The Army Blackhawk pilot involved in the Washington, DC, plane crash failed to heed her flight instructor’s warning just 15 seconds before the deadly crash that killed 67 people, according to a new report.
Moments before the deadly Jan. 29 crash near Reagan International Airport, Capt. Rebecca Lobach missed an order from co-pilot Andrew Eaves, who was overseeing her training mission, to change course and avoid the descending American Airlines jet, the New York Times reported.
Along with the error, officials found that the pilots “stepped on” some of the air traffic controller’s instructions, meaning they accidentally cut him off when pressing the button to talk over the radio and likely missed important information.
A key moment occurred around 8:46 p.m., when Eaves requested and received approval for the helicopter’s pilots to use their own visuals instead of air-traffic control to avoid other air traffic. The move is common practice to speed things up, but of course comes with the risk of more human error.
During that moment, investigators believe Eaves and Lobach failed to hear that the American Airlines plane was “circling” because one of them was pressing the microphone key to speak to air traffic control when the word came through.
Just 20 seconds before the crash occurred, the air-traffic controller asked the helicopter if it spotted American Airlines Flt. 5342, which was coming up on Runway 33 where the chopper was approaching.
“PAT two-five, do you have the CRJ in sight?” he asked, using the abbreviation for the model of Flt. 5342’s aircraft.
That was the last communication between the plane and the air-traffic controller.
Technology on the Black Hawk that would have allowed air traffic control to better track the helicopter was also found to be turned off that day, common protocol if the training mission had been for real.
But it was a practice mission involving an annual flying assessment for Robach, who was training as if top congressional officials needed to be flown from a Capitol under siege.
Brig. Gen. Matthew Braman, the Army’s director of aviation, said it was clear that multiple factors contributed to the deadly crash.
“I think what we’ll find in the end is there were multiple things that, had any one of them changed, it could have well changed the outcome of that evening,” he said.
Aviation experts have long bemoaned the practice of allowing pilots to navigate on their own, as human error can often lead to tragedy, especially in the exceedingly busy conditions around Reagan airport.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has since openly criticized the long-standing practice and vowed to get rid of it as he likened it to “threading a needle.”
There was also an apparent discrepancy between two of the three Army pilots aboard the doomed chopper about what altitude they were flying at, according to investigators — and they were well above the 200-foot limit for that location.
At one point before the collision, the helicopter’s pilot announced that they were at 300 feet, but the instructor pilot was also heard saying the helicopter was at 400 feet, according to recordings.
At the time of the fiery crash, the Black Hawk was flying at 278 feet, National Transportation Safety Board head Jennifer Homedy said, adding, “That doesn’t mean that’s what the Black Hawk crew was seeing on the barometric altimeters in the cockpit.”
The Black Hawk collided with Flt. 5342, which was en route to Reagan National Airport from Wichita, Kan., just at 8:47:59 p.m., officials said.
The fiery collision sent both aircraft plunging into the Potomac River, marking the deadliest US air disaster since 2001.
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