January 31, 2025, 02:25 AM
12131By JOE HUTCHISON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 01:58 EST, 31 January 2025 | UPDATED: 03:15 EST, 31 January 2025
An air traffic controller was reportedly allowed to leave their post just before American Airlines Flight 5342 collided in midair with a helicopter over Washington DC.
The new details have emerged from insiders who spoke with The New York Times and an internal FAA report that has started probing the tragedy that killed 67 people, including three soldiers.
The collision took place as the American Airlines flight, carrying 60 passengers and four crew, made its final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport shortly before 9pm ET.
That night, an air traffic controller at Reagan National was left to handle both helicopter traffic and manage planes - which should have been a divided duty.
Those tasks are usually handled between two people from 10am until 9:30pm, according to the report.
After 9:30pm the duties are typically combined and left to one person, due to the airport seeing less traffic later in the night.
A supervisor decided to combine those duties before the scheduled cutoff time however, and allowed one air traffic controller to leave work early.
According to the report that staffing configuration 'was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic'.
It remains unclear why the supervisor allowed the worker to clock off early on Wednesday night, just before the midair collision.
It has also emerged that the Army helicopter, which was carrying three soldiers, involved in the collision might have also deviated from its approved flight path.
The outlet again spoke with insiders that said the Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk helicopter was not on its approved route and flying higher than it should have been.
Approval had been given for the helicopter to fly no higher than 200 feet along the east side of the Potomac River, where it would have avoided the passenger jet.
The pilot of the helicopter confirmed sight of the American Airlines flight and was told to stick to their predetermined route and go behind the plane.
Sources said the pilot did not stick to the path however and was a half-mile off course as well as being at an altitude above 300 feet.
A senior Army official told The Times that the pilot of the Black Hawk had flown the route before and was well aware of the tight altitude restrictions and routes.
As the jet approached the runway, those onboard had asked air traffic control to change their runway, according to an FAA report.
The plane, a Bombardier CRJ700, had been cleared to touch down on Runway 1, the main airport thoroughfare, but the controller then asked the pilot to land on Runway 33.
A source told The Times that such a move is routine especially with regional jets, and that the decision might have been made to prevent clogging on the main runway.
Five current and former controllers also told the outlet that the lone controller in the tower should have been more proactive in directing the two away from each other.
The darkness could have played a part in what made it so difficult for both pilots to actually gauge their distance apart, they added.
Reagan National has been understaffed for many years, with just 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023 - well below the target of 30 - according to the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan submitted to Congress.
The situation appeared to have improved since then, as a source told CNN the Reagan National control tower was 85 percent staffed with 24 of 28 positions filled.
Chronic understaffing at air traffic control towers is nothing new, with well-known causes including high turnover and budget cuts.
In order to fill the gaps, controllers are frequently asked to work 10-hour days, six days a week.
The two aircraft had collided in a huge fireball that was visible on dashcams of cars driving on highways that snake around the airport, before plunging into the river.
On Thursday morning officials confirmed all 67 on both the plane and helicopter had perished, with their rescue mission then becoming a recovery operation.
Investigators made a break through later that night, after they had pulled 40 bodies to shore, when they found two black boxes from the American Airlines flight.
A flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were pulled from the river by salvage teams.
This will be of monumental assistance to authorities as they investigate what exactly happened in the moments leading to disaster.
The identities of those who died in the collision have started to trickle out, with DailyMail.com revealing the identities of the pilot and first officer.
Among the crash victims were people from Russia, China, Germany and the Philippines, including young figure skaters.
Captain Jonathan Campos, 34, and First Officer Samuel Lilley had been in charge of the flight from Wichita, Kansas, to the capital.
Both flight attendants who were on that tragic flight have been revealed as Ian Epstein and Danasia Elder.
At least three minors - including figure skaters Spencer Lane, 16, and Jinna Han - are among the victims who died.
Famed Russian skating couple Evgenia Shishkova, 53, and Vadim Naumov, 56, alongside Lane and Han's mothers also tragically lost their lives in the crash.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves was aboard the Black Hawk helicopter alongside fellow soldier Ryan O'Hara.
Eaves' devastated wife, Carrie, said: 'I am sure by now all of you have heard the news of the tragedy that has occurred in DC.
'My husband was one of the pilots in the Blackhawk. We ask that you pray for our family and friends and for all the other families that are suffering today. We ask for peace while we grieve.'
She has shared several photos of Eaves, one of which he was in uniform, and asked her friends to share any pictures they may have of him in his memory.
O'Hara, a father-of-one from Georgia, left behind a wife and a one-year-old son, and was remembered fondly by his his school as a beloved member of the rifle team.
His father, Gary, was watching television on the couch at his Midway, Georgia, home on Wednesday when he saw the news on the collision.
He told the Washington Post: 'I just had a gut feeling when I saw the story breaking.'
'His mother and I and his sister are just absolutely devastated to think we were talking to him just yesterday and we'll never have the opportunity to talk with him again.'
In an situation eerily similar to what happened on Wednesday night, a Republic Airways flight had to abort landing at the airport on Tuesday after a helicopter appeared near its flight path.
Flightradar data for the flight shows the plane had been travelling from Windsor Locks in Connecticut to the city and had to dramatically gain altitude shortly after descending on Reagan National Airport. It eventually landed safely.
President Trump blamed DEI hiring practices on the air crash on Thursday as he spoke with reporters.
Asked point blank if he was aware of any performance issues or disciplinary actions with anyone working at DCA's air control tower or the aircraft during the crash, Trump responded: 'No.'
But at another point, asked if race and gender played a role in the tragic accident, Trump said: 'It may have, I don't know. Incompetence might have played a role.'
Trump, 78, was asked if he had any plans to go visit the site, as rescue workers scour the Potomac River for bodies and collect debris at the start of a lengthy investigation about the crash.
'I have a plan to visit – not the site. Because what – you tell me. What's the site? Water. We're going to go swimming?'
Instead of visiting the Potomac where only parts of the American Eagle flight 5342 are visible above about seven feet of water, Trump said he would be meeting with family members of some victims.
'I will be meeting with some people that were very badly hurt, with their family member, obviously, but I'll be meeting with some of the families,' he said.
Captain Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger has also since weighed in on the crash, saying he believes that flying at night over water could have been factors in it.
Sully, who famously landed a passenger plane on the Hudson River in 2009, told The New York Times the two factors could have made avoiding the chopper harder.
He said: 'There would have been fewer ground lights visible over the water than over land at night.'
According to Sully, this 'might have made it a little bit harder to see'.
The 74-year-old added: 'Nighttime always makes things different about seeing other aircraft — basically all you can do is see the lights on them.
'You have to try to figure out: Are they above you or below you? Or how far away? Or which direction are they headed? Everything is harder at night.'
Sully told the outlet that he hoped the cockpit voice recorder, the inflight data recorder and air-traffic control data would help clear up what went wrong.
He added: 'I'm just devastated by this. We have the obligation to learn from every failure and improve.'
DailyMail.com has also spoken with an air traffic control veteran who said the audio from the incident with instructions to the helicopter were 'very ambiguous'.
In the nearly minute-and-a-half recording, ATC operators can be heard asking the helicopter if the commercial flight is in sight.
Through muffled audio, more commands and confirmations are made between ATC operators.
One air traffic controller said to the helicopter pilot: 'PAT 2-5, do you have the CRJ in sight?'
Seconds later, the controller spoke again, requesting: 'Pat 2-5 pass behind the CRJ.'
The veteran air traffic controller, who has worked in six different airports throughout the country, said that if those commands were the Black Hawk's first reference to the plane, the instructions were unclear.
'It would have been very ambiguous as far as, "Okay, what plane? Well, where am I looking?"' he said.
'Whenever you give directions to people, we use the 12 points on a clock. Let's say 12 o'clock is north. If I say, "Look to your nine o'clock" that would mean look to your left or to the west.
'So, if I had a helicopter that was coming into my airspace and I wanted him to see an airplane, I would say, "PAT 2-5 traffic, nine o'clock, three miles regional jet inbound to the airport."
He noted that air traffic controllers have a massive responsibility to give accurate and detailed information to pilots.
January 31, 2025, 04:29 AM
trapper189quote:
Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
Things happen so fast that by the time the alert is sounding in the tower it is too late. It seems the computers are calibrated to work well for Cessna 172 speeds but not jets...
In this case, the CRJ was doing 125kts and the Blackhawk was doing 100kts. Are those not 172 speeds?
quote:
Originally posted by Phantom229:
I believe (100% speculation) that the PAT pilot saw the traffic over the Wilson Bridge and said they would maintain visual separation from that traffic and when the controller asked to verify, the PAT pilot looked back to the Wilson Bridge and saw another jet. I’d chalk this one up to pilot error.
That makes a lot of sense.
At the first contact, DCA tower tells the Blackhawk pilot where to look, Blackhawk pilot looks there, sees an aircraft, asks for and receives approval for visual separation. On the next contact, DCA tower asks the Blackhawk pilot if they see the CRJ, the Blackhawk pilot looks down the black corridor of the Potomac, sees lights he expects where he expects to see them, and thinks it's the same airplane. Meanwhile, the CRJ is much further to the left of the Blackhawk, over land now, not the Potomac River, 800' lower than it was, with the city lights behind it, and turning.
How visible would the CRJ's landing lights be to the Blackhawk pilot at this point with the CRJ turned 70 degrees from head on?
quote:
Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
The chopper pilot's path looks like he was bullseyeing womprats in his T33 back home in beggars canyon instead of taking the safest, most vanilla route.
Hotdogs kill.
No, the Blackhawk pilot was following Routes 1 and 4:
FAA Helicopter Route Chart BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON. These routes are the FAA approved VFR corridors or tunnels for helicopters through that airspace. They are the safest, most vanilla route for helicopters. The problem is that if the MLAT data from the Blackhawk is accurate, then the Blackhawk was 100' higher than the 200' max on that portion of Route 4. The Blackhawk pilot was at 200' after the Memorial Bridge, but 30-40 seconds before the crash climbed to 300'. Again, this is according to MLAT data for which I have zero clue what it's limitations may be.
Which brings up a question: What responsibility do ATCs have for aircraft in these routes? Are these routes part of the controlled air space?