MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
A difficult day here in Washington as investigators try to understand why an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet collided in midair.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED AIRLINE PILOT #1: This is 5342, I'm not running a visual on runway one.
KELLY: American Eagle Flight 5342 was preparing to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport just before 9 last night. It sounded like a routine approach, as you can hear on this recording provided by liveatc.net.
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UNIDENTIFIED AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER #1: Can you take runway 33?
UNIDENTIFIED AIRLINE PILOT #2: Yeah, we can do 33.
KELLY: Moments later, an air traffic controller asks the helicopter pilot if he can see the approaching plane.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER #3: PAT 2-5, do you have the CRJ in sight?
KELLY: The pilot says yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED HELICOPTER PILOT: I have the aircraft in sight for visual separation.
KELLY: The helicopter pilot was told to go behind the plane. That is not what happened. The two aircraft collided over the Potomac River.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER #4: Crash, crash, crash. This is alert three. Crash, crash, crash. This is alert three.
KELLY: Hundreds of first responders searched for survivors overnight in the frigid water. None of the 67 people on the two aircraft survived, which makes this the deadliest disaster in U.S. airspace in decades. NPR's Tom Bowman and Joel Rose have both been following the investigation. They are both with me now. Joel, I'm going to let you kick us off. Federal safety investigators held a briefing today. What did they say?
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: The National Transportation Safety Board gave its first public update on the investigation. Board Chair Jennifer Homendy promised a thorough investigation, one that will follow the facts. And she was asked several times to speculate about the possible causes of the collision, and she asked for patience.
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JENNIFER HOMENDY: You need to give us time. We need to verify information to make sure it is accurate. That's best for you. That's important for the families. It's important for legislators who are seeking answers.
ROSE: Investigators did say that the passenger jet plunged into the Potomac River in a, quote, "quick, rapid impact," unquote. The NTSB later announced that is has recovered the so-called black boxes from the plane - the cockpit voice and flight data recorders. And investigators think the helicopter had one of these recording devices too that could offer more clues about what happened.
KELLY: Yeah. On the helicopter, Tom Bowman, you cover the military. This was a military Black Hawk helicopter. What do we know about it?
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Well, Mary Louise, the Black Hawk was on an annual proficiency training flight out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, just south of Washington. It had a crew of three - a male instructor pilot with a thousand hours of flight time, considered experienced, and a woman copilot with 500 hours, considered normal for a pilot. There was also a male crew member aboard. All had night vision goggles. The Black Hawk was heading south along the Potomac, in the direction of National Airport and, like the plane, was in touch with the tower. Now, there's a flight corridor for helicopters, and the maximum height is 200 feet. But sources I talk with say it appears that Black Hawk was flying higher - maybe more than a hundred feet higher - at the time of the crash. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would only say there was some sort of an elevation issue. The investigation, of course, will determine whether the helicopter was in the corridor and at the right altitude.
KELLY: Say more about that. Are there working theories for what might have been going on with that?
BOWMAN: Well, I spoke with Brad Bowman. He's a defense analyst and former Black Hawk pilot, who commanded a company and flew this very same route after the 9/11 attacks. He says in these kinds of proficiency flights, an instructor pilot can sometimes test the less experienced pilot, watching to see, you know, how the pilot responds to different situations. But he said such a technique is probably not a good idea in such a busy area. And, of course, if the helicopter was flying that much higher, the instructor should have corrected it immediately.
KELLY: Joel Rose, we have about a minute left, and I want people just to remember the history here because the accident sadly ends a remarkable streak - no major plane crashes for many years in the U.S. There have been close calls, though.
ROSE: Exactly. The last major accident was back in 2009 in Buffalo when 50 people were killed. This has been really an unprecedented era of safety for air travel in the U.S. But that said, there have been signs of strain in the aviation system, especially as traffic rebounded sharply after the COVID pandemic. We have seen a number of close calls on runways and near airports all over the country, and concern about a shortage of air traffic controllers. We don't know yet if that was a factor here. I want to stress that. The NTSB will hopefully give us an answer, just maybe not as quickly as everyone wants.
KELLY: NPR's Joel Rose and Tom Bowman. Thanks to you both.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
ROSE: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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