Vital tracking technology inside an Army Black Hawk helicopter was turned off for ‘no compelling reason’ when it collided with a passenger plane over Washington DC last week.
The Black Hawk was performing a routine training mission in an effort to renew 28-year-old Captain Rebecca M. Lobach’s annual certification when it crashed into American Airlines Flight 5342 as it was making its final descent at Reagan National Airport just before 9pm on January 29.
When the chopper went down, the Black Hawk’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast was disabled – a system which shares an aircraft’s position, altitude, and speed, Sen. Ted Cruz told the New York Times on Thursday.
The technology also includes a display that shows pilots the location of other aircrafts both in the sky or on a runway, and allows air traffic controllers to not just rely on radar tracking – which could have a delay of a few seconds, according to USA Today.
Military helicopters can turn off the ADS-B during ‘continuity of government’ missions so that nobody can track where government officials are being flown.
But Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said that was not the case at the time of the deadly crash.
‘In this instance, this was a training mission, so there was no compelling national security reason for ADS-B to be turned off,’ he told the Times following a closed-door briefing on the investigation into the crash with the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.
He noted that the helicopter was equipped with a transponder to broadcast its location, but said the ADS-B is far superior technology.
The United States Army would not confirm Cruz’s claims about the tracking system to the Times.
‘We’re going to let the investigation play out and not get ahead of the NTSB findings,’ Col. Roger Cabiness, an Army spokesman, told the outlet.
The report came as crews retrieved the mangled remains of the Army helicopter from the depths of the Potomac River.
Days earlier, authorities confirmed that the Black Hawk helicopter was, in fact, flying 100 feet above the limit for helicopters in the commercial airspace.
It was flying at 300 feet, but the maximum altitude permitted for choppers in the area is 200 feet.
Black box data recovered from the wreckage in the Potomac River had indicated that this situation likely occurred, but the National Transport Safety Board was waiting on the air traffic control data to confirm the high altitude.
Radar data is rounded to the nearest 100 feet, which means the helicopter was flying anywhere between 251 feet and 349 feet of elevation, the NTSB said.
Meanwhile, the passenger plane was at 325 feet at the time of the crash and had been cleared to land.
In the split second before the crash, the plane’s pilots made an effort to jerk the aircraft upwards in an effort to avoid the oncoming helicopter.
‘At one point very close to the impact, there was a slight change in pitch, an increase in pitch,’ NTSB’s Todd Inman said in a press conference Saturday night.
There were no survivors on either flight, and all 67 bodies have now been retrieved from the water.
There were 60 passengers and four crew on board the American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, while three soldiers were on the helicopter.
‘This is a complex investigation,’ said Brice Banning, NTSB investigator in charge. ‘There are a lot of pieces here. Our team is working hard to gather this data.’
Banning also discussed the last moments from the jet’s two black boxes, which captured sound in the cockpit and flight data.
‘The crew had a verbal reaction,’ Banning said, with the data recorder showing ‘the airplane beginning to increase its pitch.
‘Sounds of impact were audible about one second later, followed by the end of the recording.’
The Federal Aviation Administration is now set to reduce the number of arrivals at Reagan National Airport in DC, telling airlines late Wednesday that the reduction from a maximum of 28 to 26 arrivals per hour would reduce future risks.
The email, seen by Reuters, said investigators from the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board ‘have expressed concern for our tower personnel on duty, who have an increased level of stress while also having a front row view of the accident recovery.’
It added that reducing the rate from 28 to 26 ‘will reduce risk and allow a little space for extra coordination.’
Reagan National Airport is notoriously crowded, and the crossover in the air space between jets and helicopters is routine – but has caused pilots issues for decades.
Some aviation experts have even called the deadly crash ‘a disaster waiting to happen’ as they sounded the alarm over the dangerous airspace at the DC airport. Data from the FAA found there were over 30 reports of ‘near-midair collisions’ over the airport as far back as 1987, with at least 10 involving military aircraft, according to NPR.
Seven of these reports involved military helicopters under chillingly similar circumstances to last week’s crash, including one that occurred just 24 hours before the fatal collision.
In that case, a passenger jet was ordered to circle around Reagan National and re-try its landing after being warned about a nearby military helicopter.
Meanwhile, Sen. Cruz has called on the FAA to review all helicopter routes that pass over any commercial airspace to determine whether other changes need to be made.
But President Donald Trump blamed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts for the deadly collision.
The Commander in Chief said last week that those flying the Black Hawk helicopter should have ‘seen where they were going’.
He added that he had some ‘pretty good ideas’ of how the disaster occurred and vowed to make sure it would never happen again.
Trump then said he put ‘safety’ first while former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden prioritized politics.
