Investigators say the pilots might not have heard air traffic control telling them to pass behind the passenger jet before the deadly midair collision. News4’s Paul Wagner reports.
The crew of the helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines jet near Washington D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport might not have heard instructions from the air traffic controller to pass behind the plane, investigators said Friday.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said the recording from the Black Hawk helicopter cockpit suggests the crew may have missed the key instruction just before the Jan. 29 collision, in which all 67 aboard the two aircraft were killed.
Homendy said the helicopter was on a check flight that night when the pilot was being tested on the use of night vision goggles and flying by instruments. Investigators believe the crew was wearing night vision goggles throughout the flight.
Homendy said the Black Hawk crew never heard the words “pass behind the” during the transmission from the controller because the helicopter’s microphone key was depressed right then.
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At one point during the flight before the collision the helicopter pilot being tested called out that the Black Hawk was at 300 feet, but the instructor pilot said the helicopter was at 400 feet, Homendy said.
“At this time we don’t know why there was a discrepancy between the two,” Homendy said.
Homendy said it's possible the pilots might have had "bad data" in the cockpit before the collision.
"We do believe that there's inconsistency with data from the altimeters in the cockpit. So it's possible that what they were seeing is not matching up with what's recorded on the flight data recorder," Homendy said during an interview with NBC News' Tom Costello after the news conference.
Evidence suggests the American Airlines jet crew saw the helicopter right before impact, Homendy said.
"Yes, there was an indication, and that is, we see a pitch up of the aircraft. So it was nine degrees up, maximum elevator deflection. So there was an indication that they may have seen something," she said.
The collision was the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. since 2001, when a jet slammed into a New York City neighborhood just after takeoff, killing all 260 people on board and five more on the ground.
The crash
American Airlines Flight 5342 was coming in from Wichita, Kansas, carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, as it approached Reagan National to land on a clear Wednesday night. Nearby, a U.S. Army Black Hawk with three soldiers on board was on a training exercise, practicing emergency evacuation routes that would be used to ferry out key government officials in case of an attack or catastrophe.
A few minutes before the twin-engine jet was to land, air traffic controllers asked if it could use a shorter runway. The pilots agreed, and flight-tracking sites show the plane adjusted its approach.
Shortly before the collision, a controller got an alert that the plane and Black Hawk were converging and asked the helicopter if it had the plane in sight. The military pilot said yes and asked for “visual separation” with the jet — allowing it to fly closer than otherwise may have been allowed if the pilots didn’t see the plane. Controllers approved the request.
Roughly 20 seconds later, the aircraft collided.
The investigation
Since the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board has recovered all the flight data recorders and pulled the wreckage of both aircraft from the Potomac.
It will take more than a year to get the final NTSB report on the crash, but officials have been providing regular updates as investigators learn more and they plan to publish a preliminary report in the coming weeks.
Almost immediately after the crash, President Donald Trump publicly faulted the helicopter, which had a flight ceiling of 200 feet (61 meters), for flying too high. He also blamed federal diversity and inclusion efforts, particularly regarding air traffic controllers. When pressed by reporters, the president could not back up those claims. A few days later, Trump placed the blame on what he called an “obsolete” air traffic control system.
Army officials have said the Black Hawk crew was highly experienced and familiar with the crowded skies around Washington.
Air travel remains overwhelmingly safe in the U.S., but there have been a string of incidents in recent weeks, including a fiery explosion on Jan. 31 when a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven people. Last week, a small commuter aircraft crashed off western Alaska, killing 10 people.
