Federal Investigators Set to Begin Hearings on D.C. Plane Crash

New York Times

3 days ago

Federal investigators on Wednesday are expected to begin providing the clearest picture yet of what went wrong earlier this year when an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed into an American Airlines regional jet outside Washington, D.C., killing 67 people and touching off a crisis of confidence in air travel safety.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which has spent the last six months investigating the accident, is set to convene the first of three days of public hearings at 9 a.m. Eastern. Federal aviation safety officials, military brass and other parties involved in the crash are scheduled to testify about the events leading up to the midair collision near Ronald Reagan National Airport on the evening of Jan. 29.
The board is also expected to release approximately 10,000 pages of new documents related to the crash at the same time the hearing begins, including transcripts of the cockpit recordings from both American Airlines Flight 5342 and the Army Black Hawk and of the air traffic control transmissions to all aircraft in the area.
The documents are also expected to include a combined transcript illustrating how all of those communications overlapped in real time, as well as factual reports about the air control tower, aircraft and the people involved in operating them that night.
Though the board already issued a preliminary report and urgent recommendations, and the Federal Aviation Administration has already implemented safety measures to reduce the risk of a similar episode in the nation's capital, there are still a number of unanswered questions. They include why an Army helicopter on a pilot evaluation mission flew higher than was allowed in the vicinity of one of the nation's most congested airports, what led to the air traffic control tower being understaffed that evening, and various communication failures that might have contributed to the fatal collision.
N.T.S.B. investigators are not expected to reach any conclusions about the cause of the accident, though the board's chairwoman, Jennifer Homendy, has promised that those, and final safety recommendations, will be issued by next January.
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