NTSB Chairman Jennifer Homendy speaks throughout a press convention at Reagan Nationwide Airport because the search continues on the crash web site of the American Airways aircraft on the Potomac River on Jan. 30, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia.
Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Photographs
The crew of the helicopter that collided midair with an American Airways jet close to Washington D.C.’s Ronald Reagan Nationwide Airport won’t have heard directions from the air visitors controller to go behind the aircraft, investigators mentioned Friday.
Nationwide Transportation Security Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy mentioned the recording from the Black Hawk helicopter cockpit suggests the crew could have missed the important thing instruction simply earlier than the Jan. 29 collision, wherein all 67 aboard the 2 plane had been killed
Homendy mentioned the helicopter was on a test flight that night time when the pilot was being examined on using night time imaginative and prescient goggles and flying by devices. Investigators consider the crew was carrying night time imaginative and prescient goggles all through the flight.
The collision was the deadliest aircraft crash within the U.S. since 2001, when a jet slammed right into a New York Metropolis neighborhood simply after takeoff, killing all 260 folks on board and 5 extra on the bottom.
Homendy mentioned the Black Hawk crew by no means heard the phrases “go behind the” in the course of the transmission from the controller as a result of the helicopter’s microphone key was depressed proper then.
At one level in the course of the flight earlier than the collision the helicopter’s pilot referred to as out that the Black Hawk was at 300 toes, however the teacher pilot mentioned the helicopter was at 400 toes, Homendy mentioned.
“At the moment we do not know why there was a discrepancy between the 2,” Homendy mentioned.
