The pilot of the U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into an American Airlines plane in DC made a fatal mistake in the moments before the collision, according to a new report.
All 64 people on board the plane and three crew members on the Hawk were killed during the mid-air collision in Washington DC on January 29. Previous reports found that the chopper was flying too high when it collided with the passenger jet in America’s worst aviation disaster since 2001. Now an investigation by The New York Times has looked at the other errors that led up to the crash.
Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach failed to follow instructions from her co-pilot and flight instructor, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, who reportedly asked her to change course, according to The Times.
The Black Hawk crew was said to have been first alerted to a regional passenger jet in its vicinity by Ronald Reagan National Airport air traffic control.
Eaves and Lobach acknowledged the message, and asked to fly by “visual separation”, a common procedure that allows the pilot to avoid collisions by sight rather than relying on air traffic control instructions. A controller approved the request but it appears not to have been followed.
The Hawk was 15 seconds away from crossing paths with the jet when Eaves told Lobach to take a sharp left toward the east river bank, the Times reports. But this turn failed to happen, and the two aircraft struck one another.
The report goes on to say that radio communication between air traffic controllers and the pilots became disrupted, with some of the air instructions being “stepped on”.
This meant that communication dropped as soon as a member of the Hawk crew pressed down on the microphone to speak, and subsequently, key information may have gone unheard.
There were other issues that contributed to the tragedy, the investigation found.
Technology that tracked the aircraft’s movements over the Potomac was switched off at the time of the crash, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, told The Times. It was reportedly done to comply with U.S. Army protocol, which allows for pilots to practice secretly while airlifting a senior government official in an emergency.
Air traffic control errors may also have played a part, the report adds. After giving the Hawk crew permission for visual separation, air control staff continued to monitor its movements but failed to deliver vital emergency instructions to the members as they closed in on the AA jet, aviation experts said.
Captain Lobach and Warrant Officer Eaves were believed to be wearing night-vision goggles at the time of the military exercise, according to investigators. Such equipment was necessary for her evaluation as they can enhance visibility at night in complex surroundings, yet this can be skewered by bright urban lights, military pilots added.
“Multiple layers of safety precautions failed that night,” said the Federal Aviation Administration’s deputy administrator under President Joe Biden, Katie Thomson.
Brig. Gen. Matthew Braman, the Army’s director of aviation, added: “I think what we’ll find in the end is there were multiple things that, had any one of them changed, it could have well changed the outcome of that evening.”
In statement to The Times the FAA said it could not discuss any aspect of its ongoing investigation into the deadly crash.
The Army has since made changes to how its helicopters use a safety system that broadcasts aircraft location and has reduced the number of flights over Washington following the DC crash, the head of Army aviation said earlier this month. The FAA has also permanently closed a route along the Potomac River that directly intersected the flight path for the runway where January’s collision took place.
