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Several revelations have been made during the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport Midair Collision Investigative Hearing this week. The hearing is being conducted to hopefully provide some answers to how an Army Black Hawk helicopter was able to collide with an American Airlines passenger jet, killing 67 people in January.
What went wrong?
During the hearing, several witnesses and investigators were questioned about the night of the collision. One investigator reported that the flight data recorder on the helicopter showed that it was actually 80 feet to 100 feet higher than the barometric altimeter the pilots were using to guide them that night. It was also revealed that the NTSB tested three other helicopters from the same unit flying over the same location and found their altimeters showed similar discrepancies.
It was also revealed during the hearing that air traffic controllers had repeatedly, for years, shared concerns about helicopter traffic near the airport, but no route changes were ever made and the Federal Aviation Administration never warned pilots about the concerns. According to FAA surveillance data, there were over 15,000 close proximity events between helicopters and commercial aircraft at the airport between October 2021 and December 2024.
The hearing also heard from an investigator that testified that single air traffic controller was handling both helicopter and airplane traffic at the time of the crash, even though usually at that time, 8:48 p.m., those two jobs are not typically combined. It was the controller’s supervisor, who decided that given that night’s workload there was no need to separate the duties.
This air traffic controller also told the Black Hawk helicopter to fly behind the American Airlines plane as it was landing. Other pilots reported to the NTSB that normally air traffic controllers tell helicopters to wait upriver until planes pass. A report from that night stated that the controller was guiding another, unrelated plane through a landing when the collision occurred.
Could the collision have been prevented?
On Wednesday, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy blasted the FAA for their handling of the situation before and in the aftermath of the crash.
“Every sign was there, that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that,” Homendy said. “Yet you know what FAA did, after the accident occurred, you transferred out the air traffic manager, two assistant general managers. You transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in FAA tower was saying there was a problem.”
FAA officials cited the “bureaucratic process” as one of the main factors in the concerns not being addressed. To which, Homendy replied, “Are you kidding me? 67 people are dead! How do you explain that? Our bureaucratic process? Do you know we actually added up how many steps it takes to get from the tower to headquarters to figure out, and we ran all sorts of scenarios, how many steps it takes to get a policy change? Twenty-one steps! Fix it, Do better.”
Another NTSB board member, J. Todd Inman, went after the Army for saying it would update its manuals by September to let pilots know about the helicopter’s altimeter issues.
“You’re telling me it’s going to be two months before you tell them that there’s a discrepancy in their altitude?” Inman responded. “Could you hurry it up?”
He also added during the hearing, “I hope every Army aviator is not having to watch the NTSB.gov livestream to figure out if there’s a discrepancy in their altitudes and planes that are flying around.”
After the hearing’s conclusion, Homendy told the press, “Why did it take 67 lives to be lost and families who are just destroyed forever to understand what was occurring, to realize that you had helicopters flying under civilian aircraft, that you had people within the tower that were trying to say, hey, there was an issue here and not being heard?”