Day 2 of federal investigation into fatal midair crash of Army chopper, commercial plane opens

The National Transportation Safety Board enters a second day of public hearings Thursday on the January midair collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a passenger plane that killed all 67 people aboard the aircrafts.

The focus will be on air traffic control.

On the first day, investigators highlighted a number of factors that may have contributed to the crash and the warnings about helicopter traffic that the Federal Aviation Administration received years before the tragedy over the Potomac River.

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy urged the FAA to “Fix it. Do better” at the end of a fiery exchange when she highlighted the warnings the agency ignored years earlier. She also suggested the Army adopt a formal policy making it clear that helicopter pilots should never fly under landing planes because pilots told investigators they were doing that routinely.

“Every sign was there that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that,” Homendy said.

But there were 21 bureaucratic steps the tower had to follow to get a change made and after the accident the FAA transferred managers out of the tower instead of acknowledging that they had been warned.

“What you did is you transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in FAA in the tower was saying there was a problem,” Homendy said. “But you guys are pointing out, ‘Welp, our bureaucratic process. Somebody should have brought it up at some other symposium.’ Are you kidding me? 67 people are dead. How do you explain that?”

The American Airlines jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas, carrying, among others, a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area.

The January collision was the nation’s deadliest plane crash since November 2001 and was the first in a string of crashes and near misses this year that have alarmed officials and the traveling public, despite statistics that still show flying remains the safest form of transportation.

It’s too early for the board to identify what exactly caused the crash. The board’s final report won’t be released until sometime next year.

FAA didn’t add warning to helicopter charts, official says

Homendy said an FAA working group raised concerns about all the helicopter traffic around Ronald Reagan National airport and the risk of a collision in 2022, but the FAA refused to add a warning to helicopter charts urging pilots to use caution when this runway was in use.

“This is the very event that this would have been the cautionary note for,” she said.

Video and animation presented during the proceeding’s first day showed the helicopter flying above the 200 feet (61 meters) altitude limit before colliding with the plane.

Investigators said Wednesday the flight data recorder showed the helicopter was actually 80 feet to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) higher than the barometric altimeter the pilots relied upon showed they were flying. So the NTSB conducted tests on three other helicopters from the same unit in a flight over the same area and found similar discrepancies in their altimeters.

Dan Cooper with Sikorsky helicopters said that when the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the crash was designed in the 1970s, it used a style of altimeter that was common at the time. Newer helicopters have air data computers that didn’t exist back then that help provide more accurate altitude readings.

Chief Warrant Officer Kylene Lewis told the board that she wouldn’t find an 80 to 100 foot discrepancy between the different altimeters on a helicopter alarming because at lower altitudes she would be relying more on the radar altimeter than the barometric altimeter. Below 500 feet (152 meters), Lewis said she would be checking both instruments and cross referencing them.

Army officials said a discrepancy of 70 to 100 feet (21 to 30 meters) between the Black Hawk’s altimeters is within the acceptable range because pilots are expected to maintain their altitude plus or minus 100 feet.

Concern about distances between planes and helicopters

The greater concern is that the FAA approved routes around Reagan airport that included such small separation distances between helicopters and planes when planes are landing.

“The fact that we have less than 500 foot separation is a concern for me,” said Scott Rosengren, who is chief engineer in the office that manages the Army’s utility helicopters.

During the two minutes before the crash, one air traffic controller was directing airport traffic and helicopters in the area, a task that involved speaking to or receiving communications from several different aircraft, according to the NTSB’s History of Flight Performance Study.

The air traffic controller had spoken to or received communications from the Black Hawk helicopter, an airplane that was taking off, an Air Force helicopter, an airplane on the ground, a medical helicopter and an inbound flight that was not the American Airlines plane that would crash.

“All aircraft could hear the controller, but helicopters could only hear other helicopters on their frequency and airplanes only other airplanes,” the report stated. “This resulted in a number of stepped on transmissions as helicopters and airplanes were not aware when the other was communicating.”

Stepped on transmissions are those that are unheard or blocked because of other transmissions. The NTSB report provides a list of 29 separate communications between the airport tower and other aircraft during approximately the 1 minute and 57 seconds before the collision.

Previously disclosed air traffic control audio had the helicopter pilot telling the controller twice that they saw the airplane and would avoid it.

The animation ended with surveillance video showing the helicopter colliding with the plane in a fiery crash.

Investigations have already shown the FAA failed to recognize a troubling history of 85 near misses around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the collision, and that the Army’s helicopters routinely flew around the nation’s capital with a key piece of locating equipment, known as ADS-B Out, turned off.

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Associated Press writers Leah Askarinam, Ben Finley and Rio Yamat contributed to this story.