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