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NTSB Investigators detail points of failure leading to D.C.-area plane crash

edited July 31 in Off-Topic
Following are excerpts from a current report in The Washington Post. The report is very extensive, and anyone interested should view the entire report. The above link should be free to all.

An Army helicopter unit flew in the tight airspace using faulty altitude readings, while controllers efforts to improve safety were rebuffed, according to the NTSB.
Investigators painted a devastating picture Wednesday of numerous mistakes and government failures that converged at a tragic point 278 feet above the Potomac River on Jan. 29, in the fullest public airing of factors in the collision of a regional passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that cost 67 lives.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators grilled Federal Aviation Administration and Army officials for not taking action after years of warnings from air traffic controllers and others about dangers in the busy airspace around Reagan National Airport, which is crowded with military and civilian aircraft.

They released thousands of pages of documents about equipment faults aboard Army helicopters, confusion and limited visibility for the helicopter crew on the night of the crash, control tower staffing, and missed opportunities to reduce clear risks.

The documents — released at the start of three days of public hearings on the crash — include the first account from the frontline air traffic controller in National’s tower. He was handling two jobs at once and told investigators that he had been getting “overwhelmed” just 15 minutes before the crash.

An airline pilot picked up on that, telling investigators the controller seemed unusually busy and overloaded. The controller said he relied on the helicopter crew to avoid the airliner, but they appeared not to have seen the jet even seconds before impact.

But roots of the problems began long before that night, according to NTSB documents. The Army’s helicopters had altimeters that gave erroneous readouts to pilots flying in the sensitive airspace, which has a 200-foot height limit. And before the crash, a FAA regional manager blocked a proposal to move the helicopter route away from the danger zone of intersecting flight routes where the crash happened, deeming the idea “too political.”

But taken together, the full day of testimony and thousands of pages of documents provide the clearest accounting yet of what led up to the crash. And board members grew frustrated with what they called inadequate responses from Army and FAA officials.

“You guys are pointing out, ‘Well, our bureaucratic process, somebody should have brought it up at some other symposium,’” NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said. “Are you kidding me? 67 people are dead. How do you explain that?”
The above excerpts are just the introduction to the NTSB report. The report is very lengthy, and you will need to read the entire report to understand the sequence of events which occurred. There is no way that report can be summarized here.

Comments

  • edited July 31
    Thanks @Old_Joe - The link to the WAP article did work. Circuitous route. Required first accessing the link you provided and then having them email a special one-time link to the “gifted” article to me. Hope works for others. I might enjoy the actual NTSB report if / when available with the cockpit audio which I believe is now in the public domain. But the WAP article is very good.

    Not much to say …. So tragic …. But there have been, it seems, increasingly common incidents of near collisions between military and civilian transport planes. B52 incident recently. Something needs to be done to protect the flying public.


    Apparently the transcript of the Army chopper’s CVR was released before or at the hearing. Some bits and pieces here.

    My DuckGo AI search assistant says: ”The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released transcripts of the cockpit voice recorder from the PSA Airlines-operated CRJ700 that crashed in Washington, D.C., in January 2025. These transcripts were made public during the NTSB's three-day investigative hearing held in July 2025, providing insight into the final moments before the midair collision with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The recordings include communications between the helicopter's crew and air traffic control, as well as the cockpit voice recorder from the commercial jet. “

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