The US president has suggested the tragedy was due to human error.
The collision of a US Army helicopter and a civilian airliner that killed 67 people could have been prevented, President Donald Trump has said, questioning air traffic controllers’ actions.
The H-60 BlackHawk helicopter collided with Flight 5342 that was on its final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday evening. Rescue teams have not recovered any survivors from the freezing Potomac River.
“It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn,” Trump posted on his TruthSocial platform early on Thursday.
The president also questioned why the control tower had failed to instruct the helicopter crew what to do.
“This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!” Trump added.
At 9pm local time, when the crash happened, the airport reported clear skies, with 16km visibility and winds from the northwest. The air temperature was 10C, but parts of the Potomac River were still frozen from an earlier cold snap.
The passenger jet was a Bombardier CRJ700 operated by PSA, a subsidiary of American Airlines. The flight from Wichita, Kansas was on landing approach to Runway 33, with 60 passengers and four crew members on board, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said.
Among the passengers were several athletes, coaches and family members returning from the US Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.
Nearly 300 first responders were deployed to sift the wreckage for survivors, but found none as of Thursday morning. Operations were soon shifted from rescue to recovery.
Look no further than our own CAA, Customs, Av Security, full of DEI hires, the vast majority totally incompetent.
We need our own Trump – ‘YOU’RE FIRED’
DEI politicians: divisive, entitled, incompetent.
Never having worked a productive day in their lives, totally out of touch with the problems of normal self-employed, the normal producing citizen, the small entrepreneur. If you don’t have a conscience you can’t grow one. if you don’t have one you don’t know that you don’t have one.
Sociopathic sycophants have no idea that they should feel any other way than they do: competition is the rule, success is why I’m here, I deserve it all and I’m gonna get it all, and the underlings are just an obstacle. That attitude running politics is institutionalized by the finance thereof, firmly in the hands of a (((few))).
How horrible. Condolences.
Was the helicopter pilot a D.E.I hire by any chance?
Yes. Most likely a typical incompetent socialist D.E.I woke moron sadly.
Tragic.
Tragic.
That will be due to a ‘diversity’ hire obviously.
It’s everywhere.
Incompetence has now become normalised, sadly.
This is what happens when a nation becomes ‘militarised’ and military operations encroach and intrude their ‘exercises’ away from military-designated land & airspace.
That is why there are restricted Military Operations Areas on Sectional, WAC and Instrument Charts.
The helicopter was part of the VIP Fleet, and they operate on a regular basis in and out of Andrews Joint AFB, with entry and exit routes specifically designed for the choppers to follow which takes them away from the ILS Final Approach Courses at Andrews.
Interesting that the PSA Charter to American Airlines was from Wichita…that’s the aircraft manufacturing hub of the U.S..
Were there Aircraft Engineers on board going to meet with Trump and the DoD officials to solve some aerospace problams with systems, personnel, etc?
Was the Skating Team going to compete against the Russians at some juncture?
I refuse to believe that this was ‘just an accident’.
Remember when 12 year old Samantha Smith was invited to Russia by Mikhail Gorbachev, and both became informal and unofficial ‘Ambassadors for Peace’? Samantha and her Mum died in a plane crash in New England…
If one doesn’t need to be anywhere in a hurry, take the train or the bus, as you can at least do ‘Conceal/Carry’ your handgun on those…
If you have a ‘Smart Car’, and you’re going somewhere in a Gray Man’ situation, leave the car at home and carry a burner phone!
That’s what it’s coming down to these days…and while that may sound ‘paranoid’, it’s important to remember that paranoia insures our survival, and such insight and behaviour is usually proven to be life-saving, especially if one holds or has held a security clearance in the past and one may ‘know too much’…!