The fatal crash between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a PSA Airlines CRJ700 airliner on January 29 that claimed 67 lives was the subject of new conclusions revealed by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Tuesday.
The NTSB claims that at the time of the disaster, the Black Hawk chopper was flying too high. The Black Hawk was operating above 300 feet, 100 feet above the 200-foot ceiling set for helicopters operating in the National Capital Region, according to data taken from aviation traffic sources.
An important aspect in determining the accident’s cause is that this went above the approved height limit for helicopters operating in that airspace.
The precise height of the Black Hawk is still being investigated, as the NTSB confirmed that the flight traffic data was rounded to the closest hundred feet.
Investigators will need to recover the Black Hawk from the Potomac River, where it is thought to have crashed, in order to confirm this crucial information and collect more data.
In order to give the NTSB more accurate flight data from the Black Hawk’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders, recovery procedures are planned for later this week.
Determining precisely what happened in the seconds preceding the incident will require the data from these equipment.
The PSA Airlines plane may have tried to pull up prior to the hit, since preliminary data from the disaster scene indicates a considerable change in the aircraft’s pitch.
This particular detail may provide important information on the pre-crash operations of both aircraft and whether any evasive measures were attempted.
To better comprehend what happened, investigators are still working on transcribing the voice recorders in the cockpit of the Black Hawk and the CRJ700 airplane.
New pieces of debris have been found in the Potomac River as part of ongoing efforts to salvage the passenger jet wreckage. Parts of the fuselage, the right wing, and large sections of the forward cabin, cockpit, tail cone, and stabilizers have all been discovered recently.
Important parts like the quick access recorder and TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) computer are also being recovered by investigators. After being gathered, the wreckage will be taken to a safe place for additional inspection and investigation.
In order to investigate any possible operational or mechanical problems that might have led to the incident, the NTSB’s aviation systems group is going over the maintenance logs for the Black Hawk and the CRJ700.
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All 67 victims’ bodies have been recovered from the Potomac River as of Tuesday, and the identification process is finished.
As the NTSB works to piece together the circumstances leading up to one of the deadliest airborne collisions in recent history, the inquiry is still underway.
