Expert Pilot Analysis: Insights from Flight Recorder of Ill-Fated Washington DC Plane Crash

The so-called black boxes from the doomed DC passenger jet have been recovered, which could reveal vital information about the tragedy.

The devices are a flight data recorders that capture 80 types of information, such as pilots’ communications, airspeed and altitude.

It’s impossible to predict exactly what new information the two black boxes salvaged from the crash debris will contain, but Ryan Tseko suspects the data could point towards a fatal mistake.

Tseko, a former flight captain for United Express and Grand Cardone and designated pilot examiner for the FAA told DailyMail.com: ‘I don’t think there were any issues with the airplane or helicopter. I don’t, I don’t.’

‘There’s no visible signs, and there were no communications with air traffic control  saying, ‘Hey, we have an issue with the airplane.”

What’s more, both of these aircraft models are ‘very capable,’ Tseko said.  

​​​Large commercial aircraft and some smaller commercial, corporate, and private aircrafts are required by law to be equipped with two black boxes.

The first is known as a Cockpit Voice Recorder and records radio transmissions and sounds in the cockpit including pilots’ voices and engine noise.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators carry the black box of American Eagle flight 5342 at an unknown location. These automated devices store data on ‘everything that the airplane and/or helicopter is doing,’ Ryan Tseko told DailyMail.com.

NTSB investigators are working to extract information from the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder to learn more about the cause of the tragic accident

The second, the Flight Data Recorder, which tracks the performance of the aircraft’s on-board systems and monitors metrics such as altitude, airspeed, and heading.

Both devices are designed to be virtually indestructible. 

They’re orange in color to make them easier to find in wreckage, sometimes at great ocean depths. 

And they’re usually installed a plane’s tail section, which is considered the most survivable part of the aircraft.

They’re also equipped with beacons that activate when immersed in water and can transmit from depths of 14,000 feet (4,267 meters). 

While the battery that powers the beacon will run down after about one month, there’s no definitive shelf-life for the data itself.  

Authorities are still searching for similar devices in the military helicopter that also went down. 

The fatal crash took place just before 9 p.m. Wednesday when American Airlines Flight 5342 tried to land at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia.

The two black boxes were recovered from the crash wreckage after both the plane and helicopter landed in the Potomac River

Crews are currently working to recover victims’ bodies and assess the wreckage 

‘Outside conditions were actually not bad,’ when the collision occurred, Tseko said, indicated it probably was not weather-related.

This could suggest that human error was the most probable cause of the crash. But mistakes may not have been isolated to the flight crews, according to Tseko.

‘You also have to take into account the air traffic control, because there’s a lot of communications that go on in the aviation world,’ he said. 

‘You have [Very High Frequency] radios that are transmitting between the control tower, the airplane and now the helicopter. So you just add a lot of variables. 

‘And it seems to me — like, when I go back and watch the recordings — it seems like there was some mistakes made,’ he said. 

The American Airlines jet approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) Wednesday was supposed to land on runway one, but then circled to land on runway three, Tseko explained.

In that situation, the pilots have to change the runway that is loaded into the Flight Management System (FMS), which is the on-board computer that pilots use to control navigation, performance and aircraft operations. 

‘They’re now sidestepping and going to a different runway,’ he said.

It’s impossible to predict exactly what new information the two black boxes salvaged from the crash debris will contain, but Tseko suspects the data could point towards a fatal mistake made by the passenger jet’s flight crew

The accident occurred when an American Airlines jet from Wichita, Kansas collided with the Black Hawk over Washington DC Wednesday night, killing all 67 people aboard the two aircraft

It’s possible that this could have distracted the pilots, preventing them from seeing the Black Hawk helicopter that suddenly entered their flight path, Tseko said.

The airspace over Washington DC is very busy and complex, he explained.

The operations at DCA are ‘already busy enough,’ with ‘airplanes stacked two and three minutes apart coming into land,’ he said.

But there is also commercial aircraft traffic from Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), which lies just 30 miles away. 

‘And then you add in more complexity, which is all of these military helicopters that are flying close to DC,’ he said.  

At the time Wednesday’s crash occurred, there was just one air traffic controller managing both the commercial aircraft and military helicopters.

‘Now in that control tower, it could be a dual role. So one would control the helicopters and one would control the airplanes. Well, on that night, there was one guy controlling both,’ Tseko said.

‘We’ve seen this problem in the US, where there’s a shortage of air traffic control as well as pilots.

The airspace over Washington DC is very busy and complex, Tseko explained

At the time Wednesday’s crash occurred, there was just one air traffic controller managing both the commercial aircraft and military helicopters

‘So there’s an issue that the FAA needs to address [by] recruiting additional air traffic controllers and also training them to be very proficient,’ he said. 

That being said, the FAA ‘are on their game,’ Tseko added, pointing to the agency’s efforts to upgrade the Traffic Avoidance Collision Systems that aircraft currently operate under. 

This new system, called ACAS X, promises to be more sophisticated than its predecessor, drawing on more data inputs to hopefully avoid accidents like the Washington DC crash in the future. 

The FAA has not confirmed the official launch date for this new software, but Tseko said Wednesday’s mid-air crash might encourage the agency to hasten its release.

This tragic collision sent the plane and helicopter tumbling into the Potomac River, where officials are currently working to recover the victims’ bodies an assess the wreckage. 

The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that investigators found the passenger plane’s two black boxes last night.

An estimated 40 bodies have been recovered so far. Those who have been identified include a consultant who just moved to the DC area, a military flight crew chief who was a new dad, champion figure skating coaches and rising skating stars.

More information about the victims and the cause of the crash should emerge as the investigation continues.