Black Hawk crew might not have heard crucial tower instruction, NTSB says

The crew of an Army Black Hawk helicopter might not have heard key instructions from air traffic control before a collision with a passenger jet over the Potomac River on Jan. 29, the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday in its most detailed account of the moments before the crash that killed 67 people.

About 17 seconds before the helicopter and plane collided, air traffic control had directed the Black Hawk’s crew to “pass behind the CRJ,” referring to the type of American Airlines regional jet that was approaching Reagan National Airport.

Jennifer Homendy, NTSB’s chairman, said Friday that “ ‘pass behind the’ may not have been received by the crew,” based on its review of the Black Hawk’s cockpit voice recorder, which did not capture those words. The helicopter crew had activated its microphone at that moment to communicate with air traffic control.

She also disclosed that the investigation has uncovered discrepancies in verbal readouts of altitude called out by the Black Hawk crew as they flew south along the Potomac. Conflicting readings could provide clues as to why the helicopter was flying above its mandatory 200-foot ceiling before the crash at 8:47 p.m. southeast of the airport.

NTSB disclosed the details during a minute-by-minute account of the rapidly developing disaster. At the last moment before impact, the passenger jet apparently made an urgent, last-second maneuver to pull up. The plane’s elevators – flaps on the tail – were positioned close to the maximum nose-up position, Homendy said.

The crash has brought intense scrutiny to how the Federal Aviation Administration manages one of the busiest and most complex air spaces in the country, and particularly how helicopter traffic crosses the path of airplanes descending to land.

The plane was carrying 60 passengers, including elite young figure skaters, coaches and their family members returning from a competition, in addition to four crew members. The Black Hawk was carrying three crew members. No one survived.

The plane, American Airlines flight 5342, was preparing to land on Runway 33. Air traffic controllers radioed the Black Hawk, which was flying a training mission along a corridor that runs directly beneath the approach to Runway 33, alerting its crew to the plane approaching from the south.

The Black Hawk indicated it had the plane in sight, but experts have told the Washington Post that its crew may have mistakenly spotted a different plane farther away, with city lights and night vision goggles potentially limiting their view.

Homendy confirmed Friday that the Black Hawk was flying a training mission and its crew was “likely wearing night vision goggles throughout the flight,” based on the nature of the flight and the absence of a discussion about removing them that would have been required.

About four minutes before impact, a Black Hawk pilot reported an altitude of 300 feet while the instructor on board said 400 feet, Homendy said. The agency is investigating whether there was a difference between the helicopter’s actual altitude – as measured by radio – and a barometric altimeter, an instrument that accounts for atmospheric conditions that is typically what pilots would use.

Homendy said she was confident that the helicopter’s “radio altitude” was 278 feet above the Potomac at the time of the crash, but she stressed that “that does not mean that’s what the Black Hawk crew was seeing.”

“Were they seeing something different in the cockpit that differs from the (flight data recorder)?” Homendy said. “It’s possible.”

About two minutes before the crash, air traffic control radioed to the Black Hawk that the American Airlines plane was just south of the Wilson bridge, “circling to runway 33.” But the crew might not have heard the word “circling,” Homendy said.

As the American Airlines jet approached for a landing, it received an automated alert in the cockpit, stating “traffic, traffic” about 20 seconds before the collision.

Passenger planes in the United States are required to have an anti-collision technology that is designed to alert them of other aircraft when their paths could intersect. The Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS, works by automatically communicating with transponder-equipped aircraft, exchanging information about their positions and calculating the trajectories to warn of a possible collision.

The first type of cockpit warning is a verbal one – “traffic, traffic” – that escalates into a more urgent alert instructing the pilots to immediately correct course, known as a resolution advisory. Airline pilots have received more than 100 resolution advisories over the past decade warning of a potential midair collision near Reagan National Airport, a Post examination found.

TCAS isn’t designed to deliver resolution advisories below 1,000 feet, in part to avoid overwhelming pilots with alerts while they are concentrating on landing, according to aviation experts. The NTSB is still investigating what triggered the traffic alert, Homendy said.

The plane was at 313 feet two seconds before the crash, descending at 448 feet per second. Then, one second before impact, the plane nosed up by nine degrees, according to the NTSB.

To Tim Lilley, a veteran pilot who has flown both Black Hawks and regional jets, the increase in the plane’s pitch suggests that “one or both pilots pulled on the yoke” – like the plane’s steering wheel – “all the way back,” he said. Lilley has investigated crashes, but his connection to this one is personal: His son, Sam, was a pilot on board the American Airlines jet.

“It’s like three parts of my world collided over the Potomac,” he said Friday, after receiving a private NTSB briefing for families. “It’s terrible.”

In the aftermath of the collision, the Federal Aviation Administration has restricted helicopter traffic pending the outcome of the NTSB investigation.

Lilley said he has already been speaking to the Army and members of Congress about what he thinks should be done differently in the future, including enabling helicopter and airplane pilots to hear each others’ transmissions to air traffic control, staffing every Black Hawk with four crew members, and conducting a “complete retraining” based on the failures of Jan. 29.

“Most aviation regulation is written in blood,” he said. “I’m going to stick with this aviation safety piece for as long as it takes to make positive change.”

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Rachel Weiner contributed to this report.