Helicopter in fatal Washington plane crash was flying too high

Date: Category:US Views:2 Comment:0
National Transportation Safety Board members attend an investigative hearing on the Washington DC plane crash

The army helicopter that crashed into a passenger jet over Washington DC was flying too high, investigators have concluded.

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) opened a three-day hearing into the Jan 30 incident, in which 67 people were killed, on Wednesday.

The review found that the pilots of the Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the American Airlines plane from Wichita, Kansas, did not hear a warning from air traffic controllers to pass behind the jet. Some critical instruments were also not working, investigators said.

“There is a possibility that what the crew saw was very different than what the true altitude was,” Jennifer Homendy, the NTSB chairwoman, told the hearing.

Air safety experts have long warned the skies around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in the capital are too busy.

The January incident was the nation’s deadliest plane crash since November 2001.

Credit: X/@nicksortor

President Donald Trump, who had just taken office, said on social media it appeared the incident over the Potomac River “should have been prevented”.

In the hours afterwards, Sean Duffy, Mr Trump’s new transportation secretary, echoed those remarks.

“To back up what the president said, from what I’ve seen so far, do I think this was preventable? Absolutely,” he told reporters.

The hearing on Wednesday also heard that altitude readings were inaccurate. Testing after the crash showed that army helicopters in flight showed discrepancies of 80 to 130ft versus the actual altitude.

An army official claimed an inaccuracy of up to 100ft was not a problem.

Plane wreckage is removed from the Potomac River after the crash
Plane wreckage is removed from the Potomac River after the crash - Ben Curtis/Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

However, NTSB board member Todd Inman disagreed and asked why the Pentagon was not doing more testing as well as finding ways to alert pilots about potential problems.

Dan Cooper, of Sikorsky Aircraft, the company that makes the aircraft, said the helicopter involved in the crash was designed in the 1970s.

He said it used a style of altimeter that was common at the time but that newer helicopters have air data computers that did not exist then that help provide more accurate readings.

The army’s Scott Rosengren said “if he was king for a day” he would immediately retire all the older Black Hawk models like the one involved in this crash and replace them with newer versions.

In May the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) prevented the army from helicopter flights around the Pentagon after a May 1 close call that forced two civilian planes to abort their landings.

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