New details are emerging about the deadly crash between an American Airlines flight and an Army helicopter in January near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) which killed 67 people.
Three days of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) hearings, along with thousands of pages of documents, suggest that the Black Hawk helicopter may have been relying on misleading instrument readings when it was operating too high over the Potomac River in the lead-up to the midair collision.
The crash, alongside nonfatal but significant disruptions at other U.S. airports, have brought national attention to longstanding strains on the air traffic control workforce.
On the second day of hearings, investigators probed a sentiment they had heard repeatedly from air traffic controllers about managing DCA’s complicated airspace with short staffing: “We just make it work.”
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials defended the controllers as “public servants,” but also acknowledged the challenges faced by the airport and air safety regulators.
“We’re pushing the line,” admitted Clark Allen, the operations manager at DCA at the time of the crash.
Here are five takeaways from the first two days of hearings.
Black Hawk helicopter had conflicting altitude readings
A video reconstruction that opened the hearing Wednesday showed the Army helicopter flying above the altitude limit on the route before colliding with the American Airlines flight.
Inside the cockpit, however, that may not have been so clear.
Investigators said the helicopter’s barometric altimeter, which relied on air pressure, recorded lower values than a different altimeter that used radio waves. Test flights with three other Black Hawk helicopters over the area showed similar discrepancies, ranging from 80 to 130 feet, which affirmed officials’ concerns from this winter that the pilots were operating using “bad data.”
Kylene Lewis, an Army officer testifying at the hearing, said that she wouldn’t necessarily find the discrepancy between the two altimeters worrying, especially at a lower altitude, where she would have relied more on the radar instrument.
Still, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said that the board is considering issuing new safety recommendations related to altimeters.
Rick Dressler, the aviation site manager for a medevac company, said that civilian helicopter pilots had long been worried about military exercises in the area.
“I don’t like saying that 12th Aviation Battalion gives us all pause in the community, and I’m speaking for my group there,” he said. “We are all very uncomfortable when those two units are operating.”
Safety board head rips FAA for not acting on warnings
A working group of air traffic controllers proposed changing helicopter routes around DCA in 2022, including the helicopter flight path central to the crash investigation.
But one controller told investigators that a district manager told the group the impact of the proposal, which would have added new collision risk areas, or “hot spots,” was “too political.”
Homendy, the NTSB head, slammed FAA officials during the first day of hearings, characterizing the agency’s response as overly bureaucratic.
“You transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in FAA in the tower was saying there was a problem,” she said. “Are you kidding me? 67 people are dead. How do you explain that?”
“Fix it. Do better,” she added.
Army pilots had difficulty hearing air traffic control
In transcripts of cockpit recordings released by the NTSB, the pilots of the Black Hawk helicopter at points had difficulty hearing dispatches from DCA’s traffic control.
Rebecca Lobach, the helicopter’s pilot, complained that the radio “sounds really crappy” and asked at another point if the tower’s sound was muffled.
In another exchange, her instructor said, “I definitely didn’t catch what he said. I’m glad you did.”
Investigators said in February that the helicopter might not have heard a crucial instruction from the tower directing it to pass behind the American Airlines flight, which was descending to land.
The NTSB transcript released Wednesday shows the transmission from the tower was not received in the Black Hawk’s cockpit.
Air traffic supervisor: Concerns about training staff went unaddressed
Much of the second day of hearings focused on the staffing and training of air traffic controllers at DCA.
James Jarvis, an air traffic control quality specialist, said that DCA’s air traffic facility had historically been “on the lower number of staffing.” Jarvis oversaw the airport through 2023 as a quality control expert for the FAA’s Eastern Service Center.
He said he raised concerns several times about the lack of staffing in several administrative positions for training controllers — positions that were never filled, he said.
“I brought that to many, many attention every opportunity I had, and at one point I was told to quit bringing it up,” Jarvis said, adding that the shortages “absolutely” impacted training.
“There [were] not enough folks to manage the training that needed to take place,” he added.
The airspace around DCA is unusually complex, with military helicopter routes criss-crossing heavy commercial jet traffic.
Traffic controller says he was ‘overwhelmed’ in leadup to crash
A single air traffic controller was handling both planes and helicopters at the time of the collision, unusual under normal conditions, and interview transcripts released by the NTSB paint a picture of a busy night.
“He was giving clearances and there were a couple of times, and you can listen to it yourself, where he changed his mind, to do one thing, but then no, do this kind of thing,” one pilot in the vicinity of the airport told investigators. “They’re not instilling a lot of confidence in you because he’s seeming like he’s overworked, got too much going on at the moment.”
The controller told investigators that he was “starting to become a little overwhelmed with the helicopters,” about 10 or 15 minutes before the fatal crash.
An assistant in the tower said the controller told the helicopter to pass behind the airplane.
“I went to write down what the helicopters were doing, because there were other helicopters on the frequency,” the assistant said. “And then I heard someone say, ‘Oh s—.’ And I looked up and I saw the explosion.”
