News & Current Events

A helicopter pilot weighs in on the circumstances that led to the tragedy.

When an American Airlines regional passenger plane and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter collided at Reagan National Airport, it sent shockwaves throughout the country. The midair crash occurred at approximately 8:48 in the evening, a couple of hundred feet above the Potomac River. As investigators work to unravel how this could have happened, circumstances regarding air traffic control, an overly busy airport, and human error combined to create a perfect storm that led to the deaths of all 67 people involved in the crash.

Thus far, a couple of concerns have been raised about the conditions that may have contributed to the midair collision:

Too Busy: Reagan National Airport is operated by the federal government and is set up to handle approximately 15 million passengers, but it has been serving close to 25 million.

Other Aircraft: Helicopters often fly in and out of the airspace, causing congestion.

Air Traffic Control Shortage: Normally, helicopter traffic is handled by one controller and plane traffic by another, but only one controller was supervising both at the time of the crash, according to numerous accounts. A shortage of controllers is a nationwide problem.

Then there are questions regarding aviation safety that are specific to this incident. To get a clearer picture of what went wrong, Liberty Nation News caught up with B. Scott Mitchell, a Florida police officer who is also a licensed helicopter pilot. Here is a portion of our interview with him:

Leesa K. Donner: You’ve got about 170 hours of helicopter flying time, so I’m wondering: What was your first reaction when you heard about this tragedy?

Scott Mitchell: Well, what I first thought when I heard it and saw the footage is it’s most likely, in my opinion, pilot error, probably more the helicopter pilot than the airline pilot. When I was in the heavy throes of my training, whenever we would fly into an airport with uncontrolled airspace, the number one rule really for a helicopter was to stay out of the way of airplanes because their flight paths are a lot more predictable and a lot less movable than that of a helicopter. Think of it in terms of a small boat and a giant freighter in the ocean – you need to stay out of the way of the freighter.

LKD: Well, that makes perfect sense. Logically speaking, I think many people wondered at first how a helicopter could miss seeing a commercial airliner. How does that happen?

BSM: Well, obviously, it’s impossible for me to know how they missed it. I have heard reports from multiple sources that they were on a nighttime checkout ride or training mission and that they were probably flying under night vision goggles. And it seems to me to be plausible that if they were flying under those conditions using night vision goggles, there could have been some impairment to their peripheral vision. It certainly wouldn’t have helped their peripheral vision.

LKD: So that limits what you see?

BSM: Well, it does place some limitations on your peripheral vision over natural human sight. Of course, it enhances your nighttime vision if you’re looking outside the cockpit, but if you have some impairment to your peripheral, that might have attributed to it. I mean, it’s hard to say, but it seems reasonable that that could have happened.

LKD: How much does the amount of traffic matter when you are in a helicopter? I would think you would have the ability to maneuver much faster than, say, a commercial airliner.

BSM: Obviously, the busier the airport, the more congestion involved in coming in and out of that airport, which adds much more complexity and challenges to be able to navigate it. Airspaces like that are so heavily controlled that often, you’re heavily reliant on air traffic control to help you maintain separation. But I believe, in this case, as I’ve seen reported, there was some conversation with the helicopter pilot about what they call “handing off your separation,” meaning asking the pilot, are you willing to use visual separation? Basically, can you look outside your helicopter and see that airplane or the other traffic around you and maintain separation from them? And it would be up to the pilot to say whether he wants to do that or not. He could say, yes, I can look outside my aircraft and see other traffic. Or he could say, I’m not comfortable with that. I’d like for you to maintain separation for me. In other words, you tell me where to go.

LKD: Tell our readers a bit about visual flight rules versus instrument flight rules so we can better understand the situation.

(Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

BSM: So, there are two types of rules when it comes to being aware of your surroundings. Instrument flight rules indicate that you’re going to follow a predetermined track with the guidance of air traffic control down to the runway. And when you’re flying that way, if your airplane is so outfitted, which of course that airplane would’ve been, you don’t even need to look outside the cockpit in order to land the plane. It can all be done from inside the cockpit. The helicopter apparently was flying on visual flight rules where you’re looking outside of your cockpit for information about your environment, and you’re flying knowing what’s around you visually.

LKD: But let me ask you – if you’re on IFR, does the plane have a sense of what’s around it?

BSM: That depends on the plane. A plane like that, the one that crashed, would’ve had a radar system that would have shown you what was around it. And certainly, the helicopter does, too. Those helicopters are very sophisticated.

LKD: So, being a pilot, would you feel comfortable flying in and out of DC at this point?

BSM: Yes. I’ve flown in and out of DC many times, and this sort of thing is so unbelievably rare. I mean, it’s a shock to everyone that it even happened because it seems almost impossible for it to have happened because of all the safeguards that are in place. But it wouldn’t make me uncomfortable to fly there tomorrow.

As a passenger, I wouldn’t worry about flying. From my perspective, as a police officer, you’re far more at risk of getting hurt or killed just driving to the airport instead of flying.

The one thing I’m wondering about, and of course, I don’t know this to be true at all, but my understanding from the reporting is that the air traffic control tower was short quite a few positions, and I’m wondering if that had something to do with whether they could have been a little bit more direct with the helicopter or what. It’s hard to say. I guess we’ll find out after the investigation’s done.

1. An Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet in DC above the Potomac River, killing all 67 people on both aircraft.
2. The causes are unknown, but a shortage of air traffic controllers, overloading the airport with more flights than it was designed to handle, and something going on with the helicopter pilot could be factors.
3. There are two main types of flying: on instruments, which is when a pilot relies on the gauges to navigate, and visual, which means looking out of the cockpit and seeing for oneself.