This is Part 2 of my report on the DC crash.
I have uncovered over a dozen discrepancies between what the media is telling us about the DC crash and what other sources are reporting and I’ve found narratives that are being hidden for no apparent reason. This could mean they are trying to cover up who exactly made the mistakes OR could be trying to cover up intentional sabotage.
BUT, before I walk you through those discrepancies, step-by-step, you should hear what Ted Cruz said after a briefing from the FAA and the NTSB. He has information we can’t get elsewhere and that the NTSB is NOT publicly reporting. Read this and it will set the stage for the next part of my report.
TED CRUZ: “We know three soldiers were aboard the Blackhawk and they were all killed. We don't know the details now of who made the mistake. Obviously somebody did because this should not have happened. Who was not where they were supposed to be? Who was in the wrong place? Was there a miscommunication? Was there just one individual who made an error? Were there multiple individuals? What was the cause of this? What really caused this and how do we prevent it from happening again.
I'm the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. It has jurisdiction over all of aviation. I hosted briefings from the FAA and the NTSB, the National Traffic Safety Board. We know that the American Airlines flight was coming in initially on Runway 1 at Reagan Airport, and then the air traffic controllers (ATC) moved it to Runway 33. So they shifted the runway right at the very end, and the American Airlines pilots changed their descent to land on Runway 33.
Simultaneously there was an Army Blackhawk helicopter that was traveling. There are multiple helicopter routes that go in and around Reagan Airport, and that Army helicopter was on Route One and then it was shifting from Route One to Route Four. The Blackhawk helicopter came in front of the plane that was landing [and ATC instructed them to go behind.] The two collided midair and exploded midair and sunk in relatively shallow water, about seven to eight feet of water.
The black box, the flight recorder has been recovered from the airplane and they are in the process of recovering the black box audio transcript recorder for the Blackhawk helicopter, so both of those will be recovered and they're trying to piece together what happened.
We know that multiple somebodies made a catastrophic mistake, a catastrophic mistake that led to a massive loss of life. We need to understand exactly what caused this accident, whether it was an error on the part of the army pilot, whether it was conceivably an error on the part of the commercial airliner pilot, whether it was an error on the part of the air traffic controller, or some combination of multiplayers in that regard. We don't know right now.
What we do know is two aircraft were in the same place at the same time. Now as we were having the briefing from the NTSB and the FAA that they told us several things.
Number one - that had the helicopter stayed on Route 4, it would have been well out of the way of the landing path of the airline, and it would have been in a lower altitude than where the helicopter and the jet collided. Were both of them where they were not supposed to be? Presumably if they saw the plane that led to the collision, they would not have stayed in the path of the plane, but they would would have piloted elsewhere. [But they did not.]
The Blackhawk helicopter had a transponder, so it was appearing on radar. It did not have technology called ADSB, which is technology that pings the location of an aircraft, and it does so using GPS rather than radar, and ADSB is more accurate and more reliable then simply a transponder that is pinging on radar.
Now, under the FAA rules, military aircraft and federal law enforcement aircraft are exempted from the requirement that they have ADSB technology. As we were talking with the FAA, as we were talking with the NTSB, what they told us, at least initially, is that had the Blackhawk had ADSB, they said, it would have not have altered the ability of air traffic control and the American Airlines pilot to see the helicopter. I don’t know.
We asked why exactly are there so many helicopter flight paths immediately in the vicinity of such a busy airport as DC Reagan Airport. Is that a sound policy decision to have helicopters traveling that close? We looked at a map of where Runway 33 is and where helicopter Route 4 is. If the helicopter had stayed on helicopter Route 4, it should not have been anywhere close to the landing pattern for Runway 33.
It's been widely reported the Army black helicopter was on a training mission. The Army routinely codes virtually every flight as a training mission. They do that because Army pilots are required to have a certain number of hours to keep their certification, and so every flight they do as a training mission to maintain those hours.
So, calling it a training mission doesn't necessarily convey what the purpose of that flight was that it is being called a training mission. We're going to find out what the precise mission was.
My understanding is the pilots for the American Airlines flight were quite experienced. At this point, I don't have a clear picture of what the experience level was for the Army helicopter pilots.
One discussion I'm sure we will have is whether the exemptions of the FAA rules for military aircraft and federal law enforcement aircraft from having the ADSB technology, whether that is a good decision or not. My understanding is one of the reasons for that exemption is that military law enforcement sometimes doesn't want to be tracked. They don't want their location evident. [Think about that as they’re flying around your airport.]
There may be reasons for both military and law enforcement context why you want the ability not to be tracked in real time. I don't know whether that if the Blackhawk had that technology, whether it would have made a material difference preventing this accident. I think that's a reasonable question to ask.
Secondly, I think we're going to get some real questions about, “Okay, how many helicopter flights are there in and around Reagan Airport? Do we need all of those flights? Is that an unnecessary unreasonable risk?” I don't know the answer to that.
I've seen reports that the air traffic controller was assigned to multiple responsibilities. It's not clear what the facts are on that.”
That’s what Ted Cruz had to say.
DC Crash - Part 1
DC Crash - Part 2
DC Crash - Part 3
DC Crash - Part 4
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