Faulty altitude reading, missed radio instructions may be factors in Black Hawk crash
The crew of an Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet over the Potomac River last month may not have heard parts of two radio transmissions about the location of the plane, the National Transportation Safety Board reported Friday.
NTSB investigators are also looking into the possibility that the altitude reading in the helicopter’s cockpit was incorrect, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the board, said at a press briefing.
“We are looking at the possibility of there may be bad data,” Homendy said.
Homendy said investigators are confident, based on radio signals, that the helicopter was 278 feet above the river at the time of the crash, or 78 feet above the authorized altitude. But conflicting information on the altimeters used by the crew suggest they may have seen a different number, she said.
“We’re looking at, ‘Were they seeing something different in the cockpit?’” she said. “It’s possible, but we have a lot of work to do before we get to that.”
The altitude of the Black Hawk is one piece of the investigation into why the two aircraft collided over the river at 8:48 p.m. on Jan. 29. The NTSB says it will be months before it determines what caused the accident that killed all 64 people on the American Eagle flight and all three soldiers on the helicopter.
Among them was Capt. Rebecca Lobach, who grew up in Rougemont in northern Durham County and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2019. Lobach completed UNC’s Army ROTC course in two years and became a pilot after finishing flight school.
Plane carried passengers from Kansas
The four-person crew of American Eagle Flight 5342 was based in Charlotte, NC. They had left Wichita, Kansas, and were preparing to land at Reagan Washington National Airport when the collision occurred. The plane was operated by PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines.
The crew of the American Eagle flight was initially cleared to approach the airport from the south using Runway 1, the longest at Washington National. About four minutes later, when the crew made initial contact with the airport’s control tower, it was asked if it could switch to Runway 33, a shorter runway running southeast to northwest. The crew agreed.
Meanwhile, the Black Hawk had left Maryland, heading south toward Davison Army Airfield at Fort Belvoir, southeast of Washington, D.C., in Virginia. It was on a “check ride,” Homendy said, “a practical exam that a pilot must pass to be qualified to perform specific aircrew or mission duties.”
Several media outlets have quoted military officials saying that Lobach was the pilot being tested. Homendy said the flight was an annual exam that involved the use of night-vision goggles, and that investigators believe the crew wore the goggles throughout the flight.
Three minutes after the CRJ agreed to switch runways, its cockpit voice recorder picked up a radio transmission from the tower informing the Black Hawk that a CRJ was just south of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge at 1,200 feet, turning toward Runway 33.
The control tower used the word “circling,” Homendy said. Data from the cockpit voice recorder indicated “that the portion of the transmission stating that the CRJ was circling may not have been received by the Black Hawk crew,” she said.
Investigators are working to determine why that transmission was not picked up by the helicopter’s voice recorder.
A second radio transmission didn’t fully get through
A minute and a half later, the passenger jet’s cockpit recorder picked up another radio transmission from the tower to the Black Hawk asking if the CRJ was in sight. That was followed a few seconds later by another message from the tower telling the Black Hawk to “pass behind” the CRJ.
Again, the Black Hawk’s cockpit voice recorder, or CVR, suggests the entire message did not get through.
“CVR data from the Black Hawk indicated that the portion of the transmission that stated ‘pass behind the’ may not have been received by the Black Hawk crew,” Homendy said.
In this case, investigators say, the radio transmission was interrupted when someone in the Black Hawk pressed the mic key to communicate with the control tower.
The helicopter crew said it had the jet in sight and requested “visual separation,” an indication that they would avoid getting too close.
About 15 seconds later, the crew of the CRJ “had a verbal reaction” to something, the NTSB previously reported, and flight data showed the plane beginning to increase its pitch, as if to begin increasing altitude. A second later the two aircraft collided.
This story was originally published February 14, 2025 at 3:50 PM with the headline "Faulty altitude reading, missed radio instructions may be factors in Black Hawk crash."
