Those are the last words of a New York Times story on the helicopter-airline crash that killed 67 people last Jan. 29 in Washington, DC. While there is no official word yet from the National Transportation Safety Board on the cause of the crash, the in-depth Times report has material from interviews with numerous experts, and pieces together the final minutes leading up to the crash. As with so many avertable tragedies, this one combined multiple factors, each one of which might have not been fatal by itself. But the combination proved deadly, and as is often the case in modern aviation accidents, human error played a large role.
The basics of what happened are well known. American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas to Washington's National Airport was on its final approach to land when an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter flying a training mission collided with it short of the runway. All 64 people on the commercial flight died in the crash, as did the helicopter pilot, Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach; the instructor, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, and the third member of the crew, Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O'Hara.
When I blogged on this crash shortly after it happened, we knew that the helicopter was flying higher than FAA regulations allowed. At the location of the crash, it was supposed to be lower than 200 feet, but the crash occurred at an altitude of about 300 feet. Also, the helicopter was equipped with an improved navigational aid called ADS-B, which updates air traffic controllers every second on the aircraft's location, but the device was not turned on at the time.
The Times article adds important information about the interaction among the air traffic controller, Capt. Lobach, and Warrant Officer Eaves. The main purpose of the flight was to practice evacuating important members of the Federal government in time of emergency. As a part of that practice, it was customary not to operate easily-detected navigational equipment such as the ADS-B. The helicopter had a standard radar transponder on board which was operational, but it provides updated location information only about every five to twelve seconds, according to the report.
Such a time gap between updates could have been critical. For one thing, the runway that Flight 5342 landed on that night was seldom used, and it's possible that Capt. Lobach had never been in a situation where she had to avoid a plane landing on that runway. For another thing, it seems that critical information the controller tried to tell the helicopter crew may have been "stepped on" when the crew pressed their push-to-talk button to transmit words to the controller.
A third factor is that a few minutes before the crash, after being alerted that there was a commercial flight nearby, the helicopter pilots requested "visual separation" from the controller. This meant basically, "We want to be responsible for avoiding a crash by looking around us and getting out of the way of anything we see in our path."
This relieves the controller from essentially micro-managing the flight's actions, but puts a heavy burden on the pilot to know exactly what is going on and what to do to avoid a collision. At night, with night-vision goggles on, it is quite possible that Capt. Lobach and Warrant Officer Eaves had difficulty seeing the approaching Flight 5342, or at least gaining enough information about its path to avoid the collision.
At about 40 seconds before the crash, when the two aircraft were about a mile apart, the controller asked the helicopter pilots if they had the CRJ passenger jet in sight. He received no response, and then transmitted an order to them to pass behind the jet. Analysis of the recordings indicates that the helicopter crew might have been transmitting at the time and didn't hear this order. The last exchange between Warrant Officer Eaves and the controller came a few seconds later, and affirmed that the helicopter crew had "the aircraft" in sight and wanted to be okayed for visual separation, which was again approved.
Then, the instructor Eaves told the pilot Lobach to turn left, which would have brought the helicopter farther away from the jet's flight path and might have averted the accident. But she kept flying straight, and the collision happened a few seconds later.
No one knows what was going on in the minds of Capt. Lobach and Warrant Officer Eaves in those last few seconds. But some aspects of this tragedy remind me of the crash of Korean Air flight 801 in Guam in 1997. Analysis of the voice recorders in that crash revealed that the captain of the flight evidently became confused about the plane's location. But when the junior-ranked copilot tried to correct him, his suggestions were ignored.
In a training flight, the protocol should be that the student, even if she is a five-star general, for the moment is under the authority of the instructor, even if he is just a warrant officer. It's possible that cultural factors prevented Warrant Officer Eaves from being as forceful as he should have been in telling Capt. Lobach to turn left. And we do not know how deferential Capt. Lobach was feeling at the time, and whether she was alert and cognizant of her surroundings, frozen with fear, or somewhere in between.
But it is already clear that communications broke down in significant ways in the last few critical seconds before the crash. The technology exists to enable pilots to both hear and talk to the controller at the same time. I say that, not knowing the details of what would have to change about the old-fashioned AM VHF cockpit radio system still in use, but I suspect there would be some grumbling on the part of those affected and then they would go along with the change.
Beyond technology, there is the vital issue of prompt and relevant communication among those who can do something to avoid a crash. That didn't happen in this case, and I hope the lessons learned here are applied in every situation where they could help avoid the next accident.
Sources: The New York Times carried the story entitled "Missteps, Equipment Problems and a Common but Risky Practice Led to a Fatal Crash" by Kate Kelly and Mark Walker appeared in the Apr. 27, 2025 edition. I also referred to Wikipedia articles on the 2025 Potomac River mid-air collision and Korean Air Flight 801.
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