WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Scores of people were feared dead after an American Airlines regional passenger jet with 64 people on board and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter collided and crashed into the frigid Potomac River near Reagan Washington National Airport.
Officials provided no death toll from Wednesday night’s collision but U.S. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, from where the flight was traveling, suggested most if not all those on board had been killed.
“It’s really hard when you lose probably over 60 Kansans simultaneously,” he told a press conference at Reagan airport in the U.S. capital early on Thursday.
“When one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but when many, many, many people die, it’s an unbearable sorrow. It’s a heartbreak beyond measure.”
American Airlines confirmed 60 passengers and four crew members were aboard the jet. The helicopter, on a training flight, was carrying three soldiers, a U.S. official said.
I suppose we need to punish President Roosevelt for selecting such a terrible place for a civilian airport given the need for so much military air traffic in the general area.
But seriously, people are complaining about ‘why were they practicing at night’ and ‘why were they flying across known traffic lanes’, and the truth is, they do this ALL THE TIME. Why was it different this time? Who knows. I doubt we’ll ever find out the real truth because the current administration isn’t going to actually investigate itself and will just put out a story of what they want the truth to be. But this isn’t the fault of the air traffic controller (from the audio I’ve heard they were in contact with both pilots and were aware of the potential for impact), and it isn’t the fault of some military leader on the ground for sending a helicopter on this route, since it is a very common occurrence. The fault lies with the pilot of the helicopter, but it could be anything from a medical emergency to inattention to suicide.
Given the sudden change in course after being instructed to cross behind the CRJ, the pilot likely misidentified the plane before the CRJ in the line that was just landing as one they were being instructed to watch out for, and because they were focused on the wrong plane didn’t pick out the right one directly in front of them against the city lights. Between the limited FOV of night vision goggles and the light they needed to see not moving at all from their perspective this seems more like a demonstration of the limits of see and avoid at night than gross negligence on the part of the pilot.
All that being said, the helicopter appears to have been a hundred and fifty feet above the upper bond for that route, but when the routes only two hundred feet high to begin with you don’t exactly have very much in the way of a margin for error either way.