[twoparachute45]

It wasn't a police chopper, it was a military VH-60, also known as a "White Hawk" [1]. It's a VIP transport helicopter, the same type that is used to transport the president.

~The flight track of the helicopter [2] starts at a property in McLean, VA (edited to remove likely inaccurate info)~

The chopper was based out of Fort Belvoir, and based on similar past flight tracks, looks like it probably took off from there too. CNN is reporting that there were 3 soldiers onboard, and no VIPs.

1: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_VH-60N_White_Hawk

2: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae313d&lat=38.952&lon=-...

[evil-olive]

> The flight track of the helicopter starts at a property in McLean, VA

that's almost certainly not where the flight started, due to intricacies of how this sort of flight tracking works.

if you look at [0] it has tracks of both flights. toggle the right-hand sidebar, if it's not open already, and you'll see a table containing both planes. the helicopter (PAT25) is yellow, the plane (JIA5342) is blue. the legend right below that explains the color-coding - the plane's data came from ADS-B, while the helicopter's data came from multilateration (MLAT).

MLAT [1, 2] works by having multiple ADS-B feeder stations cooperate in real-time and deduce an aircraft's position based on timestamps of when the signal is received. it allows tracking aircraft that only broadcast the more limited Mode S data, instead of the newer and more detailed ADS-B.

because it requires multiple cooperating receivers, the start of the track in suburban McLean does not mean it took off from there. it just means that was the point in its flight where it became visible to enough receivers that MLAT was able to pin down a position.

you can also see this difference just by looking at the tracks - the plane is broadcasting its own position continuously, so its track is nice and smooth. meanwhile the helicopter's flight looks "jagged" in a way that does not match what its actual flight path would have been. this is an artifact of the small errors introduced by MLAT.

0: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae313d,a97753

1: https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/mlat/

2: https://adsbx.discourse.group/t/multilateration-mlat-how-it-...

[alistairSH]

And just to be clear, the POTUS/super-special VIP transport is run by the USMC out of Quantico[1], a bit further to the south along the Potomac. Belvoir is US Army, and does have VIP heelicopters (obviously), but it's not the same group that lands at the White House.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMX-1 They have some Ospreys and other things as well, but HMX-1 is the most famous and recognizable.

[reaperman]

[2] shows the helicopter taking off 2 miles away from the old saudi embassy in McLean marked “permanently closed” on google maps. (The current embassy is in DC proper, directly across the river from DCA airport)

I don’t think thats strong evidence that it took off from the old Saudi Embassy - thats pretty far away even given your caveat about accuracy.

Edit: it looks to me like the black hawk was coming from somewhere else with its ADS-B turned off entirely, and then turned on ADS-B once it reached the potomac to approach DCA. The first two datapoints of that flight already show it going 110mph, which its unlikely to be able to accelerate to in just 0.2miles after take off.

Edit 2: The route also looks very similar to this flight from 11 days earlier (but reversed in direction): https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/PAT25 This shows the Blackhawk at 300 feet passing by DCA on what seems like a routine or training flight? I don't know how to look up historical flights to see if this is a commonly-flown route. On that flight, the Black Hawk flew past DCA at 300 feet of altitude, and the last FlightAware data for the American Eagle passenger flight showed 400 feet of altitude.

[twoparachute45]

I didn't say it took off from the old embassy. The flight track starts at the backyard of a house that is currently owned by the embassy. You can see the owner of that property by searching that address here (the site doesn't support a direct link): https://icare.fairfaxcounty.gov/ffxcare/search/commonsearch....

[lovecg]

Note that that track is not ADS-B at all. It’s triangulated from mode S pings (“MLAT”, https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/mlat/). I don’t know how accurate these are.

[jetpackjoe]

CNN is reporting the helicopter came from Fort Belvoir.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/plane-crash-dca-potomac-was...

[i_am_proteus]

The current embassy is indeed in DC proper, but it isn't directly across the river from DCA.

It's about a mile upriver, near the Watergate.

[highcountess]

Military flights do not fly ADB hot outside of the DC FRZ. It was also clearly exactly following flight route 4.

There are a few locations in that area it could have been coming from. Anything else would have made no sense flying through the FRZ from/to Belvoir.

[highcountess]

That was clearly a training flight

[jballer]

It's a "Gold Top", callsign PAT25

https://helicoptersofdc.com/helicopters/5-us-army-12th-aviat...

[Rantenki]

BBC is reporting that the Army has confirmed that it was a UH-60, not a VH-60, ie: not a VIP transport: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy7kxx74yxlt?post=asset%3A62b9...

Although it's early on and these communications are often chaotic/inaccurate.

[twoparachute45]

I thought it was a VH-60 given that it was callsign PAT25 (PAT is Priority Air Transport and they use the VH-60 for those flights), but if this was a training flight, they may have still used the PAT callsign while flying a UH-60.