Finding the probable cause of the fatal mid-air collision above the Potomac River next to Reagan National Airport rests in the hands of the National Transportation Safety Board, which has promised a preliminary finding in 30 days.
Meanwhile, plenty of speculation about the cause is underway, much of it from former Black Hawk pilots who have opinions about what went wrong when the helicopter collided with American Airlines 5342 on January 29, killing all 67 people aboard the two aircraft.
NTSB member and spokesman Todd Inman said Friday there were “most likely multiple issues” involved in the cause. Even so, considerable focus has continued on why the Black Hawk was at the same altitude as flight 5342, which was on final approach to Reagan National Airport.
In a late Friday briefing, Inman revealed that black boxes have been recovered from the waters of the Potomac for both aircraft. They are both being evaluated for data and voice communications. Flight 5342 had two boxes for voice and data, while the Black Hawk had a single black box for both data and voice.
FlightAware records put flight 5342 at nearly 375 feet in altitude at the time of the crash, which would mean the Black Hawk was above the 200-foot flying ceiling in that location.
President Trump entered his own view of the matter in a post on Truth Social early Friday: “The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”
Later Friday in comments from the White House, President Trump added: “Eventually it will come out the way I said. It shouldn’t have been there” above 200 feet.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president based his Truth Social post on input from administration officials, but did not elaborate.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has called the collision “absolutely” preventable.
If the NTSB and other authorities eventually verify that the Black Hawk was too high, there will be plenty of opinions from the public on how the Black Hawk was in that location at the same time as flight 5342.
Several former Black Hawk pilots have suggested in reports that the Black Hawk crew of three were disoriented by lights in the night sky and confused flight 5342 with another commercial airliner when air traffic control notified the Black Hawk crew of 5342’s position. Black Hawk acknowledged ATC, but after 13 seconds of silence, the crash occurred.
The Black Hawk was operating on visual flight rules, and crew members had night vision goggles available, whether they were being worn or not. Some pilots have suggested the night vision goggles would not have worked as well as they should, given the bright lights and reflections on the Potomac River.
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Other pilots have suggested that the Black Hawk needed a fourth crew member seated in the rear of the craft to help spot other craft. At the point of the crash, there were only three crew: a pilot and a co-pilot and a crew chief in the rear.
One persistent question is whether various sensors and automatic systems designed to detect nearby aircraft could have been used to help avoid the crash. Many aircraft use the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), but the Army Black Hawk was not equipped with similar collision avoidance technology, according to a spokesperson for the Army Combat Readiness Center.
The TCAS aboard the commercial flight should have offered a warning of an impending collision, but such systems don’t perform fully when closer to the ground to avoid false alarms from ground traffic.
Army Black Hawk helicopters are often equipped with a variety of sensors and systems that could have been used to detect the commercial craft, giving the highly-maneuverable helicopter a chance to evade it. It isn’t clear what systems were onboard, but these systems include FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) sensors mounted in the nose for infrared detection and PDAS (Pilotage Distributed Aperture Sensor) for generating high-res, 360-degree imagery around the aircraft. There could also be onboard DVEPS (Degraded Visual Environment Pilotage System) to help pilots through clouds, dust, sand and fog. Also, IVHMS (Integrated Vehicle Health Management System) could be used for collecting information on the aircraft’s health.
Sikorsky makes the H-60 helicopter used by the Army for its UH-60 Black Hawk, while a related version, the SH-60, is the Seahawk helicopter used by the US Navy. There are others for other armed services. Later models will often have all the bells and whistles including various sensor capabilities.
A former Black Hawk helicopter pilot and medical evacuation helicopter pilot familiar with the airspace near Reagan Airport told Fierce, “When flying around DC, you always have to be aware of your location especially when you are flying visual flight rules because of the busy airspace and the prohibited areas that can get you in trouble…I’m not sure why the Black Hawk crew didn’t see the AA aircraft. I guess we will have to wait for the NTSB report to come out.”
If warning systems were onboard the Black Hawk involved in the crash, the crew might have been able to mute audio warnings, he said. “As a pilot, you get used to dealing with multiple different things at any given point. That’s why most aircraft have two pilots, one to fly and one to deal with everything else.”