As investigators begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together concerning the collision of an Army Black Hawk helicopter with an American Airlines regional jet, there are several key details that have emerged that make it impossible to understand exactly why this tragic accident occurred.
Notable Irregularities Revealed After Collion Of Army Helicopter With American Airlines Regional Jet
Let’s look at several key points that have emerged over the last 24 hours that may serve as puzzle pieces in the effort to understand how this tragedy occured.
#1: Air Traffic Control Tower Was Understaffed
A preliminary internal report from the Federal Aviation Administration reveals that staffers was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic” at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) when the accident occurred.
The air traffic controller assigned to handle helicopters in the vicinity of DCA was also instructing both departing and arriving planes. Based on the traffic volume, those jobs are meant for two controllers, not one.
Even so…the chronic understaffing in FAA control towers has been a problem for years and the idea of one controller doing the job of two was not so much an anomaly as much as the status quo in many towers.
It appears the issue is not the wrong people in the job, but simply a shortage of qualified men and women to do the highly stressful job…
#2: AA5342 Was Asked To Change Runways For Landing
American Airlines Flight 5342 was cleared to land on Runway 1, the main runway at Washington National Airport, before being re-assigned to land on Runway 33, an intersecting runway, in the final minutes of the flight. This itself is not uncommon with regional jets at DCA to keep the main runway from becoming clogged.
Intersecting runways are a reality at many airports, but the FAA has taken steps to eliminate them when feasible in larger airports like Chicago O’Hare (ORD) and Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), citing safety concerns.
#3: Air Traffic Controllers Warned US Army Helicopter Ahead Of Crash
The ATC audio reveals that the Army Helicopter was warned of AA5342 in its vicinity and instructed to “pass behind” the jet. Moments later, audible gasps could be heard from air traffic controllers as the two aircraft collided.
ATC: “PAT 2-5 do you have the CRJ in sight?”
(PAT 2-5 was the call sign for the Army helicopter)
ATC: “PAT 2-5, pass behind the CRJ.”
Army Helicopter: “PAT 2-5 has aircraft in sight, request visual separation.”
Per Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Army helicopter was on a “routine annual retraining of night flights on a standard corridor for a continuity of government mission. The military does dangerous things. It does routine things on a regular basis. Tragically, last night a mistake was made.”
CONCLUSION
These irregularities mat not mean anything and I’ll stop far short of assigning blame at this point, though I cannot imagine a scenario in which the American Airlines pilots are to blame for what occurred.
For me, the takeaway is that understaffing in US Air Traffic Control towers is real and a problem crying out for a solution. More staffing may not have prevented this tragedy, but one man should not be the job of two in such a stressful environment. Not when lives are at risk…
Emergency response teams including Washington, DC Fire and EMS respond after an American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas collided with an Army helicopter while approaching National Airport on January 30, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) pic.twitter.com/CvvrhOpt3y
— Andrew Harnik (@andyharnik) January 30, 2025
> Read More: Trump Blames American Airlines Crash On DEI, Obama, Biden, And Buttigieg
top image: US Coast Guard
I just find it hard to believe nobody in the heli was aware under VFR of the plane and changed course sooner. I don’t know that staffing at the ATC would have changed much here. Anyone have the communication with the AA flight?
@Brandon … The helicopter was blind on one side or the other . There ought always be TWO enlisted in the rear , to visually check EACH side of the helicopter . Whether Two crew chiefs , or One crew chief And One other . The pilots look forward , and each side must be “cleared” when maneuvering .
This was a Fundamental error on the part of the helicopter , and is basic military Procedure .
Furthermore , the military has not announced the name of the helicopter co-pilot , only the pilot and crew chief .
…or reduce runway 33 landing use for emergencies. Make runway 1 the sole usual runway. And lower the number of landings to no moʻre than 10 per hour. The rest of the flights can move to Dulles, which has much more runway capacity.
Biden called LaGuardia 3rd world. National is almost 3rd world as far as runways
That was Trump talking about LGA.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-laguardia-airport-redesign-2016-9
Are you serious man, its almost famous what Biden said, all you had to do was google Biden LGA third world
makes me wonder how you do research. I accept you apology in advance for really shoddy careless journalism.
I think both have said it, and whoever said it, they aren’t wrong. I have flown into all three terminals for “New York” and LGA was by far the worst. Not sure why JFK gets hate from some. I thought it was nice and decently well laid out. EWR terminal C isn’t bad, A was dated when I was last there. Not sure if the new one opened yet.
You obviously haven’t flown in to LGA in the past few years. It’s pretty much uncontested that it’s a top 5 airport in the USA and easily the best in New York.
Admittedly, I haven’t been there since 2021. It was a craphole the last few times I was there.
Matthew isn’t going to apologize. He’s changed, ever since he started posting sensationalist pieces about things like fat people complaining about being denied seating, celebrities acting entitled, people assaulting gate agents, etc. You know the saying, right? – if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze bank into you.
I don’t think I need to apologize for anything, here. But if you do…feel free to let me know what that should be.
Matthew is great, nothing to complain about. He is correct about Trump calling LGA 3rd world. However, I am not senile when I wrote that Biden called LGA 3rd world. ABC News 7 New York reported Biden’s comments….
https://abc7ny.com/laguardia-airport-improvements-renovation-at-third-world-country-joe-biden/10046449/
From 2021…
NEW YORK (WABC) — Seven years ago next month, then-Vice President Joe Biden famously described the conditions at LaGuardia Airport as the kind found in a “third-world country.”
Derek.runway 33 is important at DCA for winds. Earlier there were gusty winds, but it appeared to calm down a bit. Perhaps ATC was getting pilot reports of increased gusts again? I still believe DCA is safe. Small but safe.
Flying as a whole is safe. Even if one (hopefully never happens) plane a year crashes it’s still 2-3 orders of magnitude safer than driving. Taken on a 10 year moving average, it’s higher than that, currently.
I take much Trump says with a grain, but if the reports are true the copter was at 400 and shouldn’t have been above 200 ft, the question is WHY and HOW did it happen?
It shouldn’t take 6 months to solve the cause of this tragedy.
Eh, these reports always take a while to ensure the cause, and all ancillary details are fully accounted. I mean just because they might have been at 400ft, what caused them to be at 400ft? Was it an instrumentation error? Pilot error alone? How did none of the other 2 members onboard miss the jet? lots of questions still to answer.
Maybe they could see. Hearing, I don’t know. I’m sure the Sikorsky isn’t necessarily a quiet machine.
Understaffed FAA facilities is not an irregularly, it is the norm.
Has been for decades, and will continue to be so
What, IYO, can be done to fix this? Not being political. I know this I have heard as complaints for well over a decade. (probably longer, I was just not engaged in the conversation about this prior to about 2014 or so)
Raise the maximum age to become ATC. There’s no reason a 32 year old shouldn’t be allowed to apply
I don’t see the need for a maximum below 50. But yes, to me, this would be a good change.
I would agree.
Goes back to Reagan and Republicans and RINO MAGAts ever since having an axe to grind against FAA funding and staffing of ATC. It’s a shame that this has long been a political football, but no one forced the Republicans to keep up in their ideological fussing over ATC staffing for nearly 50 years already.
One of then-Congressman Duffy’s last major Congressional votes on US transportation was against a bill in Congress to increase funding for the FAA and improve ATC. Ever since the first time I met him in Wisconsin and later elsewhere, never liked the dude. And now Duffy and the rest of the Project 2025 operatives are into providing preferential transportation funding for areas with higher than average rates of married people with more children born under wedlock. That’s the neo-DEI they have in mind.
Understaffed ATC is not necessarily the cause of the crash. It might be in spite of the crash.
If there air traffic controllers worked in pairs with the second person just watching, that would double the number of people but not necessarily result in fewer deaths. How about having 3 controllers with 2 watching over each controller at all times.
However, there are standards, which are supposed to be reasonable compromises.
If 9/11 didn’t lead to the closure or shrinking of DCA, this will not either. Solution seems to be relocating the helicopter traffic away from the airport. The additional flight times should be negligible.
Eh, this wasn’t even typical helicopter traffic. This was a mil training op. So, that wouldn’t have changed even if they diverted all commercial heli traffic away from the airport. At this point, flying is so safe that we are bumping up against edge case failures. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t keep improving, it is just to say that all the easily foreseeable failures have already been accounted for. We are at the “last mile” problem.
This was pretty much within the range of typical military helicopter traffic along and around the Potomac River.
The DOD people may categorize the equivalent of empty legs or passenger-using flights as training or who knows what else, but not all of them are really training flights and never have been.
RE: Trump’s comments. I always assume that the President (any President) has more information about a particular incident than I do. And as information dibbles out we may eventually learn what gave rise to Trump’s initial comments.
Of course. There is no doubt that a pro-choice black disabled illegal immigrant lesbian was to blame for the disaster.
It took him 15 hours to come out and blame DEI. If important findings can be done in 15 hours, then why do we wait for months for investigation results from previous accidents?
Trump did not blame DEI. He said the cause of the crash is unknown at this point. What Trump did was complain about DEI. That he did.
My understanding is that there was a CRJ departing 01 at the same time.
I suspect the helicopter pilot saw the CRJ departing and certainly had it in sight and was passing behind it. Sadly didn’t see the CRJ to his left landing on 33 that he collided with.
Depends on the time frame. Some CRJ around that time was given a change from runway 1 to runway 33. That is not unusual, as it’s well within the range of normal for what I have had on my flights coming into DCA.
There was some talk about this DOD/Army VIP helicopter coming back from a Saudi Embassy-owned house in McLean, VA, on Lawton Street. I have the address and know the area, but I haven’t heard a thing about camera footage of the helicopter landing or taking off from that Saudi-owned home in McLean.
FWIW: Nothing listed in this blog post is an “irregularity” (except for comments from the lunatic a-holes); everything mentioned is completely routine and to be expected in any complex airspace. As a longtime pilot who is very experienced flying in complex airspace (I’ve been flying since the 1970s), here’s my speculation as to what happened:
The helicopter pilot was told to “pass behind the CRJ”. The helicopter pilot responded that he had the traffic in sight, and (no doubt) he did see a jet (to his right…) which he had assumed was the CRJ, and he could see that he would indeed pass behind it, as it was well ahead of his (the helicopter’s) position and there would be no conflict.
Problem is (my guess) that the traffic that the helicopter’s pilot saw and was working to avoid was NOT the CRJ in question – the CRJ was to the pilot’s LEFT, on final; the traffic the pilot saw was a different jet which had taken off from the other runway and which was climbing and turning. That is the brightly lighted aircraft you see (crossing from right to left) in the footage we all keep watching, and that traffic was to the RIGHT of the helicopter. In short, the helo pilot was told to cross behind a jet, and he saw a jet – it was big, bright, well ahead of his course, and very easy to see…so he (the help pilot) relaxed his vigilance a bit (because he could easily see there was no threat of a conflict with that aircraft). But he (the helo pilot) had eyes on the wrong jet – the CRJ that he had been warned about (and instructed to cross behind), was actually to his left (perhaps slightly behind him and harder to see – it’s hard to tell based on the angles) and the helo pilot never saw the CRJ until they collided.
There is a lot going on in any aircraft at times like this. The airspace is tight and many aircraft are flying in fairly close proximity, often with overlapping paths. Often vertical separation is extremely tight, and even a deviation of a hundred feet one way or another can eliminate the safety margin – and pilots often are not at precisely the altitude they’re assigned (for a variety of reasons), it’s not a perfect, digital world. This accident took place at night, over ground literally filled with flashing bright lights, and it’s incredibly difficult to judge distances under such conditions. There are a thousand “judgement calls” a pilot makes every few minutes in an environment like this.
Probable cause (just my guess): Pilot error on the part of the helo pilot, in that he mis-identified the OTHER jet he saw, thinking it was the “CRJ” he had to cross behind. He also failed to find and see the CRJ, his actual traffic. Obviously big, deadly, tragic mistakes, but mistakes happen. Contributing factors: less-than-perfect instructions from the guy in the tower. ““Pass behind the CRJ”” is too vague an instruction in this case, with too much ambiguity – the controller should have been more explicit about the relative position of the traffic in question (eg “pass behind the CRJ one quarter mile to your LEFT”) and he should have insisted the help pilot confirm he had observed the correct traffic (but controllers have to make a thousand judgement calls too, and don’t always have time for precise perfection, relying on pilots to do their part). The environment (dark night, ground cover filled with lights) and staffing shortages (leading to controllers making short, minimal instructions because they have too much on their plates) are contributing factors.
How to fix this? Reduce slots at DCA dramatically until/unless the controller shortage is alleviated (hah!). Improve the standard phraseology and protocol for traffic deconfliction instructions, to be more explicit and require specificity and confirmation. Given the country’s “leadership” (I hesitate to use that phrase) we probably will have fewer ATC staff going forward rather than more (because Elon wants his tax cut and hates the FAA because they regulate his rockets). The only way to force a positive change on ATC staffing would be to greatly reduce flights at DCA (which would greatly inconvenience Congress). The changes to ATC/standard phraseology would be straightforward, if the FAA is left to do its work without political nonsense. This is what I expect will happen (though I worry about political meddling).
“I have that traffic” is a phrase I’ve used many thousands of times when speaking with a controller. A few times I’ve said that, only to later realize that I had actually had my eyes on a different aircraft, and I mistakenly reported that I had seen the traffic that was pointed out to me when I had not. In those cases, it never was a critical mistake, it never made any practical difference, I spotted the critical traffic seconds later and there were no issues. But it’s something that can and does happen. Where critical margins are razor-thin, it could make all the difference. I think that’s what happened here.
This is just my speculation. We need to let the NTSB do their work, which will take many months, as it should. The NTSB is the best, but they will probably soon get a new boss straight from Fox News. I fear that Trump will fire the NTSB because they’re not going to say the cause was brown-skinned foreigner lesbians. We will see about that.
So I agree with Isaac, two posts above. I just gave you more details.
Note: I don’t know if the other jet (departing from the other runway) was a CRJ, but small jet aircraft models are quite hard to tell apart even in daytime, even more so at night. It could have been a 737 or other relatively larger jet, doesn’t matter, if the helo pilot just saw a jet, he could tell he wasn’t going to be close to it, and he said he had his traffic, that’s all it takes.
I generally appreciated everything you said until you went silly with the last statement and the middle paragraph. A) would the carriers even allow the reduced slots without raising h377? How does one confirm the traffic “they have eyes on” going forward? This seems like a common issue based on your comments? I mean you could have just stuck to facts instead of injecting your propaganda, going forward. FWIW. Outside of that, thank you for the rest of the post.
I guess based on this assessment, really the only true fix is a permanent reduction in slots to provide for better spacing. I don’t see how even additional instruction, based on what you stated, could have prevented this given there is no way at that speed and distance to confirm which aircraft you have eyes on in airspace like that. I’m not ATC or a pilot, and I could very well be wrong. Just from an engineering perspective, it seems unavoidable without spacing increases.
ATC is severely understaffed and has been for years if not decades now, problem is it takes a long time to train up ATC.
Tl/DR
*Sorry, I was referring to the long post above.
My condolences to all who have been impacted by this tragedy.
Claude
I’m just passing this on as others may have seen this interview as well…..
According to someone in the military and stationed where these pilots were based (who has flown that exact route for years in a Blackhawk) made some interesting observations being familiar with both the aircraft, the training and flying at night in those crowded skies. He stated that crew would be highly trained to be flying there and at night. These would be more or less senior pilots, not new pilots flying in that area . This would include all on board the Blackhawk and each of them would have been wearing night vision goggles. While they work very well in identifying aircraft and cut down on glare, these goggles have sides on them so your vision is straight forward without peripheral vision. They would have to turn their heads to see side to side.
With the tower telling the crew, ‘do you have the CRJ insight’ they said yes, however, planes move quickly and easily could’ve gone out of their direct division.
Also, he was being interviewed because he’s military familiar with the flying route and flying the Blackhawk in the exact situation, (he did not say WHERE this info came from) he said the pilot of the Blackhawk the was not at 200’ but was near 300’.
As I said, I am passing this information along, but it was a live interview yesterday.
– DEI female helicopter pilot
– DEI ATC management
– DEI ATC controllers
So much incompetence to go around. It’s a wonder these disasters don’t happen more often.
These disasters didn’t happen for nearly 16 years in the country, but then Trump came back into government to do more damage and more damage hit in less than 2 weeks of him having control. A sign of the times.
It’s not a constitutional crisis. It’s an insider threat coup.
You seriously need help. Please, for the sake of everyone, consider getting some. There is no constitutional crisis, there is on “inside coup”. At least not anymore than there has been the last century. You want to talk about a constitutional crisis, lets talk about court packing and the threats of it from a certain allegedly “loved” president. Yeah, we had a governmental coup, but it isn’t the one you are speaking of.
On what basis do you make these claims, Gary?
@Matthew … I saw reference to a lawsuit against the FAA for rejecting 1,000 ATC applicants because they were the “wrong” race .
Please advise us , what was that all about ?
What is stopping you from using google to search yourself?
I was disguisedly pointing out to @Matthew the answer to his question .
DEI contaminates everything it touches with failure , particularly jobs requiring very high level testing for skill .
One cannot learn how to fly a helicopter ; one has the skill to do so , or one doesn’t .
One cannot train to be an ATC ; one has the skill to do so , or one doesn’t .
Matthew, Both the military and ATC had active DEI programs for hiring. DEI discriminates by prioritizing race and gender over competency in order to fill arbitrary DEI quotas. So by definition you’re no longer prioritizing selection of the best of the best. Thus ending up with less competency.
Whenever there is a NATO mission inevitably there are a number of casualties among forces from what is called ‘friendly fire’. 99.9% of those casualties are not US forces and 99.9% of the incidents are carried out by US forces.
I think here, US forces just brought ‘friendly fire’ home.