Horrific, newly released video shows the moment a passenger jet and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter collided in Washington, DC, early this year, as it was revealed that the chopper was receiving incorrect altitude readings in the seconds before the worst US air disaster in more than two decades.
The National Transportation Safety Board showed the harrowing video of the Jan. 29 crash over the Potomac River as the agency kicked off a three-day hearing into the deadly crash, sparking a flood of emotion from victims’ families.
The nighttime CCTV footage shows the aircraft enter a heart-stopping collision course at low altitude above the city before they crash in a blinding orange explosion that illuminated the night sky.
All 67 passengers aboard both aircraft were killed — 64 on American Airlines Flight 5342 and three on the Black Hawk
Also revealed was some of the last-minute communication between ground and air crews before the tragedy.
Three minutes before the crash, Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eaves told Capt. Rebecca Lobach to “come down for me” because the helicopter was flying too high.
The NTSB says it believes the chopper crew thought they were flying 100 feet lower than their actual altitude because of a faulty altimeter reading.
Just 15 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it could see the American Airlines jet and told it to pass behind the plane, transcripts reveal.
However, the message wasn’t received because the Black Hawk crew had been trying to communicate via radio at the same time.
Family members of the victims in attendance at Wednesday’s 10-hour hearing — the culmination of a six-month investigation — openly sobbed as the footage was shown. Some were hearing their loved ones’ last known words.
The NTSB released thousands of pages of information gathered over the course of its investigation, identifying numerous concerns.
Among them, longstanding efforts to re-route flight paths for helicopters traversing the Potomac near Reagan National Airport, where the doomed passenger jet was making its approach before the mid-air collision.
Air traffic controllers told the NTSB discussions to change the routes away from airplane runway approach corridors have stalled for more than a decade “due to continuity of government operations or security,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
Absent the route changes, a working group focused on helicopters in 2022 devised the idea of tracking potential “hot spots” on diagrams of local airfields to alert chopper pilots of potential conflicts with landing aircraft — one of them right near the crash site
