WASHINGTON – The U.S. Army helicopter that collided with an American Airlines plane killing 67 people last week had turned off an advanced surveillance system that the federal government has hailed for making airspace safer, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said on Thursday.
Cruz, who was among a group of lawmakers briefed on the collision by federal authorities, said the Black Hawk helicopter had switched off its automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast sometime prior to the Jan. 29 crash.
“This was a training mission, so there was no compelling national security reason for ADS-B to be turned off,” Cruz said after a briefing from the National Transportation Safety Board and FAA. He added that the helicopter had a transponder so it would appear on radar, but said ADS-B is significantly more accurate.
The system, which is the preferred method of surveillance for air traffic control in the U.S., improves visibility by broadcasting an aircraft’s GPS location, altitude and ground speed, according to the FAA. The system includes a display that shows pilots where there are other aircraft in the sky or on a runway.
The helicopter was on a routine training mission when it collided with the airliner, which was inbound from Wichita, Kansas. Data has indicated that the Black Hawk may have been flying above its 200 foot flight ceiling, though the FAA said investigators need to access the crashed aircraft to verify the data.
Salvage crews return to the Potomac River for helicopter
Salvage crews began the process of retrieving a U.S. Army helicopter from the Potomac River on Thursday.
The multi-agency operation has retrieved most of the crashed American Airlines plane out of the icy water, including its wings, fuselage and cockpit.
Now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will focus on retrieving the mangled helicopter, a crucial component in federal authorities’ probe as they look to confirm data related to its altitude at the time of the collision, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
More:Students, Olympic skaters, families and more. A tribute to lives lost in the DC plane crash
Reagan National Airport limits flights after plane-helicopter crash
The Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday it would slow the arrivals rate at Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) outside of Washington as weather and recovery efforts were affecting flight paths into the airport.
“The FAA is slowing traffic into and out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport due to weather conditions and recovery efforts in the area,” the FAA said in a statement to USA TODAY.
The move was first reported by Reuters, which said that arrivals would be reduced from 28 per hour to 26 per hour during the slowdown. The reduced arrivals rate would likely lead to a slight increase in average delay lengths at the airport while it was in force.
– Zach Wichter, USA TODAY
Officials will address staffing, congested air traffic after deadly collision
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he will change the rules that govern staffing at airport control towers and vowed to examine the congested airspace in the Washington area following the fatal crash at Reagan National Airport.
Speaking about rules that allowed a supervisor to reduce staffing before the fatal crash, Duffy said “We’re going to pull that authority back to make sure that we have the right policies in place inside our towers to make sure when you fly you’re safe.”
Duffy said he also plane to announce steps to increase air traffic control training while also hiring more applicants. The FAA is about 3,000 controllers short of staffing levels and nearly all control towers have staffing issues.
Moreover, Duffy said officials will look at military missions in Washington airspace and see whether they could be scheduled at times when traffic is lower. The Black Hawk helicopter was on a routine training mission when it collided with the airliner.
“We also have to look at (military) missions that have flown the DC airspace,” Duffy said. “We’re going to hopefully find this out, but if they had night vision goggles on a mission like that at nine o’clock at night and not at 1 a.m. – it is unacceptable.”
“We can fly training missions at a different time of night,” he added.
What we know about the NTSB’s investigation into the collision
So far, investigators with the NTSB have interviewed all five people working in the control tower at the time of the collision, collected data from the black boxes recovered from the aircrafts, obtained maintenance and flight logs, and have begun piecing together a timeline of the events leading up the crash, synchronizing flight data and communications.
After recovering the wreckage of the crashed plane, investigators will examine its cockpit switch positions and instrument readings, according to the NTSB. The agency said it still needs to examine the Black Hawk to verify more information about the accident, especially the helicopter’s altitude at the time of the crash.
The air traffic control tower display showed the Black Hawk was flying at 300 feet at the time of the collision, the NTSB has said, though that flight track data was rounded to the nearest 100 feet and exact altitude is still not known.
According to the latest release, it appears the helicopter exceeded the 200-foot maximum altitude assigned to the flight path it used on the night of the crash. To confirm that, however, investigators need to access the helicopter.
The NTSB said it expects to have a preliminary report outlining the facts and information gathered during the initial phase of the probe within 30 days of the crash. A final report detailing the cause of the crash is expected to take one to two years to complete.
Rate of near-midair collisions are higher around DCA
There have been 30 near-midair collisions since 1987 around Reagan National Airport, with one-third of those incidents being military aircraft-related and seven including helicopters. While this is higher than the national rate and could cause concern among air travelers, aviation experts say the numbers don’t indicate flying is unsafe.
“It’s important to keep a little bit perspective, for a lot of folks 30 aircraft sound like a lot but it’s almost over 40 years,” said Philip Mann, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
NMACs, formerly called near-misses, are defined by the FAA as “an incident associated with the operation of an aircraft in which a possibility of collision occurs as a result of proximity of less than 500 feet to another aircraft,” or when a pilot, crew member or even passenger reports “a collision hazard” between two or more aircraft.
Mann said this could cause “a little bit of fuzziness.”
“There could still be a football-field-and-a-half distance between the two (aircraft) and they could be side-by-side,” he said. “If you come a foot inside of that, you’ve had a near miss.”
– Kathleen Wong
Read more:Rate of near-midair collisions are higher around DCA. What does that mean for travelers?
Contributing: Reuters
