Jump to content
  • Member Statistics

    17,677
    Total Members
    7,904
    Most Online
    Snaxitu
    Newest Member
    Snaxitu
    Joined

Central PA Winter 2024/2025


Voyager
 Share

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, Bubbler86 said:

Just like Summer.  Pounding rains headed into Harrisburg. 

It’s amazing how often those heavy returns just don’t equate to on the ground production in the winter. I was right in the heart of all those pretty colors that went through earlier and only got .15” from it. 

  • Sad 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, paweather said:

I agree just terrible my goodness. Where did aviation go? 

May be coincidence, who knows.  The copter crash is still a worry about how and why.  All of this puts weather into it's proper position of less importance but we just picked up close to a half inch of rain in 30 min here. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Special disorientation very well could be problem. We operate 4 medevac jets out of capital city airport. Had a jet in the area weather was really bad tonight. No distress call at all from the pilots. If it’s not spacial disorientation that  is a pretty catastrophic parts failure. I can tell you losing one engine or both would not make you go nose down. With the no distress call I would lean pilot error. 
 

DC crash I have flown that same corridor in a helicopter. You have to be 200 feet or less. I have no idea why she would have been near 400 feet. Tower didn’t give a lot of time for separation. I would think the helicopter pilot was told to remain visual separation and she did reply she had traffic. I think she had the wrong jet. The other factor that night, planes rarely land that direction but they had strong southerly winds that night. Just a perfect storm but still don’t know why she would have been that high with landing traffic near by. 
 

Just my two cents. 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, paweather5 said:

Special disorientation very well could be problem. We operate 4 medevac jets out of capital city airport. Had a jet in the area weather was really bad tonight. No distress call at all from the pilots. If it’s not spacial disorientation that  is a pretty catastrophic parts failure. I can tell you losing one engine or both would not make you go nose down. With the no distress call I would lean pilot error. 
 

DC crash I have flown that same corridor in a helicopter. You have to be 200 feet or less. I have no idea why she would have been near 400 feet. Tower didn’t give a lot of time for separation. I would think the helicopter pilot was told to remain visual separation and she did reply she had traffic. I think she had the wrong jet. The other factor that night, planes rarely land that direction but they had strong southerly winds that night. Just a perfect storm but still don’t know why she would have been that high with landing traffic near by. 
 

Just my two cents. 

The super low ceiling leads to me think of disorientation. It was a complete nose dive - hunch is they thought they weee stalling. The Learjet crash at TEB a few years ago had that iirc.  
 

Edit: also I’m jealous. In my next life I want a career in aviation. I have ~15 hours in a Cessna lol 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, paweather5 said:

Special disorientation very well could be problem. We operate 4 medevac jets out of capital city airport. Had a jet in the area weather was really bad tonight. No distress call at all from the pilots. If it’s not spacial disorientation that  is a pretty catastrophic parts failure. I can tell you losing one engine or both would not make you go nose down. With the no distress call I would lean pilot error. 
 

DC crash I have flown that same corridor in a helicopter. You have to be 200 feet or less. I have no idea why she would have been near 400 feet. Tower didn’t give a lot of time for separation. I would think the helicopter pilot was told to remain visual separation and she did reply she had traffic. I think she had the wrong jet. The other factor that night, planes rarely land that direction but they had strong southerly winds that night. Just a perfect storm but still don’t know why she would have been that high with landing traffic near by. 
 

Just my two cents. 

The height of the helicopter is my big wonderment right now.  I also realise that it is night and and harder to see but the video I saw this evening showed absolutely no deviation by the copter when it hit the plane.  The plane was gliding and losing elevation slowly at that point so really hard for me to understand how they did not see it even if in the last 30 seconds and we would have seen the copter try to adjust...the video shows a straight ramming.

 

You mentioned she a few times, is that in reference to the pilot whose name has not been released?  I understand she was a co-pilot so at least one other person should have been at least partially connected to the situation and neither saw this plane, even the last moments?

Thanks for your input though, my comments are wonderment not suggesting I know any more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Bubbler86 said:

The height of the helicopter is my big wonderment right now.  I also realise that it is night and and harder to see but the video I saw this evening showed absolutely no deviation by the copter when it hit the plane.  The plane was gliding and losing elevation slowly at that point so really hard for me to understand how they did not see it even if in the last 30 seconds and we would have seen the copter try to adjust...the video shows a straight ramming.

 

You mentioned she a few times, is that in reference to the pilot whose name has not been released?  I understand she was a co-pilot so at least one other person should have been at least partially connected to the situation and neither saw this plane, even the last moments?

Thanks for your input though, my comments are wonderment not suggesting I know any more.

The helicopter crew two pilots likely would be wearing night vision goggles. It’s like looking through binoculars. Your peripheral vision is not great. If they looked and saw the departing jet which is the wrong jet, maybe they thought no factor they would be focused on the path in front of them. I know few people close to this unit and it’s said she was the pilot in command of this flight but most likely flown dual pilots. 
 

I would think the jet would have had a better chance to see the helicopter. What stinks about this is anything above 1000 feet the jets have auto deviation system to avoid accidents. Down below 1000 it’s get disabled because of all the traffic landing taking off. I will say this with city lights you can lose visual of traffic very easily. The lights blend in with all the city lights. 
 

I think what is more odd to me is both these aircraft have something called TCAS. It will literally show you the plane or helicopter direction of flight and how many feet it is above or below you. TCAS will scream warnings at you about traffic near you. I don’t know if they disabled them for landing and traffic because it can become annoying with the warnings. 
 

I still think this all falls on wrong altitude of Helicopter. But why would ATC let a helicopter cross that close to landing traffic? It’s very easy to put helicopter in a hold for landing traffic done all the time. Why did ATC not say helicopter check altitude? Why did the airplane not do a go around with traffic that close to him?
 

A lot went wrong that night. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, paweather5 said:

The helicopter crew two pilots likely would be wearing night vision goggles. It’s like looking through binoculars. Your peripheral vision is not great. If they looked and saw the departing jet which is the wrong jet, maybe they thought no factor they would be focused on the path in front of them. I know few people close to this unit and it’s said she was the pilot in command of this flight but most likely flown dual pilots. 
 

I would think the jet would have had a better chance to see the helicopter. What stinks about this is anything above 1000 feet the jets have auto deviation system to avoid accidents. Down below 1000 it’s get disabled because of all the traffic landing taking off. I will say this with city lights you can lose visual of traffic very easily. The lights blend in with all the city lights. 
 

I think what is more odd to me is both these aircraft have something called TCAS. It will literally show you the plane or helicopter direction of flight and how many feet it is above or below you. TCAS will scream warnings at you about traffic near you. I don’t know if they disabled them for landing and traffic because it can become annoying with the warnings. 
 

I still think this all falls on wrong altitude of Helicopter. But why would ATC let a helicopter cross that close to landing traffic? It’s very easy to put helicopter in a hold for landing traffic done all the time. Why did ATC not say helicopter check altitude? Why did the airplane not do a go around with traffic that close to him?
 

A lot went wrong that night. 

The video I saw of the atc controllers showed the screen graphic of the two entities going straight for each other and I heard some "light" doubt in the atc's voice when he asked the copter if they had visual and were going around behind.  I am surprised there was not more angst seeing them going at each other even if he thought the copter was 1 to 2 hundred feet lower.  I was not sure what the plane could see since I thought it was nose up in final landing position.  I guess we will know if they can dry out the box and get the internal convo.

The lack of worry from the atc made me think this was normal faire for a copter to be that close.  

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Bubbler86 said:

The video I saw of the atc controllers showed the screen graphic of the two entities going straight for each other and I heard some "light" doubt in the atc's voice when he asked the copter if they had visual and were going around behind.  I am surprised there was not more angst seeing them going at each other even if he thought the copter was 1 to 2 hundred feet lower.  I was not sure what the plane could see since I thought it was nose up in final landing position.  I guess we will know if they can dry out the box and get the internal convo.

The lack of worry from the atc made me think this was normal faire for a copter to be that close.  

 

 

Honestly the helicopter might take the blame. But in no way should a helicopter even be that close with a jet landing. It is normal to have jets fly over top but typically the minimum spacing is 200 feet. The fact that plane is landing that helicopter should have been told to hold until landing traffic has passed. These flights happen a lot and helicopters fly that route 4 many times a day. When the jets land the other runway they are coming in at pattern altitude to come downwind to turn final to land. So it’s rarely an issue. I know first thing a lot of people say is why didn’t they see each other. It’s way harder than you think. At the same time that is why we have instruments to let us know. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Blizzard of 93 said:

@mitchnick and others that love snow chances…

The 0z EPS snow map might have had the best run of the season without a specific threat on our doorstep.

Talk about potential…this is the 10 day EPS snow map from the 5th through the 15th.

IMG_8798.png

It IS the best long range run of the season. You're going to be one busy sob in February! Lol

People that don't like maps aren't going to be happy.

Anyway, I came in to post the PA Eps map and I should have known you'd ninja me. I posted it anyway because it's so pretty.

sn10_acc-mean-imp.us_state_pa (1).png

  • clap 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Blizzard of 93 said:

@mitchnick and others that love snow chances…

The 0z EPS snow map might have had the best run of the season without a specific threat on our doorstep.

Talk about potential…this is the 10 day EPS snow map from the 5th through the 15th.

IMG_8798.png

 

1 hour ago, mitchnick said:

It IS the best long range run of the season. You're going to be one busy sob in February! Lol

People that don't like maps aren't going to be happy.

Anyway, I came in to post the PA Eps map and I should have known you'd ninja me. I posted it anyway because it's so pretty.

sn10_acc-mean-imp.us_state_pa (1).png

Quite the turn around in the last 18 hours.  It looked like the Team SER was about the take control and now the GFS is running 2/5 under us.  Some big changes.   Were it not for a lack of cold air, the 6Z GFS would be a train of snow storms vs. the ice to rain scenarios they show right now for the 5th and 9th (not much rain on the 9th.)  3 winter storms on the 6Z GFS between now and Valentines day. 

  • yes 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Yardstickgozinya said:

No politics, just what seems to be a pretty good explanation of some of what happened. 

Watching the most clear of images I have seen so far, at this link, just makes it hard to understand how the copter did not know.  Understanding the plane is above it and descending as they get closer, the lights on the plane are super bright and one would think even night vision would have caught something in their angle of vision at least in the last 10-15 seconds.  If they can't see that plane in that position, visual separation should never be an allowed tactic. 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dca-surveillance-cameras-catch-clearest-171807768.html

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...