BARTOW, Fla — Air traffic and data recordings will help determine the cause of Wednesday night’s midair collision between a passenger plane and a military helicopter.
Radio recordings show that the air traffic controller at Reagan National Airport told the crew of the military Black Hawk helicopter to look out for the American Airlines jet that was about to cross its path.
“Air traffic controllers and pilots, we have to have a lot of trust with each other because a lot of the time the pilot is going to be flying in the clouds and can't see anything out their window,” said Bruce Bivins, President of Air Traffic Control Future Operators. “They trust when an air traffic controller tells them what to do. Same the other way, when a pilot tells an air traffic controller that they have an aircraft in sight and won't hit that aircraft, we rely on that.”
The pilots of the military helicopter had confirmed to controllers that they had the commercial airplane in sight and were avoiding it. The helicopter and plane collided seconds later.
Bivins trains air traffic controllers at his academy in Bartow. He said under the rules of the air, pilots flying “visually”, are ultimately responsible for using their eyes to spot and avoiding other aircraft.
“From the initial report, I would say that the helicopter pilot misled the air traffic controllers. Maybe he didn’t have that aircraft in sight. Maybe he thought he did. Maybe he had another one in sight.”
Bivins said there will also be scrutiny on the performance of the air controller.
“They’ll see how long that controller was actually on position. How long they’ve been working. They’ll go back for the last week or two. They look into everything that could possibly be a contributing factor,” Bivins said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation into the collision.
“They want to know what happened in those last seconds. The last 30 seconds, 10 seconds, two seconds, and then on impact. They want to determine if there was any possibility of anything mechanical that possibly could’ve occurred. They also want to determine if there were any external forces,” said Sheldon Jacobson, aviation security specialist and professor of Computer Science.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump, without evidence, placed blame on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for air traffic controllers at the Federal Aviation Administration.
“This should not have anything to do with politics. I can tell you that, air traffic controllers, nobody gets certified because of race, religion or anything else. They get certified because of aptitude, that is it,” Bivins said.
"I’ve gotten exhausted from FEMA. We’re 62 and 72 years old, and we’re on Social Security/Disability. What the hell does this country want from us?”
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