Pilots flying an Army Black Hawk above the Potomac River on Jan. 29 expressed confusion and frustration in the last minutes before the helicopter collided with a commercial passenger jet, according to a transcript of its cockpit voice recording.
Communications with the air traffic controller who was monitoring the helicopter from Ronald Reagan National Airport were flawed throughout the flight’s final phase, according to the transcript, which was released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency investigating the accident.
“Is he pretty muffled?” the Black Hawk pilot, Captain Rebecca M. Lobach, asked at one point, in reference to an instruction from the controller.
“Yeah. I definitely didn’t catch what he said,” replied Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, who was instructing Ms. Lobach that evening. “I’m glad you did.”
The investigative agency released the documents as part of a three-day hearing on the factors that contributed to the accident. Investigators on Wednesday discussed a number of troubling discoveries, including the likely possibility that the altimeter that indicates the helicopter’s flying height gave incorrect readings, leading the pilots to believe they were flying lower than they actually were.
The garbled communication made it difficult for the pilot flying the Black Hawk and her instructor to hear important information from the control tower during the fatal flight. In the final moments of the flight, based on what he thought they were being asked, Mr. Eaves told Capt. Lobach to turn east.
“Alright, kinda come left for me, ma’am, I think that’s why he’s asking,” Mr. Eaves said.
Capt. Lobach replied, “Sure.”
Seconds later, and apparently before the turn could be made, they crashed into the plane, an American Airlines regional jet carrying 64 people.
The transcript sheds new light on the deadly midair collision between the Black Hawk and American Airlines Flight 5324, an accident that killed 67 people, and the decisions the pilots made that night.
Capt. Lobach at one point turned the helicopter in the wrong direction, prompting a correction from Mr. Eaves. The pilot, who was flying that night for her annual evaluation, also had difficulty maintaining her prescribed altitude, though it is unclear from the transcripts why that was.
The transcript underscores some of the factors that appear to have contributed to the crash: the pilots were flying at too high of an altitude for the helicopters’ route; they suffered from a lack of clarity on the controller’s expectation; and their equipment for determining altitude might have been faulty.
Several experienced helicopter pilots said in interviews with The New York Times, after reviewing the transcript, that while some of the flight’s challenges were ordinary, others were evidence of an unusually difficult check ride, or evaluation flight, for Capt. Lobach.
“The pilot flying might have had some difficult points during her evaluation, but nothing outside the norm for an officer in her position,” said Austin Roth, a retired Army instructor pilot who knew the deceased crew and flew the same route many times.
Questions remain, Mr. Roth added, about whether the altitude readers in the Black Hawk’s cockpit were malfunctioning or whether Capt. Lobach simply had difficulty maintaining the required 200-foot altitude for some other reason.
Sixteen minutes before the deadly crash, threats to the crew’s safety were already emerging.
In discussing the difficulty hearing the air traffic controller, Capt. Lobach said that the volume in the cockpit was adequately high, seeming to rule out that volume level was the problem.
But a couple of minutes later, she said, “com sounds really crappy.”
The N.T.S.B. has said for months that there were communications problems during the flight. Investigators found that some of the directions from the controller were likely “stepped on,” or bleeped out, omitting critical details. Experienced Black Hawk pilots said that there would be no way to know if communications had been stepped on in the helicopter cockpit, because all they would hear during those moments would be silence.
In addition to grappling with the missed communications, Capt. Lobach had difficulty with some of her responsibilities, the transcripts show, including keeping to the correct route and altitude.
Mr. Eaves repeatedly told her to keep to 200 feet, noticing that her altitude was higher than it should be. She agreed, but N.T.S.B. materials show that she was flying higher than that — sometimes by 100 or more feet — throughout the helicopter’s final leg. The crash occurred at roughly 300 feet above the river.
Evidence presented in Wednesday’s hearing from N.T.S.B. testing suggests that the barometric altimeters may have been faulty, reflecting a lower altitude than where the helicopter was actually flying.
The route Capt. Lobach took during the flight’s final moments was in keeping with the standard path for helicopters in that airspace along what are called Routes 1 and 4, documents show. But earlier in that southbound leg toward the Army base, Capt. Lobach apparently moved in the wrong direction.
“What’s up ma’am, where we going?” Mr. Eaves asked at that time.
“Down the river. Uh, route one to four,” said Capt. Lobach, referring to the helicopter route that would take them south.
“Uh, you just took a right turn which is gonna take us back to Great Falls,” Mr. Eaves replied, referring to a city in Virginia northwest of National Airport.
Capt. Lobach excused herself and made the adjustment.
Kate Kelly covers money, policy and influence for The Times.
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