A Passenger Jet Landing at Reagan Airport Collided With a US Army Helicopter, Likely Killing All 64 On Board

This is the video that will be playing on a constant loop on our screens and in our heads for the next few hours, days, weeks or however long it takes for some other horrific event to come along and occupy our collective attention. And here is the summary of the incident from the Commander in Chief:

And another delivered in the most dispassionate, unbiased, fact-based way I can think of in 2025, Grok AI:

A mid-air collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, has resulted in multiple fatalities and no survivors recovered, leading to widespread discussion on social media and news platforms.

• The collision occurred on January 29, 2025, with the passenger jet carrying 64 people and the helicopter having at least three soldiers on board.

• Emergency response operations are ongoing, with bodies being recovered from the Potomac River where the aircraft crashed.

• The incident has led to significant disruptions4, including the grounding of flights at Reagan National Airport and the diversion of at least 19 aircraft.

This is where we are at now in the evolution of our species and our culture. As many as 64 airline passengers and a flight crew of three soldiers operating a US Army Blackhawk helicopter are presumed dead. Their bodies still being dredged out of the Potomac in what has already been officially deemed a recovery, not a rescue:

And the internet has wasted no time pointing out how sus this all is. Definitely declaring there's a massive coverup operation underway, before the recovery operation has barely begun. We've already entered a news cycle in which people who have only flown airplanes made of notebook paper and whose only experience with helicopters was being raised by a helicopter mom will become experts in commercial and military aviation.

CNN went immediately to its default setting of saying Trump is at fault:

We've got people doing the "Zoom in … enhance … zoom … enhance" thing on their Commodore 64s:

Speculation about how you can remote pilot a highly complex, incredibly sophisticated flying death machine remotely like it's a hobby drone:

What alleges to be the flight pattern and audio from the tower, obtained by people sitting in their living rooms:

All of which could turn out to be perfectly legitimate evidence as we try to find out how this horrifying tragedy could've happened. All of which could also turn out to be pure bullshit from shameless opportunists. And all of which is entirely sickening and inhuman at a moment when tough men with very difficult jobs have been spending the night scrambling to the crash site, donning wet suits, and fishing the disfigured corpses of innocent human beings out of a freezing river. 

I mean, I get it. Same as these people, the bar has gotten really low when it comes to conspiracy theories I'm willing to at least consider as plausible. Especially over the last few years. Some of the opinions that would've gotten you removed from Twitter and Facebook - and even had your right to a bank account and credit cards - four years ago are accepted as fact today. The more we learn about 9/11 the more we come to understand what the official government reports left out. So after a while it's only natural to expect people will find some nefarious plot lurking behind every wood pile. So we'll get a lot of "There was someone on the flight that some shadowy organization needed taken out …" or whatever. It's inevitable now. The faster we get our information, the faster we get our 100% wrong information, made up by imbeciles out of pure speculation.

So while I know I'm just wasting my time and yours by asking everyone to slow-walk this stuff and wait for the actual facts to come out, I'm just going to share this from someone claiming to be an actual expert on the subject:

I was a Blackhawk helicopter crew chief in the Army. 

I was even a Flight Instructor. This means that I trained Crew Chiefs and ensured that they completed all training annually to maintain their flight ratings. 

One massive responsibility we had was to be the eyes for the pilots. We handled airspace obstacle avoidance and communicated potential risks to the pilots. 

Quite often we would train as a flight of 2 or 3 birds flying in formation. 

It was my job to have my head out the window and tell the pilots that the aircraft behind us was "staggered right at 3 discs". (We measured close distances in terms of the diameter of our rotor discs). 

I can tell you after doing this for hundreds of hours, even when you know EXACTLY where a Blackhawk is, and you have night vision goggles on, it is EXTREMELY hard to SEE the aircraft. 

These birds are designed to be hard to see at night. 

The red and green lights on the side get lost in the lights of the city below. The only "lights" on top of the aircraft are called "slime lights" because they are a very very very dim green.  

Incredibly difficult to see. 

If you are above the helicopter, even if it has it flood light or spot light (2 different lights) on, underneath it, it is still hard to see the bird because all of that illumination is below the airframe. 

Another thing people should know is just how busy things can get on the aircraft.  

Pilots are talking to each other about what they are observing on the instrument panels. This means neither are looking outside the aircraft. 

The crew chief might be conducting a fuel check, where we would also be looking up into the cockpit at the fuel gages and the clock.  

This CAN lead to moments where all 3 people on the aircraft are all looking inside the aircraft. It's not supposed to happen that way. We are supposed to announce when we are "coming inside" or are "back outside" the aircraft. 

But that doesn't always happen. 

Also, in cities like DC, the radio traffic is constant and can make it hard to filter out what is important for you to listen to. 

Checking instruments, doing math, reading checklists, and listening to multiple radios all at the same time is HARD. Mistakes happen. 

Anyone out there telling you that they find the aircraft collision to be suspect, have NEVER been in a flight crew and they have ZERO idea what they are talking about. 

Ignore them all. Better yet, mock the hell out of them. 

999 times out of 1000 aircraft incidents always come down to a series of pilot and crew errors.  Humans are involved. They aren't perfect. 

Tonight, my heart and mind is with the families of those involved in this tragic event.  

I won't join the chorus of idiots making speculations.

Hear, hear. Let's all take a beat. Finish recovering the dead. Let their families bury them. Let the people who are experts in this field do a thorough investigation and tell us what they've found. And if they leave questions unanswered to seem to be not telling the whole truth, then let the irresponsible guessing games begin. 

But again, I know I'm wasting my time. Patience is not a big social media thing.

PS. Requiscat in pace to Skating Club of Boston's own Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who just finished fourth at Nationals in Wichita: