Washington Crash Report
Seems the NTSB has released their final report on the Washington airplane-Blackhawk crash that killed 67 a year ago in January 2025, and almost all the blame is getting laid on one particular doorstep: the FAA’s Air Traffic Control system.
I have to say, I am a bit surprised – “pilot error” is cited so often it’s almost a mantra, and preliminary reports (or rumors?) have blamed the Blackhawk pilot before. Not now.
It’s a pretty damning report, listing out a long series of failures at the FAA that made a catastrophe more and more likely. In other words, this horrific accident, in which 67 people died, was not a fluke or unavoidable chance. It was the result of bad decisions compounding over time.
On the night of, the air traffic control tower at Reagan National Airport had assigned only one person to manage both plane and helicopter traffic. That information was known shortly after the crash, but the NTSB has determined that there was no actual need for this to happen, per the New York Times. Staffing levels were sufficient for planes and helicopters to have separate ATCs in charge of them.
What did that lone ATC do? This person allowed the Black Hawk to go into visual separation, meaning that the helicopter would simply look around for other aircraft rather than take directions from the tower.
The report says Reagan ATC does this a lot – which given that reportedly the main runway is the nation’s most congested approach corridor, is not a good thing. The backup runway intersects helicopter routes. Simulations show that the civilian aircraft was not able to be seen from the helicopter. Right there, that’s a problem.
Even this was avoidable, though, since the ATC in the tower got an automated warning a full 26 seconds before the collision, per ABC News. If the ATC had relayed that warning to the pilots, it almost certainly would have prevented the crash. For whatever reason, the ATC never did.
You would think that as a principle airport serving the Capitol area, given the congestion, ATCs would be the best?
In 2018, the FAA downgraded the Reagan National Airport’s facility rating. This has the effect of lowering the experience minimums for ATCs there, lowering the tower staff’s pay and thus driving away top-level talent.
Here’s a spot where some of you rotorhead readers can help: the report alleges that the altimeters in Blackhawks aren’t accurate and can be off 200 feet, so the pilots didn’t know they were at twice the recommended altitude? And this is not documented anywhere? This part sounds awfully suspicious to me – one would think that a chopper altimeter ought to be accurate within inches, not football fields.
Additionally, the chopper (per Army protocol) had its Automatic Dependent Survey Broadcast (ADS-B) which broadcasts a locator signal in its Out mode, turned off. Not that it matters much, as not that many civilian aircraft have the matching ADS-B In receivers as it is not mandated.
In this instance, if both aircraft had had the right technology and switched it on, it near certainly would have prevented the crash. The NTSB has recommended mandating ADS-B In a full 17 times over the last 20 years, but here we are. Jalopnik
Maybe we should clean up the air traffic control system?
I can think of a whole list of things I’d like to see the government spend its money on, and that is part of the list. Moldy barracks, bad drinking water on post, chow halls that aren’t open or serve crap when they are… maybe let’s quit changing camo and post names with every election cycle, actually address real problems. Apparently, one of them needs to be ATC.
Category: America, Army, Government Incompetence
Lets not forget the Legislative branch culpability. As a result of their emphasis on flights in/out of Reagan as its more convenient for them. Reagan National has a bastardized “traffic pattern” to attempt to shoehorn more takeoffs/landings into the congested airspace.
Remind me who was President in 2018 when the ATC requirements were lowered???.. Hint to Lars and co, it was NOT President Trump…
In 2018, Trump was president. Might want to correct that date.
Thanks for the correction… thats what happens when I post before coffee
Didn’t ‘they’ try to close Reagan National decades ago but Congress wouldn’t allow it? Reason for closure being just use Dulles, National too congested?
I worked for the FAA for about 10 years. I visited Dulles a couple of times to include the tower. Now, towers are purposely kept as quiet as possible to eliminate distractions and since the ATCs do all their comms through headsets, it’s kind of eerie watching planes land and take off in such a quiet environment. Anyway, while in the tower, we talked about the number of daily “operations”. That is, the number of takeoffs and landings. The tower manager told us back then that Dulles was definitely not working to its full potential. Let’s just say that the ATCs were not overworked. I don’t remember his numbers, so I looked up the stats in Wikipedia. Dulles was designed for a capacity of 55 million pax a year. In 2024, they handled about 27 million. Way below capacity. IMO Reagan could be and should be shut down. It’s far too congested. But if Congress is so hard over to keep it, transition it to a general aviation airport with additional use by the military. That will cut down the number of daily ops radically and increase safety.
I’d have to agree. The only plus to Reagan is the AWSOME tour of DC that get on approach and take off. Either side of the plane.
I have some great photos of Arlington!
I can remember when Dulles was first opened. For years the terminal was so deserted you could have a soccer match in it without disturbing anyone. National airport has been granted exceptions and variances for decades to keep it open for the convenience of the political class.
Yeah, it always shocks you when you find out that your pet theories turn out to be questionable.
Kinda hard to realize you ain’t the mind boggling, Sherlock type detective you thought you were.
There are three ways to read altitude in Blackhawk, Barometric altimeter, radio altimeter and GPS. Only the first two are normally used for routine reporting and operations in civilian air space. The radio altimeter is going to be very precise, probably within a foot or so. The Barometric altimeter is where you run into problems. It can be off by quite a lot, 150′ not being too unusual. It is likely that one was reading one and the other was reading the other.
Before the crash both pilots called up altitude and gave different altitudes. They were supposed to stay under 200′ but were flying at 313′. They never ever should have been that close in any case. At 100′ directly underneath the jet they were directly in the wake turbulence zone for the passenger jet and it would have been quite dangerous for the helicopter even if the jet had passed above the helicopter.
The tower had also allowed them to visually de-conflict air space in an area where it simply wasn’t possible to do so. That is wearing night vision in a crowded urban air space with lots of light pollution.
This was what we called a “series of unfortunate events”, that had someone made a better decision anywhere along the way it all could have been avoided.
It’s radar altimeter, not radio. If it was the AN/APN-209 that most 60s have used, they are only as accurate as what they are set at (should be zero feet on the ground even though it’s about 3 ft to the antennas). Below zero is a negative zero display but will not show actual negative error in feet, just the negative zero, and I’ve seen that on a bird (not mine).
A radar altimeter and radio altimeter are actually the same thing. Also sometimes called electronic altimeter, reflection altimeter, or low-range radio altimeter. They all do the same thing which is bounce radio waves off the ground and measure the time it takes to be reflected back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_altimeter
In 30 years of AF rotary wing mx, I’ve only seen radalt, so there’s that.
Don’t get me started on Infra Red Radar tho 🤣
My dad used the term “A cascading series of fuckups”. And even a perfectly calibrated, properly set barometric altimeter isn’t an “instant read” instrument. There’s always inherent latency. It’s just the nature of the beast.
Yes, latency is also apparent in GPS at flight speeds which, when coupled with other reasons, is why GPS is not a primary instrument for altitude. A barometric altimeter is regarded as more accurate than GPS.
The electronic altimeter reads at speed close to the speed of light and is normally considered most accurate.
Until you have a pilot telling you it’s reading 15’ in a 20’ hover 😬
That will get you a solid landing.
Thankfully those were avoided. Re-zero or re-place.
Never heard of an “electronic” altimeter. For over 100 years they have operated on barometric pressure. That is why the ATIS info includes the barometer setting which has to be dialed in on the altimeter. Before takeoff, the pilot can check its accuracy by setting the altimeter and comparing its reading with the listed field altitude of the departure airport. Before landing, the pilot gets the ATIS info which includes the altimeter setting (barometric pressure) and sets it into the window on the altimeter. Failure to do this renders the altimeter reading worthless when getting close to AGL. Anyway, that is what I was taught and did for over 20 years as an instrument rated pilot. You need an accurate altimeter just to fly at the prescribed altitude for that specific airport’s landing pattern. 200 feet off doesn’t cut it.
You can’t use a barometric altimeter that has a 150 foot error for an ILS approach with a 200 foot decision height. Most IFR rated single engine aircraft do not have radio/radar altimeters. In none of my 560 hours of flight time have I ever seen altimeters off by 150 feet if they were set to the correct barometer setting.
YouTube has the NTSBs video. Unfortunately I can’t share the link.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=NTSB+Washington+helicopter+crash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq6e96XEmH0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRVBHS1TDsc
here are a few
It’s not just the barometric altimeters that have some “slop” in them. The same could be said for the barometer at the airport. I stopped worrying about the altimeter setting in my Comanche after getting the “current” reading from the automated system. That was just a snapshot taken at one time then broadcast for a half hour to an hour as “current”. I always set my altimeter to the altitude of the airport before takeoff. The altitude is rather stable at ground level, unlike the barometer. The altimeter in my plane almost never agreed with the airport’s pressure as stated.
The technique I used was set to field barometer and see how close it came to field elevation. Its been over 45 years but in the T-37 If the altimeters left/right cockpit were more than 75 ft different when set to same ATC barometer give it back to maintenance. Something similar for difference from field elevation.
“chow halls that aren’t open or serve crap when they are”
I sat through a Teams Townhall meeting with the AMC CG last week. Big, grandiose plans for dining facilities with big screen TVs, gaming consoles, relaxation areas, etc. Bassically combining a chow hall with a rec center. I wanted to turn on my mic and yell “Hey motherfucker, you can’t even feed your troops now, and you want millions for this shit?”
They don’t need to hang out in the chow hall. The cooks (military or civilian) need time to clean up (and go home).
Kinda my thought, too. Don’t combine the chow hall and rec center.
She was the RAINBOW tour guide at the White House, being pilot was a far second.
A tragic event.
Captain Hindsight would have foreseen it had he not been distracted with the BP disaster.
“The report says Reagan ATC does this a lot”
Letting uncontrolled aircraft into “controlled” airspace? What could go wrong?
“Simulations show that the civilian aircraft was not able to be seen from the helicopter.”
At night, from a moving aircraft, with many, many bright lights (some of them probably moving, also) all around, and they needed a “simulation” to figure out that there was a problem?
“the altimeters in Blackhawks aren’t accurate and can be off 200 feet”
No shit, Sherlock. Any and every instrument is not totally accurate. That is why even scientific experiments using precision instruments are done multiple times and the results compared and possibly averaged.
Air traffic should never have been allowed to use the flight path that helicopter did. It was, as the saying goes, “an accident waiting to happen”.
No aircraft could be safely operated at night with an altimeter with an error of 200 feet. Moreover, the critical decision height for continuing a precision instrument approach is 200 feet above the runway threshold.
I wouldn’t even want to fly VFR with that much error. You could do better with an iPad…
It was before your time, but Bernath aka Bernutz or Bernasty used an iPad to figure his airspeed, ground speed, and fuel burn for a light sport flight to an airport in Oregon. He ran out of fuel and altitude about a half mile short of the airport. That was his first crash. Back in my flying days, we didn’t have anything but those flight calculators, a form of circular slide rule. They were surprisingly accurate when used properly.
I remember Bernath. He’s the reason I made the iPad reference. I used to be pretty handy with the E6B, my navigator dad taught me in my yute. Still have it around here somewhere.
I still have the U.S. gov’t issue one given to me for the ROTC flight program.
I’ll see if I have mine somewhere; however, it will be of no use. I asked my sister-in-law to drop off my car at the Boise airport so I could have a ride home when I got there. She did and I found out if you park a car in July in Boise ID with the windows up for a couple of days, everything inside including flight calculators will melt.
I am not a rotorhead, but all aviation altimeters operate the same way on barometric pressure. If the barometric altimeter is set to the pressure at the nearest airport, it should be accurate to within 10 feet.
There is another issue at play here with barometric altimeters. Over water they tend to lose accuracy. I don’t know all the details of why this happens but it is a common phenomenon. It has multiple causes of this regarding it; a weather man aviator could explain it better. Normally though it tends to read a lower altitude than actual.
Yep, there were a lot of reasons why this happened. FAA deserves quite a bit of scrutiny, and some procedural changes should be made to not set people up for failure. Still, the pilot in charge made some big errors and compounded it with attitude, resulting in her driving her helicopter into another aircraft. She is the reason several dozen people died that night. And the check ride instructor probably should have stepped in a few times.
If they are given the correct barometric pressure, they’ll still be between 50-75ft of being accurate – provided they put in the data before take-off.
At crash time the pressure was 30.05 – “standard” at sea level is 29.92. That makes a big difference in altitude accuracy.
Plus the tower will tell you what pressure to input so that everyone is getting the same readings.
Yes, it is in the ATIS, before take off or landing.