On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump appeared to place the blame for a midair collision that killed 67 people on the previous administration’s approach to hiring aviation professionals. But experts and investigators involved with the crash, which also involved a military helicopter, say the next few weeks will see investigators pore over every element of the crash, and the moments leading up to it, to determine the causes.
“You need to give us time,” Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a press conference Thursday. The NTSB is an independent US federal watchdog agency that is leading the investigation into the crash. “We have data, we have substantial amounts of information,” she said. “We need to verify information.”
“We Will Analyze the Facts”
On Wednesday evening, a US Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter collided with the tail of a Bombardier CRJ-700 jet coming in for landing at Washington, DC’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. Officials say no one on board either the military helicopter or the commercial airliner, operated by the regional airline PSA Airlines on behalf of American Airlines, survived the crash. It is the deadliest US commercial airline crash in 16 years.
In a White House briefing Thursday morning, Trump pointed to a program that also existed through his first administration aimed at expanding the talent pool for the US Federal Aviation Administration to individuals with disabilities. There was no proof, he admitted, that the crash was linked to the FAA’s attempts to improve diversity in its workforce. But he made the connection “because I have common sense and unfortunately some people don’t.”
Later on Thursday, the White House released a statement criticizing the Biden administration’s “rejection of merit-based hiring” at the FAA in favor of a hiring program that encouraged diversity. Trump also ordered the FAA and the US Secretary of Transportation to review all of the FAA’s hires and safety protocol changes made during the four years of the Biden administration, “and to take such corrective action as necessary to achieve uncompromised aviation safety,” which might include firings.
But experts and the investigators say a thorough and unbiased approach will be critical to determining exactly why and how the collision occurred.
In a press briefing, NTSB Board Member J. Todd Inman said at least seven different working groups will focus on different elements of the flights, made up of federal investigators as well as representatives from the military, aircraft manufacturers, and organizations representing aviation professionals.
An operations group will look into the history of the accident, and crew involved. Another group will focus on the body of the aircraft, examining the wreckage and accident scenes to determine what course the aircraft traveled before the collision, including the altitude. Another will zoom in on the engines involved. Others will examine onboard hydraulic, electrical, and pneumatic systems, as well as flight control instruments. A group will look specifically at the role of air traffic control, using recordings and sensor data to determine how professionals at National Airport reacted to the incident. Another will examine the reactions of first responders, and another will examine the helicopter in particular. A “human performance” group will be embedded within several of those organizations, focusing on what role crew fatigue, workload, medication, equipment, and training might have played in the collision.
Inman said the groups would produce a preliminary report on the crash in at least 30 days, though would surface any pressing issues that might affect wider air safety as soon as they appear. “We will help find out what happened, and we will do it factually and accurately,” he said.
After about a year, the NTSB will likely release a more in-depth report that includes recommendations for the entire air safety system. Officials at the FAA will then choose which of these recommendations to accept and implement.
“Unbiased Minds”
Looking at every part of a crash is standard operating procedure for crash investigations, says Daniel Kwasi Adjekum, who teaches aviation safety as a professor at the University of North Dakota. “In investigations, you should always have an unbiased mind,” he says. “You look at everything and rule it out.” That approach is critical, he says, to preserving the credibility of non-political crash investigations. The taint of bias “makes it hard to call for substantial changes” after a tragic crash, he says.
“Anybody who is rushing to judge or find fault right now is completely inappropriate,” says Michael McCormick, a former vice president of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization who now coordinates the air traffic management program at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Now is the time to allow the professionals to do their jobs.”
No matter what investigators find, the DC crash will very likely lead to significant changes in the way this country operates its aviation systems, McCormick says.
“Having a midair collision occur in a major metropolitan area while both aircraft are being guided by air traffic control is an event that’s going to generate a lot of attention, a robust investigation, and some significant changes.”
The last serious crash that made him feel this certain about change was the 2009 Colgan Air Flight 3407 crash, which killed 50 people outside of Buffalo, New York and resulted in the FAA adopting new safety procedures. Before that? September 11, 2001.