In March 2023, two US Army Black Hawk helicopters collided and collapsed in the field of a Kentucky farmer after a nocturnal evacuation training mission, killing nine members of the service.
This accident was part of a dozen fatal accidents during training missions of the Black Hawk army since 2014 which cost the lives of 47 members of the service and in April 2023, helped Pentagon officials temporarily soldier And to provide more training to all army aviators not involved in critical missions.
The deadly collision on Wednesday between a passenger airliner and a Black Hawk Army Black helicopter leading to night training over the Potomac river in Washington DC again sparked questions on training and safety measures the army.
Experts say that the management of Black Hawks is an extremely complex challenge. And federal legislators and residents of the region have raised concerns concerning the dangers of DC DC airspace of DC, which sees high volumes of commercial and military theft.
The piloting of a Black Hawk requires a “delicate balance”, said Michael McCormick, an associate professor at the embrye-rddle Aeronautical University in Florida and retirement vice-president of the Organization of Air Traffic of the Federal Administration American aviation. To control the helicopter, you need the use of hands and feet above the requirements of military training and active operations, he said.
“The soldiers go through the philosophy you train while you are fighting,” McCormick told Guardian. This means that training exercises take place at any time of day and night and in bad weather and that military equipment will experience more wear “than if you manage a civil helicopter during a visit to Manhattan” .
The army helicopter unit involved in the DC accident carried out annual training for its mission of “continuity of the government”, which implies the evacuation of high -level officials of the national capital in the event of an emergency , said Pete Hegseth.
“The army does dangerous things. He does routine things on (a) a regular basis, “said the defense secretary. “Tragically, last night, an error was made.”
The Lieutenant of the US Retired Army, the Darin Gaub pass, who piloted the Black Hawk helicopters for 22 years, told the Associated Press that there had been thousands of flights of military helicopters without problem For many years in airspace on DC.
Wednesday’s deadly flight was “the one who did not immediately come out of all these thousands,” he said. “It is therefore a testimony of the major procedures that are there, for the pilots that train there and how they work daily. It is essentially a very choreographed dance with very little room for the maneuver. »»
In addition to the use of instruments, helicopter pilots also fly in sight, using benchmarks and the ground below them to estimate their altitude and their position. This makes missions at low altitude at night even more complex.
Sometimes pilots will use night vision glasses to help visibility, but this can also cause complications. “Consider it as a diving mask. It essentially blocks your peripheral vision and you lose this field of vision, ”said McCormick, the former Federal Aviation official.
But even without them, said McCormick, drivers flying at lower altitudes may have trouble identifying other planes that can get lost in clusters of the city.
Black Hawk pilots who crashed in Kentucky in 2023 used night vision glasses, AP reported.
Hegseth said Thursday that the pilots involved in the DC accident had night vision glasses on board, but did not say if they were used when the accident occurred.
Since the collision on Wednesday evening, the corridor of the North -South helicopter that the Black Hawk army used – known as Route 4 – has been closed while officials continue to investigate the accident and the first stakeholders continue to search for leftovers and debris.
The army operates some 2,100 Black Hawk UH-60 helicopters manufactured by Sikorsky, a subsidiary of the aerospace and defense company Lockheed Martin. In 2021, the director of army security, Brig Gen Andrew Hilmes, told Army Times after two national black army guard crashed in Idaho and New York that Black Hawk had an “accident rate” lower than that of Chinook and Apache helicopters less common than Chinook and Apache helicopters, the least common and less common Chinook and Apache.
A preliminary FAA security report examined by the New York Times said that an air traffic controller had generally exercised by two people at the time of the accident. Investigators examine the data collected by the “black boxes” recovered on the accident site. A preliminary report is expected within 30 days, while the final report could take more than a year.
The 67 people aboard the regional jet of Bombardier CRJ operated by PSA Airlines, a subsidiary of American Airlines, and the army helicopter were killed. Among the passengers were 14 members of the American figure skating team which returned from a development camp in Wichita, Kansas.
The army has identified the helicopter crew like the Children Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28-year-old sergeant of Georgia; Chief adjutant 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, from Maryland; And a third member of the service whose name is not released at the request of their family.
Federal authorities are also investigating the fatal accident of a civilian medical jet in Philadelphia on Friday who killed the six passengers, including a six-year-old child and his family in Mexico who were in the United States for medical treatment. Nineteen people on the ground were also injured, according to Cherrelle Parker, the mayor of Philadelphia.