Captain Wonderful Failed Her Check Ride

I've been deeply skeptical of the NTSB's investigation of the January 29 collision of a helicopter and a jet landing at Reagan National Airport on January 29, especially after Todd Inman's remarks at the February 1 press conference implying disagreements among the investigators over releasing data on the helicopter's altitude. This has been a sensitive question since the investigation began, and it clearly continues to be, since the NTSB held an update press conference yesterday afternoon, the traditional Friday bad-news dump.

Here's a transcript of Chairman Homendy's remarks at the press conference. There isn't a whole lot that's new, and what is, is buried within the old. ABC News gives the approved version of the briefing:

There's no indication the U.S. Army Black Hawk crew could tell there was an impending collision before its devastating crash with an American Airlines plane in Washington, D.C., National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jennifer Homendy said Friday as the agency continues to investigate the cause of the accident.

The helicopter crew may have had bad information on the altitude from their altimeter, as the pilots had differing altitudes in the seconds [actually four minutes] before the crash, the NTSB said.

Wait a moment. The transcript of the control tower voice recording that was made available on February 1 has the instructor pilot responding twice to the tower after its inquiries, "aircraft in sight, request visual separation". It's certainly possible that the instructor pilot didn't see the jet, or mistook another set of lights for the accident jet, but if he didn't see anything at all, he was telling a falsehood, and if he saw the wronkg jet, his judgment is in question. Chairman Homendy doesn't address either issue.

The highly respected aviation YouTuber Juan Browne, as I've noted, seems to think the repeated "aircraft in sight, request visual separation" were just pro forma responses to the tower to get them off his back so he could continue on his flight path -- in other words, a falsehood.

Chairman Homendy makes the point that the maximum altitude for the helicopter when passing over the Memorial Bridge should have been 200 feet. However, at 8:45:30, the instructor pilot told Cpt Lobach that they were at 300 feet altitude at that location. But at 8:44:27, the instructor pilot had already noted to Cpt Lobach that the helicopter was at 300 feet and needed to descend to 200. For some reason, this descent never took place, even though the instructor pilot clearly expressed the need for it.

In fact, Chairman Homendy says at 8:43:48, the pilot flying told the instructor pilot that they were at 300 feet, while the instructor pilot said they were at 400. The chairman points out that there was no discussion of the discrepancy, says they do not know why there was a discrepancy, and they're exploring this. However, this gives a two-minute span between the Key Bridge and the Memorial Bridge where at least the instructor pilot understood they were at 300 feet, should have been at 200, but there was no discussion about this. If anything, if Cpt Lobach thought they were at 400 feet, she should have seen even more urgency to descend.

At the February 1 press conference, it was established that the jet's altimeter said it was at 325 feet when the collision took place. Yesterday, Chiarman Homendy updated the radar altitude for the jet at 313 feet, and the helicopter at 278 feet. (Some sources indicate that radar altitude is less accurate over water.)

This would be a very strong indication that Cpt Lobach had understood the helicoper was too high for at least four minutes before the collision at 8:47:59, irrespective of the exact altitude of either aircraft or any discrepancy in the helo's altimeters. The fact that the collision occurred indicates that the helo's altimiters were close enough, and the pilots were fully aware this was too high, whatever the exact numbers may have been. This would also be irrespective of whether the helo crew had parts of the ATC transmissions blocked when they were keying the mic. The ABC report nevertheless continues,

"We are looking at the possibility of there may be bad data," Homendy said.

The transmission from the tower that instructed the helicopter to go behind the plane may not have been heard by the crew because the pilot may have keyed her radio at the same second and stepped on the transmission from ATC, the NTSB added.

. . . The Black Hawk was conducting an annual training flight and night vision goggle check ride for one of the pilots [namely, Cpt Lobach] at the time of the crash, Homendy said. This is a practical exam that a pilot must pass to be qualified to perform specific duties, she said.

Here's my question. This was a check ride that Cpt Lobach had to pass. During the ride, more than four minutes before the collision, the instructor pilot doing the check noted that the pilot flying was too high, and indeed, although she had four minutes to get down to 200 feet altitude, she never did this. At the same time, the instructor pilot inexplicably told the ATC twice that he had the jet in sight and was maintaining visual separation, which he clearly was not.

Was Cpt Lobach already failing her check ride even before she ran into the jet? If she wasn't, was the instructor pilot complicit in conducting a silly charade that was going to pass her no matter what?

This, of course, doesn't appear to be anything like a full transcript of the helo's CVR from the whole flight. My surmise, during the two-week period before the NTSB would release even a redacted portion of the CVR, was that its contents would prove deeply embarrassing to the Army and the memory of Cpt Lobach. For now, I think I was right, and I would bet there's still more to come.