Immediately after 8:43 pm On January 29, an air traffic controller at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington asked a question to the American Airlines Flight 5342 pilots: could they land on a different corridor?
There was nothing uncommon for the pilot’s request or consent. But the decision to shift the corridors was fatal, bringing the plane closer to the Black Hawk Army helicopter, which would collide with a crash that killed 67 people.
Exactly what happened is still combined. The National Transport Security Council recovers and examines debris from the frozen Potomac River. The Security Service is expected to publish a preliminary report in the coming weeks, but a more thorough accounting will probably not arrive for one or two years.
However, according to the details that have emerged so far, pilots in the US regional jet aircraft appear to have been acting as expected, according to aviation security experts and half a dozen airline pilots who have flown to Reagan Airport. It seems they could not have done differently, these experts told the New York Times.
“There was nothing to do. It was a regular day at Reagan, “said Shawn Prruchnicki, a former airline pilot and assistant professor at the Aviation Studies Center at Ohio University, who said he had tried aircraft in Reagan National more than a hundred times.
Researchers are likely to focus on understanding why the helicopter entered the flight route of the plane and if the air traffic controller handled both aircraft that night could have or should have done more to separate them.
The airport is among the most congestion in the country and requires airline pilots. To fly there, pilots need extra training that is usually intended for airports near mountainous territory. This is because departing or arriving aircraft should thoroughly avoid heaven over the White House, Capitol, National Mall and Vice President, who are strongly guarded, especially by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.
Dulles International Airport, a large airport with hundreds of domestic and international flights a day, is about 25 miles, filling the area of ​​the area with even more planes.
Of course, there are no mountains in Washington. But the limits of where planes can make effectively fly to and from there as challenges, as they fly, say, Alaska, said a senior airline pilot, who spoke about the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak to journalists.
Sam Lilley, one of the pilots of the US flight that night, understood the requirements of operation in the area, according to his father Tim Lilley, who is also a pilot of the plane and earlier in his career he threw helicopters Black Hawk for the army . Mr Lilley said he and his son had discussed the challenges of Washington’s airspace. Sam Lilley was proud to have been there regularly there.
“You feel successful when you have conquered this challenge and this is the way we both examined it,” Mr Lilley said.
Sam Lilley, who was 28, was the first PSA Airlines officer, a subsidiary of American Airlines, who joined more than two years ago, his father said. He hoped to gather several hours on smaller jet aircraft to graduate to fly much larger airplanes to international destinations. Mr Lilley, who was committed to getting married this autumn, had already used his corporate privileges to visit Japan, Ireland and Iceland and wanted to continue traveling to the world, his father said.
On the night of the crash, Mr. Lilley and the pilot who were responsible for the flight, Captain Jonathan Campos, had departed from Wichita, Kan, in a small peripheral jet carrying 60 passengers and two other crew members. At about 8:15 pm, they began going down to Reagan Airport from 37,000 feet, the NTSB told the weekend, quoting black box data. These data also include sound from the cockpit and the NTSB said that the times it provided were preliminary.
About 25 minutes later, the pilots were cleared for a standard approach in the runway 1 of the airport. A few minutes after that they were asked – and agreed – to go to corridor 33.
This corridor is short, making it the least suitable for larger jet aircraft, which require longer interruption distances. But it is considered long enough for regional jet jets such as the CRJ700, which was made by the Canadian company Bombardier, that the pilots are flying. Pilots and security experts have said that diverting smaller planes to Runway 33 can allow air traffic controllers to improve aircraft from busy times. Pilots can reject such a request, but after a brief discussion, Mr Lilley and Mr Campos agreed the change.
About 8:46 pm, a radio broadcast could be heard in what control of the air traffic he informed the helicopter on the presence of a plane just south of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge at about 1,200 feet, around Runway 33, according to with the ntsb
Nearly two minutes later, after the plane fell below 500 feet lifting, the controller can be heard by asking the helicopter pilots if they had the plane. Airplane pilots could hear these communications from air traffic control, but not the helicopter answers because the two aircraft were transmitted to different frequencies. The auditor communicated in both.
At this point, the plane would be moments of landing and the pilots would have focused strongly on the ground, experts and other pilots said. One of the pilots would have flown and guided the aircraft to the runway, while the other would play a supportive role, including monitoring the levels of systems. The landing tools would have been developed.
“Normally, one pilot looks straight forward and the other pilot focuses inside,” said Robert E. Joslin, a professor at Embry -runautical University and a leading former test adviser and test pilot for the federal aviation administration. “They must focus on landing.”
Neither would the pilot be expected to sweep the area for other aircraft. Even if they had, the helicopter could easily be mixed in the city’s lights behind it or maybe it was out of view, the experts said.
But shortly after the plane crashed below 500 feet, the pilots received an automated message: “Movement, Traffic”. This notice is not uncommon, but it would have caught their attention, experts said. The message is intended as a warning that there is another aircraft nearby. Such alerts so close to an airport would be annoying, but would not require immediate action beyond the attempt to detect the source.
The warning was created by the traffic -collision avoidance system, known as TCas, which is widely credited for a substantial reduction in mid -range conflicts over the last four decades, experts said.
At low altitudes, one of the most important features of the system would have been suppressed – a feature that commands pilots on how to separate two aircraft that are dangerously close by telling someone to climb and the other to descend. This is due to the fact that at lower altitudes, a wrong warning that teaches pilots to make quick changes can be dangerous. Even if this feature was activated, it would only work if the helicopter was also equipped with TCas, which would probably not be.
And while traffic warning may be dealing with Mr Lilley and Mr Campos, they could also be quickly put comfortably. Seconds later, another broadcast came: Air traffic control ordered the helicopter to pass behind the “CRJ”, according to the NTSB, using a nickname for the type of plane flying by the pilots.
It is not clear and it can never be clear, what the airline pilots think at that time. However, experts said they could have provided the pilots, who focused on landing the plane, some assurance that air traffic control appears to help resolve the cause of traffic warning.
About 16 seconds later, just before 8:48 pm, airline pilots can be heard orally, according to NTSB at that time, the nose of the plane began to pull. Then the sounds of the crashes could be heard and the recording was over.
