Hildegarde

I can’t believe it dropped 20% over… ooops I had the chart upside down my mistake

The listed indices dropped an amount within the standard range that they regularly fluctuate. The dow is still up from where it was on january 1st. The same can be said for nasdaq and the s&p. Stocks are continuing to trend upward unabated, but they do wiggle as they do so.

Don’t ever trust the news when they say the market “plummets.” They use that term incredibly misleadingly. The lines on the charts wiggle constantly. When something bad happens some hack news sites will find a minor downward wiggle near the same time and they’ll claim causation and pretend that something significant happened to the markets, to drive clicks to their website.

The fact that most of the comments are taking the headline at face value is not a good sign.

The helicopter was flying at 300-400 feet. The buildings to the southeast are shorter than that. Those areas are 3-4 story sparse developments not highrises. The plane was above and descending. It would be seen against the night sky. There would be no buildings near where the helicopter would be looking for the plane.

Landing approaches are started from specific navaids. This plane was not off course because it was given a different arrival route than expected.

The airspace around DC is some of the most restricted in the world. Routes into the national airport are very tight with little allowance for error. Most of the routes come in over the river to avoid overflying government buildings, and the involved plane had a sharp left final over the river. The plane may have turned when the helicopter wasn’t expecting it.

This is all speculation. Investigations into things like this are thorough. It is far to early to assign blame to anyone involved.

TCAS is a transponder based system. Warnings are suppressed at low altitude by design, and city lights do not interfere with it.

Runways get changed all the time for many reasons. Every runway at washington national is in a different direction, it would be a different approach entirely and not a last minute change. There is no evidence that the plane flew the approach wrong. There is ADS-B data for the full flight. Anyone can check the plane’s actual flighpath.

Pilots can refuse ATC orders that are unsafe. The approach they were originally planning would have crossed the river and had the same risk of traffic.

The helicopter pilot seeing the wrong plane is a likely explanation. There were other planes in the area. The controller warned of the traffic. The pilot confirmed having the plane in sight.

From information on flightradar24’s article, the collision happened at around 300-400 ft. Those altitudes are too low for TCAS to issue alerts. The Black Hawk had a transponder broadcasting with mode S, so it would be visible to TCAS and the tower, but it was not broadcasting ADS-B, which would let you see it on most flight tracking websites.

The jet would have received an audible TCAS alert if this happened at a higher altitude.