Midair

“The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.”

―James Patterson

In the midst of this 1860 moment in American history, waiting for our Fort Sumter as the neo-Confederates become ever more audacious and divisive, news this morning of a collision between an American Airlines regional jet on final approach into Washington-National (I guess they're calling it Washington-Reagan now, after the guy who did so much to create this moment of political schism) and an Army Blackhawk helicopter. Everyone died.

The fireball from the collision lit up the sky just south of the approach end of Runway 33.

Probably best that we now arrange our airports in a way that those waiting for the arrival of their loved ones are generally clustered down by baggage claim, and not watching the plane touch down through a window.

This one is a puzzler, and it's not. This year marks my fortieth flying airplanes, and I've had several near-miss moments when I almost swapped paint with another aircraft. The most crowded and stressful place to fly are these Class B airspaces, such as Washington, with airplanes all around you. In theory they're all supposed to be in two-way communication with ATC, and equipped these days with ADS-B so we can all see each other with our collision avoidance software, but that's not always the case. A Class B looks like an upside down wedding cake, and if you're more than a few miles from the main airport there's always some yahoo trying to skirt below the "Bravo", talking to no one. The hair on the back of my neck always stands up when I'm flying into DFW, another busy Class B, and the controller calls out traffic "twelve o'clock, three miles, type and altitude unknown." At that point all you can be is eyeballs out, scanning the horizon for a spec that turns into the outline of a plane that turns into "holy sh*t." It's a good thing, as we used to say, that it's a big sky filled with little airplanes.

But a clueless private pilot wandering through traffic with his radio turned off is not what happened here. The helo and the American Airlines jet were talking to tower, the airliner cleared to land behind another you could see just about to touch down if you watched the video. The helo driver called "traffic in sight" and was told to "maintain visual separation" just a few seconds before impact.

So why this collision? A couple educated guesses here. First, in very busy airspace I've had the experience of having ATC call out traffic with which I needed to deconflict, responding that I had the traffic in sight, then realizing to my unpleasant surprise that I was actually looking at another aircraft, further away than the threat the controller had referenced. The mistake was revealed when my collision avoidance system started sounding the alarm that another airplane was very, very close, as I ingested my seat cushion the hard way while pulling away from the closer plane.

Which gives another hint as to what might have happened here. Did the Blackhawk have TCAS (Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System) and, if so, was it turned on? If they had an active TCAS system, Bitching Betty would have been flashing warning lights and giant white balls on the instrument panel, while audibly directing the crew to take evasive action. Without TCAS, they might have called visual on the airplane that was about to land, not the AA flight a couple miles behind it, and never known what hit them when they broadsided the actual threat.

As for the regional jet, there's not much one can do to avoid a collision on final. You're slow and dirty, with flaps and landing gear hanging, just a few knots about stall speed. An abrupt pull on the yoke stalls the plane and lands you in the Potomac. And if, as it seems, they were struck amidships and from at or below the horizon, they also probably never knew what hit them.

It does place things in perspective, though. In the midst of all this stress and turmoil, we're alive. Don't you know those kids on the ice skating team coming home from skating camp in Wichita, and their coaches, and the crew of both aircraft, would have told you before they smashed into the icy Potomac that they would've given anything to be burdened with the problems on our plate this morning. One thing about four decades of flying; at some level you realize every time you crawl into the cockpit this might be the last time. Afterward food tastes better, Peg's smile when she greets me at the FBO carries a little more glow, smiles come a little easier.

The most extreme example of all that, as I digress in the coda to this post, was the giddiness that followed coming home from a shooting mission during the war. Shooting at us, I mean, and not the other way around. We smoked and laughed and couldn't believe our good fortune standing there outside the hangar in the predawn darkness, savoring the mere fact of being alive. I told myself then that I wouldn't let myself lose that revelation about the value of life itself, but it's difficult sometimes.

A ton of work today as I enter the last two days of my time with D&S. Plus, I promised P I'd make a batch of red chile, and dry Issac a bag of seeds and pepper flakes, now that my three pounds of dried chile peppers arrived yesterday from New Mexico.