Latest radar evidence suggests Black Hawk in DC disaster was flying too high, but NTSB wants more proof
Crews have recovered and identified all 67 victims, officials said Wednesday.
US Navy recovery teams lift the back wing section of American Airlines Flight 5342 from the Potomac River Tuesday. (Photo credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
(CNN) — Newly released data from ground-based radar came out Tuesday suggesting an Army helicopter was flying higher than it was supposed to be when it collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 a week ago, killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft.
According to the “best quality flight track data” available, the helicopter was flying at about 300 feet at the time of the midair collision with the plane on its approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport outside Washington, DC, according to a statement Tuesday evening from the National Transportation Safety Board. “This data is rounded to the nearest 100 feet,” the agency said.
The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was flying a training mission in a dedicated helicopter route where it was not allowed to fly above 200 feet, according to a published FAA chart. Since the accident above the Potomac River, the Federal Aviation Administration has indefinitely suspended the use of most of those routes.
Tuesday’s update from the NTSB doesn’t fully clarify an already murky situation. Although the air traffic control display at Reagan National should have shown the Black Hawk was flying at about 300 feet, the agency said it is continuing to collect data on its position, work that will not be finished until the helicopter wreckage can be pulled from the water. That is not expected to happen until next week.
Conflicting information about what controllers saw
NTSB board member J. Todd Inman stated over the weekend the airport tower’s radar was showing the Black Hawk altitude at 200 feet with the Bombardier CRJ700 jet’s flight data recorder reading 325 feet, a discrepancy that investigators could not immediately explain.
The NTSB canceled previously announced news briefings on its investigation Monday and Tuesday and has not made officials available for questions on the Tuesday evening update.
The so-called black boxes containing the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder from both aircraft have been recovered. The NTSB says it is still working to synchronize the recordings, but board chair Jennifer Homendy told CNN’s Pete Muntean on Monday they will release what they can when they can.
“Every piece of the information is critical to the investigation, and the NTSB is about transparency,” she said.
Officials have warned against a rush to judgment on the cause of what is the deadliest US aviation disaster since the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in 2001. Still, figuring out how high the Army helicopter was at the time of the collision is considered key to determining how two aircraft flying in one of the nation’s most heavily regulated airspace corridors under clear skies could run into each other.
President Donald Trump did not wait for an investigative report before weighing in.
“The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot,” the president posted last Friday on Truth Social. “It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it?”
The newly released altitude information was collected by Potomac TRACON, the air traffic control unit that coordinates aircraft arrivals and departures at multiple airports in the region, including Dulles International in Virginia and Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. That facility, about 40 miles west of Reagan National, uses information from multiple radar sensors and telemetry transmitted from aircraft to pinpoint their positions, according to the NTSB.
Investigators piecing plane back together
The recovery of the jet wreckage from the Potomac continued Wednesday as weather conditions deteriorated in Washington. Wreckage from the jet “has been offloaded from the barge and transferred to a secure location for a full wreckage layout and examination,” the NTSB said in an update.
The NTSB’s examination will account for major portions of the aircraft, witness marks on the aircraft structure and fracture surfaces, “general airworthiness” of the aircraft, along with cockpit switch positions and instrument readings, the investigative update said.
Recovery efforts will continue in the Potomac on Thursday, the update said.
Investigators searched for debris from the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that was part of the midair collision on Jan. 29.
Video footage showed crews removing large parts of the jet on Wednesday, including a portion of the plane’s fuselage with the name “American Eagle” on it.
The wreckage was transferred, one piece at a time, from a barge to a flatbed truck parked only a couple of hundred feet from the airport’s main runway.
The recovery of the helicopter will begin after the wreckage of the jet is removed from the water, which is expected to be complete Thursday, Unified Command said.
Crews have recovered and identified all 67 victims, officials said Wednesday.
A preliminary report on the cause of the crash is expected within 30 days. A final report can take more than a year, but the NTSB chair says she hopes this investigation won’t take that long.
“I would hope it would be much less than that,” Homendy said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the previous deadliest aviation disaster in the US in 2001. It was American Airlines Flight 587.
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