UCAP Vectors 110
DCA Midair Update... Confusing Coverage of Incident at Portsmouth NH... Oshkosh Bound Off-Field Landing... Dude, Where’s My Plane?... Welcome AvBrief... About Substack.
Jack and Jeb have mostly recovered from their pilgrimage to EAA’s AirVenture Oshkosh fly-in extravaganza last month. A good time was had by all, and we’re once again convinced we have the best listeners evah! Meanwhile, the rest of the aviation world also has at least somewhat recovered and returned to their day jobs. One result? There’s new news to share. So once again, hop up, strap in and hold on!
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DCA Midair: NTSB Holds Public Hearings
Beginning in late July, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held a three-day series of public hearings into the January 29, 2025, mid-air collision between an American Eagle regional jet and a U.S. Army helicopter at Washington National airport outside Washington, DC. All 67 passengers and crew aboard both aircraft were fatally injured; the MHI/Bombardier CRJ700 and Army/Sikorsky UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter were destroyed.
Given the usual thoroughness of the NTSB’s preliminary report into the tragedy, there weren’t many new facts uncovered about the collision itself. But the background stories – staffing and policy issues at the DCA tower, and at the FAA itself, plus what we’ll label a cavalier attitude among Army aviators – brought the senselessness of the accident out into the open for all to see.
While we say there weren’t many new facts to come out of the hearing, that’s not the same as not getting confirmation of a few things we already knew. One confirmed detail involved the Army Black Hawk: It was approximately 100 feet above the maximum altitude for the helicopter route it was flying along the Potomac River’s northerly bank. Also, it was closer to the center of the river than the bank and the Army all but admitted its altimetry system was inaccurate. Its ADS-B surveillance system had been turned off for security reasons.
Another confirmation from the hearing involved ATC’s traffic advisories to the Black Hawk crew. On two occasions, the tower controller advised the helicopter crew of the regional jet, and both times they requested and received approval to maintain visual separation. That obviously didn’t work out as planned, due in part perhaps to both pilots using night-vision goggles.
One fact that became glaringly obvious during the hearing but which some observers have minimized is the lack of any ATC traffic advisory to the CRJ crew of the helicopter. While there’s no requirement for the second aircraft to be advised of traffic when the first one has accepted responsibility for visual separation in a terminal area, ATC never told the RJ crew that the helicopter was nearby, and supposedly passing underneath them. The same controller was handling both aircraft, though on different frequencies. It’s likely the RJ crew truly never knew what hit them.
Meanwhile, the risk of a similar collision at DCA had been raised by tower personnel and brought to the FAA’s attention well before the accident, but the agency had failed to act. “I don’t get it,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said during the hearings. “Every sign was there that there was a safety risk, and the tower was telling you that,” she admonished the sacrificial lambs mid-level FAA staffers appearing. “What you did is you transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in FAA and the tower was saying there was a problem,” she added.
“Are you kidding me? Sixty-seven people are dead! How do you explain that?” she asked. “Fix it. Do better.”
Typically, NTSB probable cause findings and final reports lag by at least a year after an accident of this magnitude.
[JB}
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Confusing Coverage of No-Injury Incident at Portsmouth NH’s Pease Airport
An August 18 story in the local Dover, New Hampshire, newspaper tells of an Allegiant airlines flight that had to divert to Boston because the Portsmouth International Airport's single runway became unavailable due to a small-aircraft incident.
It's a pretty typical old-school media story covering aviation the way they often do. There's a fair amount of detail about the airline flight, and relatively little detail about the small plane, and what they do report is somewhat contradictory and confusing.
According to the story, a "high wing light sport aircraft" was landing at Portsmouth when it had an incident that resulted in it making a “gear up” landing, and then becoming disabled on the runway. This made the runway unavailable to the arriving Allegiant flight.
When it became obvious the runway was not gonna be cleared quickly, the Allegiant flight made the choice to divert to Boston for refueling, and to wait until the runway became usable again.
The story does not report the make or model of the incident aircraft, but an included picture seems to show a biplane, possibly a small amphibious aircraft, that is stopped at the edge of the runway, resting at a slight angle.
My first thought, when I was reading the story, was that it couldn't have been a gear-up landing because there are no light sport aircraft with retractable landing gear, but the picture suggests that this might actually be an amphibian, which landed without extending its gear.
The story also described that the incident resulted in no damage to the runway or the incident aircraft, [emphasis added by Vectors] which of course seems unlikely in the case of any sort of gear-up landing.
I sent an email to the author of the article asking for some clarification and additional detail. As of the date this issue of Vectors went live, I have not heard back.
It's really just more of the same way that old school media reports on aviation in general and general aviation in particular.
[JH]
Oshkosh Bound Plane Performs Off-Field Forced Landing in Kentucky.
An Oshkosh-bound pilot and his passenger were over Kentucky, on their way from North Carolina, when they had engine troubles and made a successful emergency landing on a road.
“Ma'am, I'll be declaring an emergency…. My engine has gone to idle. I'm looking for a field.”
The pilot of the Cessna Super Skylane — a model sometimes applied to Cessna's P206 model — calmly advised ATC of his emergency and landed the plane on a remote road. The authorities apparently had a bit of a challenge getting to the plane. No word on if, or how, it got back in the air.
Also no word on whether they managed to get to Oshkosh this year.
Good job to this pilot for getting his plane safely on the ground.
[JH]
Dude, Where’s My Plane (This Time)?
I’ve never misplaced an airplane. I’ve had ramp personnel move it from where I left it, though, resulting in a subdued, abbreviated Keystone Kops routine on their part. So I read with some interest the story about a Cessna 172 that was stolen twice over the summer.
The airplane was reported missing and presumed stolen from the Corona (CA) Municipal Airport on July 28. The next day, it was located at a nearby airport, and its owner relocated it back to Corona. When the owner returned on August 3, it was gone again. But not for long. Later that day, it was located at another nearby airport.
According to Aero News Network, witnesses at the second airport reported seeing a woman enter the airplane. She reportedly told others she owned it.
[JB]
Former AVweb Staffers Create a New Aviation News Site.
Over the years, we've talked about a lot of stories that we first saw covered in the online aviation news site AVweb. For a long time AVweb has been the go-to source for breaking news about the world of aviation.
But there are lots of changes happening in the world of journalism, and aviation journalism has not been spared. So now a handful of long-time AVweb staffers have ventured out on their own, and begun a new online aviation news site that they're calling AvBrief.
Veteran aviation journalist and long-time AVweb editor-in-chief, Russ Niles, is leading a group of aviation writers in this new online news venture. They're posting their stories on a website as well as offering them to readers as a subscription email newsletter.
We're not sure what's in the future for AVweb — we're still looking at it daily — but we're also keeping an eye on AvBrief. I'm sure we will be talking about stories that we see in each of these.
If you'd like to check out AvBrief, head over to AvBrief.com, where you can also sign up for their email newsletter, which is currently three times a week.
[JH]
Some Thought on Substack
For the last few issues of this newsletter, we have been publishing it through the Substack platform. We chose to begin using Substack after much discussion and agonizing, particularly about Substack’s reputation.
We ultimately decided that Substack’s ability to expose our newsletter to a wider audience was valuable enough that we were willing to overlook their reputational problems.
Of course, as luck would have it, no sooner do we start using Substack then they are in the news again for promoting disreputable newsletters.
Even without this incident, we would be constantly reevaluating our platform choices, and we certainly will continue to re-consider Substack. But for the time being we're gonna continue to publish here as well as on our regular website. And we are also exploring other online newsletter platforms that we might use, so changes may be in the future.
We welcome any suggestions and feedback that our listeners and readers have about this kind of stuff. Please send them to podcast@uncontrolledairspace.com or as a comment to this issue. Thanks.
[JH]
That’s it. We love to hear from our listener-readers. Post a comment with this newsletter issue, leave something on Patreon, or send us email, to podcast@uncontrolledairspace.com.
UCAP Vectors, Issue 110 is copyright (c) 2025 UncontrolledAirspace.com
Thanks for the heads up on AvBrief. I have been watching in dismay what’s been happening to AvWeb recently and looking for alternatives - now I’ve found a great one.