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TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Initial radar data has led investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to believe the Black Hawk helicopter was flying above 200 feet (61 meters) — the maximum altitude required to fly in an approved corridor near Washington’s busy central airport.
As reported by Reuters, it bolsters President Donald Trump’s earlier accusation that the Black Hawk helicopter was flying too high when it collided with an American Airlines plane on Wednesday night.
The information is based on data taken from the American Airlines plane’s flight data recorder — the “black box” that tracks a plane’s movement, speed and other parameters.
The American Airlines passenger plane that collided with the Black Hawk military helicopter as it was landing in the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C., was about 325 feet (99 meters) above the ground at the time of impact, investigators said Saturday night.
“That’s our job to figure out,” NTSB board member Todd Inman told reporters when asked what could explain the discrepancy.
Inman also said at a briefing Saturday night that helicopter flight training typically includes the use of night-vision goggles.
“We don’t know at this point whether the night-vision goggles were actually on, or what their location was,” he said. “Further investigation should tell us if that happened and what factors may have played a role in the overall crash.”
Inman said there was an “internal debate” among investigators about whether to release the information before the helicopter’s altitude or radar data is confirmed. “We haven’t resolved that,” he said.
The numbers support the theory that the Black Hawk helicopter was flying higher than it should have been, as Trump has publicly stated.
“The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high,” he posted on his TruthSocial account Friday. “That’s way over the 200-foot limit. That’s not too complicated to understand, is it???”
Inman declined to comment directly on the matter when asked by reporters Saturday. The potential discrepancy between the helicopter’s altitude and what controllers saw on radar will be investigated, he said.
The data confirms that air traffic controllers alerted the helicopter to the presence of the American Airlines CRJ700 about two minutes before the crash.
The American crew had a “verbal reaction” in the seconds before impact, according to the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, and flight data showed the nose of the plane began to lift, officials said.
The official said an automated radio transmission warning of “traffic, traffic, traffic” was heard on the voice recorder and then the sound of a crash could be heard before the recording ended.
The U.S. Army on Saturday released the name of the third soldier killed in the collision of a Black Hawk helicopter with an American Airlines passenger plane near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this week. The crash killed a total of 67 people.
The soldier was identified as Capt. Rebecca Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina. She had been an aviation officer in the regular Army since 2019 and was assigned to the 12th Aviation Battalion, Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
The Army initially declined to identify Lobach, an unusual decision the agency said was made at the request of the family.
But on Saturday, the Army said in a statement that Lobach’s family had agreed to release her name publicly.
The Army previously identified the other two soldiers killed in Wednesday’s crash as Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39.
There were no survivors of the midair collision that occurred Wednesday night (Washington time). Sixty passengers, four airline crew members and three helicopter pilots were killed in the deadliest U.S. aviation accident since November 2001, when a jet crashed shortly after takeoff from New York.
The names of the 60 passengers and four crew members who died on the jet have not been officially released, though many have been identified through family and social media.
Crews were preparing to remove the wreckage from the Potomac River starting Sunday.
Forty-two bodies have been recovered so far, the Washington, D.C., fire department said Saturday.
The military helicopter was using a special corridor for military, government and emergency helicopters along the Potomac River through downtown Washington. The corridor has a 200-foot altitude limit.
But the intersection of commercial flights and helicopters in the congested airspace around Reagan Airport has raised concerns for years. Miles O’Brien, a pilot and aviation analyst for CNN, said that on a good day, only 300 feet separates the top of the helicopter corridor from the glide ramp, or designated descent path, for planes.
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