NTSB finds Army chopper in fatal midair crash with plane was above altitude limit
Incorrect altitude readings on the Army helicopter that collided with a passenger plane over Washington, D.C., in January contributed to the aircraft getting too close, but air traffic controllers warned about the hazards helicopter traffic presented years before the crash.
Those warnings came even before the 85 near misses near the airport in the three years before the crash. But despite the concerns that were raised about the route the Black Hawk helicopter followed that night, the Federal Aviation Administration didn’t make changes to it or warn pilots about it.
The details came out of the first day of National Transportation Safety Board hearings in Washington, where investigators highlighted several of the factors that contributed to the crash between the American Airlines plane from Wichita, Kansas, and the Black Hawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport that was the deadliest aviation disaster in America since November 2001.
“It’s so bureaucratic,” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. “I mean we heard it in the testimony today: ‘Oh you could bring it up in another symposium or another group. or you could take this option or we said no.’ But then I asked did you provide an alternative? That’s why people are so critical of the federal government because you can’t ensure safety.”
Representatives of the Army and Federal Aviation Administration tried to deflect responsibility throughout the hearing. The Army acknowledged that their Black Hawks altimeters might be more than 100 feet (30 meters) off, but they seemed to say that was acceptable because their pilots’ goal is to maintain altitude within 100 feet of a limit.
Army officials instead raised concerns about the lack of separation between landing aircraft and helicopters flying on approved FAA routes near the airport. But later in the day, FAA and Army officials both implied that those routes were never supposed to ensure separation. Instead they suggested that it was up to the air traffic controller to keep helicopters from flying on that route anytime planes were taking off or landing from that runway.
Aviation lawyer Bob Clifford, who is representing several of the victims’ families said there was a lot of “finger pointing” and “no acceptance of responsibility and accountability” during the hearing.
The board’s final report won’t be released until sometime next year, but it became clear Wednesday how small a margin of error there was for helicopters flying the route the Black Hawk took the night of the crash.
The January nighttime incident 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.
Animation, altimeter discrepancy
A video animation showed where the helicopter and airliner were leading up to the collision. It showed how the helicopter flew above the 200 feet (61 meters) altitude limit on the helicopter route along the Potomac River 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 older 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 help provide more accurate altitude readings.
Army 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, although that’s not something every Army pilot is trained to do.
Army officials said the greater concern is that the FAA approved routes around Reagan airport that included such separation distances as small as 75 feet between helicopters and planes when planes are landing on a certain runway at Reagan.
“The fact that we have less than 500 foot separation is a concern for me,” said Scott Rosengren, chief engineer in the office that manages the Army’s utility helicopters.
But Rosengren said that “if he was king for a day” he would immediately retire all the older Black Hawk models like the one involved in this crash and replace them with newer versions of the helicopters.
Questions over the route
Army officials and the head of a local medevac helicopter company that flies around Washington told the board they believed air traffic controllers would never let them fly the helicopter route involved in the crash anytime a plane was approaching the runway.
Chief Warrant Officer David Van Vetchen said after the crash that he talked to many of his fellow pilots and everyone had the same assumption that controllers would never allow them to fly across the path of the runway the American plane was approaching before the crash. But Homendy said other pilots in the unit told investigators they were allowed to fly underneath landing planes.
Citing the numbers for runways, Van Vetchen said that “100% of the time when I was on route four and 33/15 was active” he would be instructed to hold until after the plane landed or took off from that runway.
‘Stepped on transmission’
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 on two different frequencies, according to the NTSB’s History of Flight Performance Study released Wednesday.
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. Officials on Wednesday also raised the use of night vision goggles, which limit the wearer’s field of view, on the helicopter as a factor.
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.
On Wednesday, it came out that even if they had been turned on, the ADS-B Out systems on most of the helicopters in the same unit as the one that crashed wouldn’t work because they had been installed incorrectly. When the NTSB uncovered that problem, the Army sent out an alert about it and worked to quickly reprogram the units so they would work.
Homendy highlighted that an FAA working group raised concerns about all the helicopter traffic around Reagan 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.
Homendy said “every sign was there that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that.” But 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?”
Proposed changes
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, introduced legislation Tuesday to require all aircraft operators to use both forms of ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, the technology to broadcast aircraft location data to other planes and air traffic controllers. Most aircraft today are equipped with ADS-B Out equipment but the airlines would have to add the more comprehensive ADS-B In technology to their planes.
The legislation would revoke an exemption on ADS-B transmission requests for Department of Defense aircrafts.
Homendy said her agency has been recommending that move for decades after several other crashes.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that while he’d like to discuss “a few tweaks,” the legislation is “the right approach.” He also suggested that the previous administration “was asleep at the wheel” amid dozens of near-misses in the airspace around Washington’s airspace.
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Associated Press writers Leah Askarinam, Ben Finley and Rio Yamat contributed to this story.
By JOSH FUNK
AP Transportation Writer
