The opening day of the National Transportation Safety Board’s marathon public hearings into the deadly midair crash between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines passenger jet in January offered new details that could explain why the two aircraft were on a collision course.
The N.T.S.B. is not expected to issue their final conclusions and recommendations from the investigation until early next year. Still, the evidence, testimony, and materials that were released on Wednesday illustrated a number of problems that are likely to draw attention from regulators and lawmakers eager to close safety loopholes that allowed the fatal crash to occur.
The hearing, which lasted more than 10 hours, was technical and at times testy, with the morning focused on the helicopter and the possibility that the pilot of Black Hawk was unable to know with precision just how high up in the air she was flying. The afternoon panels examined the crowded airspace around Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., where the crash occurred.
Hearings on Thursday and Friday are expected to delve deeper into air traffic control procedures at the airport, how the relevant agencies collect and assess safety data, and the role that advanced collision avoidance technology could play in ensuring such crashes don’t occur in the future.
Here are some of the takeaways from the hearing and the new documents released by the N.T.S.B.
Investigators have zeroed in on whether the helicopter pilot was misled by her instruments.
Data from the crash showed that at least one barometric altimeter, the main instrument that measures altitude in the Black Hawk helicopter, was recording a flying height 80 to 100 feet lower than its true altitude. And under testing, the N.T.S.B. found that the altimeters could be off by up to 130 feet on Black Hawks flying over the Potomac River, which the helicopter and jet were flying over when they collided.
That could have caused the helicopter crew to believe they were flying at a safer, lower altitude when they were actually headed straight into the jet’s path.
Army experts testified that it was not uncommon for the barometric altimeter, to be off by a much as 100 feet, and that such a discrepancy would not commonly be cause for alarm.
The Army started to notice problems with the barometric altimeter readings on Black Hawks as far back as 1983, six years before the Army first acquired the UH-60Ls, like the one involved in the crash on Jan. 29. That craft was delivered to the Army in 2001.
Sikorsky Aircraft, the manufacturer of the Black Hawk, discontinued the UH-60L model in 2006.
An ad hoc working group raised concerns about the crowded D.C. airspace.
A few years before the crash, there was a discussion among some Federal Aviation Administration officials, air traffic managers and other aviation industry representatives involved in an ad hoc helicopter working group at the control tower at National Airport about making changes along a particularly concerning helicopter route through the airspace, known as Route 4.
There was widespread worry about the potential for collisions between helicopters flying that route and airplanes trying to land on the airport’s Runway 33 — pathways that came close to crisscrossing in midair, particularly without strict F.A.A. rules for keeping the different kinds of aircraft separated vertically and in their planned routes.
But the discussions never moved up the chain at the F.A.A., N.T.S.B. officials and witnesses from the F.A.A. said on Wednesday, and the route did not change.
“It never got through the bureaucracy,” Jennifer Homendy, the N.T.S.B. chair, told reporters after Wednesday’s hearing.
Air traffic control made an unusual move before the crash.
The air traffic controller handling both helicopter and airplane traffic that night rerouted American Airlines Flight 5342 from the normal runway, Runway 1, to a lesser-used Runway 33. But instead of telling the approaching Army Black Hawk to hover in place until the jet passed, he allowed it to proceed along a helicopter route that crossed the plane’s path of descent.
Pilots described that move as unusual. They told the N.T.S.B. they had typically been told to pause over Hains Point, at the tip of an island north of the airport, until planes on this same cross-river approach had safely passed.
“If I was southbound, I was told to hold north by Hains Point,” Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 David Van Vechten Jr. said in an interview, the transcript of which was among the materials the N.T.S.B. released on Wednesday. “Not one single time ever did they let me cross the approach path” of Runway 33, where the passenger jet was landing that night.
Tensions between N.T.S.B. and the F.A.A. were on display.
Improvements to aviation safety require the N.T.S.B. and the F.A.A. to work cooperatively, because the N.T.S.B. makes safety recommendations, but it’s up to the F.A.A. to put them into place.
But on Wednesday, as the hearing neared its end, board members accused the F.A.A. of knowingly stymieing efforts to improve safety at National Airport, and stonewalling parts of the board’s investigation of the crash.
“Every sign was there that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that,” Ms. Homendy, the N.T.S.B. chair, said, raising her voice for the first time.
She blamed F.A.A. officials for not doing more to accelerate improvements to safety.
“Sixty-seven people are dead. How do you explain that?” she said, adding: “Fix it. Do better.”
She also criticized F.A.A. officials for taking months to turn over documents pertaining to the staffing of the air traffic control tower, stressing that they were delivered only on Friday after she went over their heads, enlisting F.A.A. Administrator Bryan Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to produce the records.
Nick Fuller, the F.A.A.’s acting deputy chief operating officer for operations, defended the agency, arguing that it had been transparent with investigators, and had given them the “latest and greatest” information.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
Kate Kelly covers money, policy and influence for The Times.
David A. Fahrenthold is a Times investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades.
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