NTSB finds an army helicopter in a deadly atmosphere with a plane higher than height
Investigators searching for the air collision in January of a passenger plane and an army helicopter over Washington, which killed 67 people that the helicopter was flying higher than the readings of its height should have been inaccurate.
Details came out of the first day of the national transport safety sessions in Washington, where investigators aim to reveal visions about the reason for the crash between the US Airlines plane from Whitchita, Kansas, and the Black Hawk helicopter over Ronald Reagan National Airport.
The Board of Directors opened three days of listening sessions by showing animation and operating sound and video from the collision night, in addition to the interrogation of witnesses and investigators on how the Federal Aviation and the army administration contributed to the most crash in the country since November 2001.
The final report of the Council will not be issued until some time next year, but it became clear on Wednesday how small the error of the helicopter flying on the road that Black Hawk took on the night of the accident.
The night incident in January was the first in a series of accidents and near errors this year that sparked the concern of officials and audiences traveled, despite statistics that still show that aviation is still safe forms of transportation.
Animation, the scale height
The hearing opened on Wednesday with a video drawing showing the place where the helicopter and aircraft had a collision. He explained how the helicopter flew over the height of 200 feet (61 meters) on the helicopter road along the Botomac River before it collided with the plane.
The investigators said on Wednesday that the trip registrar showed that the helicopter was actually from 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) above the barometer height scale on which the pilots relied on that they were flying. So NTSB conducted tests on three other helicopters of the same unit on a flight above the same area and found similar contradictions in their weighting devices.
Dan Cooper said with Sikorsky helicopters that when a Black Hawk helicopter involved in the accident was designed in the 1970s, it used a pattern of the height scale that was common at the time, “Dan Cooper said with the Seikorsky helicopters. Modern helicopters have air data computers that were not present at the time that help provide more accurate high readings.
NTSB has tested black helicopters of hawks of the same unit and found that the barometer weighting devices were less than 80 feet to 130 feet of height readings from the radio height scale, according to the rendering of the height scale test in the council.
The barometer height scale measures atmospheric pressure to determine the height, with a decrease in pressure with increased increases. Radio -height measuring devices wear radio waves from the ground or water surface to determine height.
The senior justified officials of Keelin Louis Al -Majlis told that she would not find a variation from 80 to 100 feet between different helicopters on a worrying helicopter because they are at low altitudes that will be more dependent on the height scale of radar more than the barometer height scale. Less than 500 feet (152 meters), Lewis said she would check both the knife and refer to it.
She said as long as the height scale records a 70 -foot height from the height published before taking off, the height scale is accurate under the review lists.
Army officials said that the contradiction ranges between 70 to 100 feet (from 21 to 30 meters) between the Black Hawk weighting devices within the acceptable range because the pilots are expected to maintain an overload or minus 100 feet.
The biggest anxiety is that the FAA roads approved around Reagan Airport, which included such small separation distances between helicopters and aircraft when the planes land.
“The fact that we have less than 500 feet of foot is a source of concern for me,” said Scott Rosengern, chief engineer in the office who runs the army -accompanying helicopter.
But Rosenger said that “if it is the property of one day”, it will immediately retire all the older Black Hawk models like those that participate in this incident and replace it with newer versions of the helicopters.
Road questions
Army officials and head of a local helicopter company in Medvak, which flying around Washington, told the council that they believe that air traffic monitors would never allow them to fly on the helicopter road involved in the accident at any time when a plane approaches the runway.
After the accident, the chief of the justified officer, David Van Vitch, said that he had spoken to many of his fellow pilots, and everyone had the same assumption that the control units would never allow them to fly through the runway path that the American plane approaches before the accident.
Quoting the numbers of the corridors, Van Vichen said that “100 % of the time I was on the fourth road and 33/15 was active”, which will be directed to keep it even after the plane landed or took off from this runway.
He ascended to his transfer.
Within two minutes before the collapse, one of the air traffic monitors was directing the airport traffic and helicopters in the region, a task that included speaking or receiving communications from several different aircraft, according to the study of the NTSB flight history.
Air traffic observer spoke to or received contacts from a Black Hawk helicopter, a plane that was taking off, an air force helicopter, a plane on the ground, a medical helicopter, and an internal flight was not the US Airlines that would be disrupted.
“All aircraft can hear the console, but helicopters can only hear other helicopters on their frequency and only other planes,” the report mentioned. “This led to the launch of a number of transport operations because helicopters and aircraft were not aware when the other was continuing.”
The transmission operations are what was not facilitated or prohibited due to other transportation operations. The NTSB report provides a list of 29 separate connections between the airport and other aircraft in nearly one minute and 57 seconds before the collision.
The air traffic control sound was previously revealed that the helicopter was telling the observer twice that they saw and avoided the plane. On Wednesday, officials raised the use of night vision glasses, which limit the field of seeing its wealthy as a worker.
The animation ended with a video of the monitoring that shows the helicopter that collides with the plane in a gunfunction.
Investigations have already shown that FAA failed to identify the 85th wild date near Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before, and that the army helicopters have routinely flew around the country’s capital with a major piece of specific equipment, known as the Ads-B Out.
Suggested changes
American Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, presented a legislation on Tuesday to ask all aircraft operators to use both models of ADS-B, or automatic automatic surveillance, and technology to broadcast aircraft website data to other aircraft and air traffic monitors. Most of the aircraft today are equipped with AdS-B Out equipment, but the airlines must add the most comprehensive ADS-B technology to their aircraft.
The legislation will cancel the exemption of ADS-B transportation for the Ministry of Defense aircraft.
Humndi said that her agency recommends this move for decades after several other incidents.
Transport Minister Sean Duffy said that while he wanted to discuss “some amendments”, the legislation is the “right approach”. He also suggested that the previous administration “was sleeping on the wheel” in the midst of dozens of mistakes in the airspace about the airspace in Washington.
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The Associated Press Book of Leah Academam, Bin Vinley and Rio Yamat contributed to this story.
