The Bongino Brief - What Happened At Reagan Airport???
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Dan Bongino. Welcome to the Bongino Brief. I'm Dan Bongino. You know what, guys? I'm going to skip the bell today. I don't usually do that, but given the tragic circumstances, that's usually more of a celebratory event for me starting the show, but I'm not. This is going to be deadly serious stuff today. So let me ask some open questions first. If you're just waking up, getting the news, maybe you're out in the West Coast, Reagan Airport, There was a flight. It was descending, getting ready to land in what is unquestionably very congested airspace. There are a lot of programs, some I'm familiar with, we're obviously not going to be talking about, that involve tracking a lot of these incoming and outgoing aircraft.
It's a very congested area. It is not a huge airport. It is a very tough place to land due to the congested space. Aircraft is landing. It is a flight from Wichita, Kansas. Gets into a collision with a Black Hawk helicopter on an Army training mission, according to what Secretary Hegseth said. It doesn't appear at this point that there are any survivors. Appears going to be close to 60 plus souls lost, which is horrific, obviously. So some open questions first, which we'll address. And we have some footage going on here, too, that we're going to get to. and footage of the crash, which I'll warn you, you may not wanna see it, but it's important that we cover it accurately. Number one is these aircraft,
not so much the helicopter, but the airplane involved, they have this crash avoidance system built in that if you've done anything with FAA, TRACON, TFRs, ADASs, FRIZs, air security picture stuff, which we do, you're pretty familiar with how this works. I'm not a pilot. I'm not the Wikipedia pilot. I don't pretend to be a pilot. I'm just telling you things we've dealt with, having dealt with the air security picture often. Was that off when you get within a certain landing distance and a certain altitude? Was it working? Was it is it off? Is it off automatically? Why didn't it go off? Was it, you know, when they get below a thousand feet? As I saw a couple of people commenting this morning, was that crash avoidance system not working or does it just go off with a below that certain altitude? So that'll be an open question, because obviously that's what this system is designed to avoid a crash like what happened. Second, was it a case of target fixation where sometimes you'll talk to these?
I will never forget one of the White House military aides was a helicopter pilot, talked to me often about flying at night, how it was difficult for him to operate at night without night vision. Also talked about things like target fixation and things like that, crowded battlefields. Did they... the helicopter pilots, were they fixated on an aircraft taking off and did they miss the one landing? That's a big miss. Obviously a tragic one. Were they fixated on the wrong target? Open question. Third question, was there night vision involved? Did it have anything to do with the closing of the visual field? I believe the night vision was available from what I'm hearing from early reports, but it's an open question because until I get a conclusive answer, I'm applying the Bongino rule here.
Fourth is the obvious one. Just how did this happen flight path-wise? This is a known flight corridor that's very busy. How did this happen? Is it an altitude issue? Obviously, we're going to wait for some reporting on that. And then fifth, the uncomfortable question people have to ask. I see it as highly unlikely. I want to say that in advance, but it'd be irresponsible not to at least consider Was there a possibility that some of this was maybe not accidental? I just want to say in advance, given from what I've heard from a number of pretty good sources and some media homework I've been doing, that seems highly unlikely. However, applying the Bongino rule works both ways. Don't draw conclusions means don't draw conclusions.
It doesn't mean don't ever ask a question ever for the rest of your life. Then what's the purpose of this show? So those are five open questions I have right now. Let's check out the VO, the voiceover. Sorry for using lingo. We'll talk over. You can see the video here on the screen right now. You see it right there.
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