The Blackhawk army pilot involved in Washington’s plane crash, DC, could not address the warning of its flight instructor only 15 seconds before the fatal accident that killed 67 people, according to a new report.
Moments before the mortal shock of January 29 near the Reagan International Airport, Captain Rebecca Lobach lost an order of the Co -pilot Andrew Eaves, who supervised his training mission, to change the course and avoid the American Airlines Jet descending, the New York Times reported.
Together with the error, the officials discovered that the pilots “stepped” some of the instructions of the air traffic controller, which means that they accidentally cut it by pressing the button to talk about the radio and probably lost important information.
There was a key moment around 8:46 pm, when the eaves requested and received an approach for the helicopter pilots to use their own images instead of air traffic control to avoid another air traffic. The measure is the common practice to accelerate things, but of course, it comes with the risk of more human error.
Duration at that time, the researchers believe that Eves and Lobach could not hear that the American Airlines plane was “spinning” because one of the topics was to press the microphone key for air traffic control when the voice was run.
Only 20 seconds before the accident occurred, the air traffic controller asked the helicopter if he saw American Airlines Flt. 5342, which appeared on track 33 where the helicopter approached.
“Pat two five, do you have the CRJ in sight?” He asked, using the abbreviation of the FLT model. 5342 aircraft.
That was the last communication between the plane and the air traffic controller.
The technology in the black hawk that would have allowed air traffic control to better track the helicopter was also off that day, a common protocol if the training mission had the leg in a real way.
But it was a practice mission that involved an annual flight assessment for Robach, which was training as if Congress officials needed to be flown from a under siege capitol.
Brig. Gene. Matthew Braman, army aviation director, said it was clear that multiple factors contributed to the fatal accident.
“I think what we will find in the end is that there are several things that, if any of them had changed, could have changed the result of that equal,” he said.
Aviation experts have long lamented the practice of allowing pilots to sail on their own, since human error can often lead to a tragedy, especially in excitingly occupied conditions around the Reagan airport.
Since then, the Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has openly criticized the practice of long data and promised to get rid of it, since he liked “to thread a needle.”
There was also an apparent discrepancy between two of the three army pilots aboard the condemned helicopter on the altitude to which they flew, according to the researchers, and were well above the 200 feet limit for that location.
In a moment before the collision, the helicopter pilot announced that at 300 feet, but the instructor’s pilot was also heard saying that the helicopter was 400 feet, according to the recordings.
At the time of burning shock, Black Hawk flew at 278 feet, said Jennifer Homedy, head of the Transport Transport Security Board, adding: “That does not mean that this is what Black Hawk team was watching in the barometric altimeters.”
The black hawk collided with Flt. 5342, which was a route to Reagan National Airport from Wichita, Kansas, at 8:47:59 pm, authorities said.
The burning collision sent lunch of both planes to the Potomac River, marking the most fatal American air disaster since 2001.