're configured.
And when you are in a landing configuration or a
takeoff configuration, these are the two most critical i e.
Dangerous phases of flight because you are slow and you
are low, you're close to the ground, there's not a
lot of room to maneuver, and you have all of
this stuff hanging out that creates drag to allow us
(11:31):
to land and until you clean it up. When you're
on takeoff, if you've ever taken off on a plane
and you're kind of climbing out slowly, then you hear
the landing gear come up, the flats come up, and
all of a sudden you're really climbing. It's because the
plane is now configured to fly. When you have landing
gear down and flaps extended. The aircraft is configured to
go to the ground, so it's even if they heard
(11:53):
so I mentioned teacaps. As you get closer to the grounds,
you don't want the ground to be creating noise. You're
surrounded at an airport with all of these other aircraft
that are squawking their codes to identify themselves, their ISS
codes that atc uses to track air traffic. So you
don't want both going off because you are close to
(12:15):
other aircraft and it's a distraction when you're in a
critical based flight like landing or takeoff. So all right,
that doesn't traffic avoidance does not go off.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Okay, that is the wine Yogi, who also has quite
a few years as an Air Force piloner belt giving
us a little insight. I gotta take a break. I'll
talk to you later, Crystal.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Okay, we'll see tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Okay, bye,
It appears that at black Hawk helicopter collided with a
commuter jet that was flying from which Dal, Kansas to Washington, DC.
And just to get a better handle on this, I
was like, who can I call? Who can I call?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, the wine Yogi's a pilot. Many of you may
not know that. Crystal off On so has spent a
long time being a pilot in the Air Force. And
so I was like, you know what, win Yogi, put
on your pilot hat and let's have a chat about
what could have happened, what might have happened, and what
it's like to fly into Reagan in the first place.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hi, Crystal, Hi, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I'm doing good? So for the audience's sake, they know
you love wine, they know you love yoga. What did
you fly in the Air Force?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I see that casey Un thirty five was my major
weapons system. I also flew a beach Jet four hundred,
which is also a Mitsubishi thirty which is more of
a lear jet type, so I'm certified in that. And
I also flew the T thirty seven, which was a
training acrobatic aircraft, so I was certified in that. And
then I ado through little puddle jumpers before I ever
(01:02):
went to pilot training for to see of the Air Force.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So you've flown a few planes, and have you ever
flown in and out of Reagan in DC.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I haven't. You have to have a special certification to
go into Reagan. So usually when we were flying, whether
it was DB's or we had something that was taking
us in that general area, we normally were flying for
the Air Force into Andrews Airport space simply because you know,
if there's an air Force base nearby, you tend to
(01:33):
avoid the civilian just because you know the Stilian airports
are going to be so much more busy, busier, so
if ever you can, you try to avoid that.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I have flown through.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
That airspace because I have flown into Andrews which is
in Maryland, and I have flown in Atlanta's airspace, in
Denver's airspace, in Dallas Fort Works airspace.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I've flown all over the.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
World and various ico to the International Airspace Controlling Agency
kind of like the International FAA. So I have flown
in a number of places where it's variant. Mexico City
is a place where a wild kind of way to
approach in just pimply because of the way the nav
(02:19):
navigational aids are set up and the busyness of the
airport itself.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Now, I know that you and your husband, who is
also a pilot, have been looking at this since last
night and really sort of analyzing this, and it appears
and all of this is speculative, right, we don't really
know exactly what went wrong, but it appears that a
commuter jet was coming into land on an airport that
it did or a runway that wasn't the primary runway
(02:46):
at Reagan because it was a smaller aircraft. And at
the same time, a Blackhawk was doing a training flight.
And we do know that the Blackhawk pilot at one
point said I'm watching this plane. But now there's speculator
that he was watching a plane that was taking off
instead of a plane coming in. And from your perspective,
(03:08):
knowing what little we know, now, what are you guys
kind of spitballing or guessing could have gone wrong here?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So in this particular case, and if you've watched the video,
you can kind of see the bright lights of an
aircraft that was departing off of the main runway.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And so at that point, if the.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
CRJ, So that commuter aircraft, if it is turning onto
its final approach, it very well and again I don't know,
but it very well could have had its belly based
off of its turn profile towards that helicopter. And if
you've ever watched airplanes landing at night, you notice that
most of the lights are towards the front and down
(03:53):
towards the runway as you're approaching the runway, so that
you can get that visual of the runway. Night time flying,
your depth perception is very different. Anyone who has ever
gone hiking in the woods knows you think you need
to list your foot so high, and maybe it's not
high enough because that depth perception is really lacking in
(04:14):
nighttime conditions, so you typically don't necessarily have those glaring
lights on the belly of an aircraft. So that helicopter
pilot very well may have been looking across seeing the
other aircraft on departure, and that's when they did not
take any evasive actions to avoid the aircraft that was
(04:37):
actually kind of turning into their flight path.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I mean, it's possible that he just didn't even see it,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
It is very possible the other thing that happens is
when you're we aircraft have what it's called traffic collision
and avoidant system. The acronym is Tea calf. Even when
I was flying twenty five years ago, we had Tea
calfs and that is a warning system that and I've
had a near midair as well, and that's what they're
(05:05):
called as midair's. When I had maybe jets, we were
out over the Atlantic, very dark, and you're not necessarily
lighting up like you have just your normal light time
because you're not in a landing configuration. And so I
thankfully had a lot of speed because I was on
(05:26):
my way home back to Charleston to go land for
the night. We were done, and I had a lot
of smash that built up so that when I got
my collision avoidance, I was able to climb immediately and
it will kind of tell you to do that. So
I was able to lead off and get a massive
amount of airspace between us and the queue fighters that
(05:46):
were converging on us. And when as soon as I
called in, one of the things that I did as
I went ahead and reported it and I had them
pull the tape so that they could figure out where
the break in the seat when events first began, just
to make sure that we weren't doing anything wrong as well.
And so that's what I canted everybody as we're kind
(06:08):
of going through this. I was also a flight safety officer,
so I was trained in how to go through mishaps
by the Air Force. We have to wait to figure
out all of these details. Since it was a nighttime incident,
the visuals that we get on video are not going
to be obvious as evident. And you know, flying when
(06:32):
we were talking about this this morning, when you are
flying at night, one of the things in a cockpit
is the listeners aren't aware is you don't have lights
on because the more light that your eyes are exposed to,
the closer your pupils will dilate down. Versus when we
keep when you're flying at night, you use red lights,
(06:53):
so because you want your pupils fully dilated, when you're
going into an environment like Washington, DC at that time
of the night where everything is lit up and you
have all this light pollution happening, it is very difficult
to necessarily see everything that might be happening outside of
your cockpit because your eyes are now inundated with all
(07:15):
of this light, and it can be a difficult transition
if perhaps the helicopter pilots were not facing something super
bright and then they're turning into that direction where you
have all of this light. Solution, who knows what was
happening in their cockpit And we're really not going to
know until they figure out air speed and they're going
to get all the information from the black box, altitude,
(07:38):
the recordings that they were having, the conversations that they
were making with Tower, the people, the tapes from Tower itself,
and goes through your process of interviewing everybody involved, and
so I know there's a lot of information out there.
I would just caution everybody just to let Ntspeed do.
It's a job that the Army do. It's investigation, and
(08:02):
then hopefully we will be able to avoid this in
the future. I personally think Reagan should have been shut
down a long time ago, and maybe this will finally
be the impetus to shut it down.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
I've talked to so many pilots who say, when you
ask them what airlines do? What I always ask pilots
when I was a flight attender, like, what what airports
do you love flying into? What airports do you hate
flying out of? And Reagan was always on the list
because there was too much that could go wrong and
if you were going to be targeted by a terrorist,
chances are you're going to becoming that Reagan. That was
(08:32):
their thinking back in the nineties, right, you know they're
doing that somebody else on the text line. Multiple people
have asked us why was that black Hawk helicopter anywhere
in the vicinity of the landing taking takeoff area of Reagan.
I think this stuff happens all the time. I mean,
we have multiple aircraft flying around in different airspaces all
the time, don't we.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
You do, And quite honestly, if they felt that they
were given clearance that perhaps cross that approach end of
that runway, if they thought that they were going to
be coming in to maybe land after the aircraft that
they thought they had a visual on. Again, I have
no idea because I have not heard that particular interaction
(09:15):
with tower.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
But you have that all the time where you're.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Expected to stagger out. I've had to do it myself
flying Saudi Arabia, where the aircraft ahead of me had
to go around because there was an aircraft on the
runway and even though she was cleared to land, our
tech data said the casey went thirty five could not
land with another aircraft on the runway because we don't
have reverse thrusters and we have no ability to avoid.
(09:41):
We take up the whole runway the wingtips. And so
she went around and I had to offset with her
and get visual with her, just to watch everything happening.
And there is in such a condensed airspace, especially with Regan.
For the listeners that may not be aware, but you've
probably heard it repeated by all these experts going on TV,
(10:06):
you have limited corridors because of the capital that you
have to avoid flying that life flying up the Potomac
is one of that. You know, that usual kind of
approach that you're going to come into. You you'll shoot
your approach to the main runway and if you're a
smaller aircraft, circle around to the adjoining UH runway through
three that they're talking about where this incident occurred.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And so you have to.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Understand that not only is it extremely busy, there's a
lot of chatter going on in the radios, and typically
when you're flying, you have the pilot in command, the
person who.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Is physically flying and then their co pilot or first
office navigators run in the checklist.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
It's more and more with with GPS, navigators are kind
of a thing of the path. Yeah, your navigator is
is satellites, but you're having somebody else talk on the radios,
get the clearances, dial in which heading they want you
to take, making sure that you're clear to land, all
of these types of things while they're running their landing checklist,
(11:10):
making sure that the gear is down and they're configured.
And when you are in a landing configuration or a
takeoff configuration, these are the two most critical i e.
Dangerous phases of flight because you are slow and you
are low, you're close to the ground, there's not a
lot of room to maneuver, and you have all of
this stuff hanging out that creates drag to allow us
(11:31):
to land and until you clean it up. When you're
on takeoff, if you've ever taken off on a plane
and you're kind of climbing out slowly, then you hear
the landing gear come up, the flats come up, and
all of a sudden you're really climbing. It's because the
plane is now configured to fly. When you have landing
gear down and flaps extended. The aircraft is configured to
go to the ground, so it's even if they heard
(11:53):
so I mentioned teacaps. As you get closer to the grounds,
you don't want the ground to be creating noise. You're
surrounded at an airport with all of these other aircraft
that are squawking their codes to identify themselves, their ISS
codes that atc uses to track air traffic. So you
don't want both going off because you are close to
(12:15):
other aircraft and it's a distraction when you're in a
critical based flight like landing or takeoff. So all right,
that doesn't traffic avoidance does not go off.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Okay, that is the wine Yogi, who also has quite
a few years as an Air Force piloner belt giving
us a little insight. I gotta take a break. I'll
talk to you later, Crystal.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Okay, we'll see tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Okay, bye,
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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