The USA’s National Transportation Safety Board will release a report in 30 days about a fatal midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines aircraft in Washington.
A Blackhawk helicopter on a training flight collided with American Airlines flight 5342 on Wednesday, January 29 , just before 9pm as it approached Runway 33 of the Reagan National Airport from Wichita, Kansas. The collision killed the 64 people onboard the American Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 and three Army personnel in the Black Hawk.
The midair collision happened in airspace about 3 miles (5km) south of the White House above the Potomac River in a busy airspace, where numerous military and civil flights are common. While the airspace around Reagan National Airport is complex, there are established procedures to separate commercial and military helicopter traffic.
Responders were continuing to recover bodies and wreckage from the river at the time of writing. The black box flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from the CRJ700 were found on Thursday night and work had started on analysing the data.
Widely reported ADS-B tracking information shows the Army helicopter entering the CRJ700’s flightpath as it approaches runway 33. Recordings made less than 30 seconds before the crash which are also available reveal controllers attempting to stop the collision from happening.
Several media outlets, including the New York Times and Washington Post reported that the ATC Tower at the Reagan National Airport was understaffed at the time of the accident.
The FAA in the USA has a shortage of around 3,000 controllers, despite hiring around 1,800 last year. It also appointed an expert panel last year to study ways of addressing the issue of air traffic controller fatigue after several near-misses between aircraft.
NTSV to set up ATC investigation group
Alongside several other groups that form part of a standard National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation, an ATC Group will reconstruct and review the air traffic control systems and processes used during the incident.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday night, Todd Inman, NTSB member on the scene and spokesperson for the investigation said, “This includes the acquisition of pertinent flight track surveillance, information what you might typically think of as radar or ADS-B, along with controller pilot communications. The controllers, who have union representation will be interviewed and the investigators analyse those as part of the investigation.”
“We don’t have a lot of information right now. Our intention is to have a preliminary report in 30 days. We will not be determining the probable cause of the accident while we are here on scene nor will we speculate about what may have caused this accident.”
NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said, “We express our deepest condolences to those who lost loved ones in this terrible tragedy. We are going to conduct a thorough investigation, looking at the facts.
“You need to give us time. We have a substantial amount of information that we need to verify.”
