Silence Descends On The Washington Air Crash

' After the NTSB press conference Saturday afternoon, in which it was announced that the regional jet's altitude was 325 feet at the time of the collision when the helicopter should have been no higher than 200 feet -- and a faction of the NTSB investigators didn't want this released -- while the Army revealed the identity of the pilot almost concurrently, we've learned nothing more. Somewhat belatedly, Juan Browne posted an update late yesterday that does little other than summarize what we knew Saturdday afternoon.

At 2:20, he estasblishes that this was a check flight for Cpt Lobach, and the check pilot was Chief Warrant Officer 2 Eaves. The point neither he nor anyone else has made on this is that Cpt Lobach inarguably failed her check flight. He establishes that a total flight time for an Army helicopter pilot at this stage of her career of 450 hours is "about normal", although this would be very low for a fixed-wing pilot. He says, "the Army has been doing more with less for years."

He establishes that the male voice talking to the tower on the radio messages is CWO Eaves, which is normal. But at 9:50, he shifts to the last exchange between CWO Eaves and the tower:

So just within some 16 or so seconds of the collision, once again, PAT25 confirms that he still has the CRJ in sight. requesting visual separation. They're just saying this automatically, "request visual separation have him in sight", as if it's a normalization of deviance, it's like this is the way they've been doing it all the time, and he's convinced that he's got tthe correct aircraft in sight, when in fact he does not.

Browne then moves to another issue that hasn't been clarified since the craxh:

Another thing that needs to be verified is exactly which model of Blackhawk were these guys flying at the time of the accident. It's more likely than not that they were flying one of these old UH60 Lima models, the L models, steam powered gauges, no autopilot, without all the flat screen technology of the later Victor models, or I believe even Mike models.

I noticed a comment on an X thread from a helicopter pilot who said that the autopilot has an ALT HOLD feature that can automatically keep the helicopter at a particular altitude like, say, 200 feet. If the helicopter had this feature, it would have been a major problem for the pilot not to use it. If the helicpter didn't have the feature in that very complicated and busy airspace, it would be a major problem for the Army command. So far, this information isn't being released.

At 13:00, he moves to another key, as yet undisclosed, issue:

Part of this analysis is going to be to determine what was the altimeter setting at the time of the accident, and how was that information passed on to the helicopter pilots. Do they pick it up on the ADIS recording, or do they get it from the controller prior to entering the airspace? . . . I have not heard anyhbody mention what the altimeter setting is, and the altimeter setting is critical, because you set it right here in your altimeter, and it makes sure everybody is on the same sheet of music. . . . [E]very tenth of an inch of mercury that you're off in your altimeter setting, you are introducing an altimeter error of 100 feet, and that's why setting your local altimeter setting is so important on these approaches[.]

So Browne identifies saeveral lines of inqui9ry that the NTSB is likely to follow:

• The apparent automatic assumption by the helicopter check pilot that he had the jet in sight, and the automatic acceptance of this by the tower controller, who was clearly overworked
• Whether the Blackhawk in question had an autopilot and key features like ALT HOLD
• Whether the helicopter's altimeter had been properly set.

The biggest issue of the Washington crash is that this is the first fatal air accident in 15 yers, and it comes in the wake of increasing concern about the FAA's regulation of the air traffic control system, which as I noted in Sunday's post Browne himself has expressed. The reaction of legacy media has been to discount these concerns, especially as Trump has expressed them:

President Donald Trump wasted little time this week trying to assign blame for the nation’s deadliest air disaster in more than two decades. Among his chief targets: An FAA diversity hiring initiative he suggested had undermined the agency’s effectiveness. /p>

“But certainly for an air traffic controller, we want the brightest, the smartest, the sharpest. We want somebody that’s psychologically superior,” Trump said at a news conference Thursday. /p>

No evidence has emerged that rules seeking to diversify the FAA played any role in the collision Wednesday between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people.

But the evidence actually seems to support Trump. It is non-controversial that the fAA has a shortage of controllers. It is gernerally alleged that the shortage results in large part from the FAA hiring to racial quota, and if they can't find enough qualified minority applicants, this places an artificial limit on the number of white applicants they can hire. Thus, as Browne points out here, one controller was doing the work of two, and he was clearly rushed in approving the helicopter's request for visual separation.

There's also a strong suggestion that at least in this case, the Army has developed a culture that normalizes deviance. It looks as though every new revelation from the NTSB investigtion is likely to prove embarrassing to both the Army and the fAA. and it looks like there's already pressure on the NTSB to slow-walk its findings. I suspect that neither Trump nor Secretary Hegseth will tolerate this.