The air traffic controller recorded audio before the plane crash

What Caused the Black Hawk Helicopter-Jet Collision at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport? An Air Traffic Controller’s Perspective

The Black Hawk pilot is asking for a visual separation of traffic on the radio. “Visual separation” means the pilot acknowledges that they see the incoming aircraft and are informing the air traffic controller that they will avoid getting too close to the plane. The tower then approves the separation.

The helicopter pilot acknowledges that it sees an incoming plane but it’s unclear if it’s looking at the right plane. The conditions Wednesday night were dark, but clear. The crew members on the helicopter were wearing night vision goggles, which can restrict the user’s line of vision.

Amid this heavy, but normal, traffic for the busy airport, the Black Hawk helicopter approaches airspace shared with multiple planes making their way in and out of Reagan. The Bombardier CRJ jet, which is being used by American Airlines, is on the radar as the plane that is closest to the helicopter is about to land.

controllers can be heard on their radios directing planes to take off and land at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport moments before the collision.

64 people were on the plane and three on the Black Hawks who died in the crash. The US Figure Skaters, along with several other Russians, were among the passengers of the jet.

It’s early hours into the investigation into what caused the midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter Wednesday night just outside Washington, D.C. It will be a while before investigators can give clear answers, but air traffic controller audio and radar review by NPR offer some insight into the minutes before and after the crash.

Richard Levy, a retired American Airlines pilot and aviation instructor, told NPR’s Here and Now that the controller was doing “a magnificent job” guiding aircraft through the air and found no fault with the instructions the controller gave both the helicopter and the American Airlines jet.

An Air Traffic controller asks the military helicopter pilot if he has the CRJ, as the two aircraft get closer to each other. The air traffic controller then tells the helicopter pilot to “pass behind” the American Airlines jet.

A few minutes before arrival, air traffic control asked the American Airlines flight if it could land on runway 33, a shorter runway. The pilots seemed to switch runways during their approach. Some have wondered whether this change in flight path could have caught the Black Hawk off guard.

The Colgan Air crash, which occurred in March 2005, is the first fatal aircraft accident in the United States, according to a spokesperson from the University of Buckinghamshire

Eighty percent of aviation accidents worldwide can be attributed to human error, and that is a prime candidate in this case, Marco Chan, a former pilot who now heads pilot programs at Buckinghamshire New University, told WIRED.

He said that safety protocols and human factors may have been at play. I do not want to draw conclusions early on. The workforce number hasn’t caught up in all areas of aviation, despite the fact that the passenger number has been bouncing back quite a bit.

Air traffic control asked the helicopter if it had seen the aircraft, and was told to “pass behind the CRJ,” which would have had the right of way unless the Black Hawk was on an urgent military mission. It isn’t known if the helicopter responded.

The crew of a passenger jet might not have heard the tower radioing Black Hawk, because military flights operate on different radio frequencies. Or there may have been a jammed transmission: If more than one party on a channel are radioing at the same time, that can prevent others from hearing the whole conversation.

The passenger jet, which was operated by regional carrier PSA Airlines on behalf of American Airlines, had 64 people on board, and police boats have already recovered 27 bodies. The Colgan Air crash was the last fatal aircraft tragedy in the United States.