What caused the deadly D.C. plane crash between an American Airlines jet and Army Black Hawk helicopter?
Investigators are beginning to explore how an American Airlines jet and Black Hawk Army helicopter collided over Reagan Washington National Airport.
The skies on Wednesday night were clear. The pilots were in communication with air traffic control, and officials said American Eagle Flight 5342 was on a standard descent to the runway in the busy airspace above the nation’s capital. Yet somehow, the passenger jet and an Army helicopter collided midair, bursting into flames and plunging into the Potomac River in the first major fatal commercial plane crash in the United States in 16 years.
Federal investigators are now searching for answers in what is expected to be a lengthy process. A number of factors, both technological and human-driven, could have played a role in the deadly accident, aviation experts say, including whether multilayered systems designed to stop collisions functioned properly.
“Everything, unfortunately, lined up for this accident to happen,” said Kenneth Byrnes, a pilot and chairman of the flight training department at Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University.
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation, which will also involve the Federal Aviation Administration and the Army. The painstaking process will include the collection of evidence from the scene, reviews of radio traffic and data on aircraft flight paths, communications with air traffic controllers and interviews with those controllers. Such investigations can take a year or longer to reach a conclusion, and the NTSB is the only agency authorized to provide an official cause for the crash.
“We look at the human, the machine and the environment,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters Thursday. “We will look at all the humans that were involved in this accident. We will look at the aircraft. We will look at the helicopter. We will look at the environment in which they were operating in. That is standard.”
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