As one who held a private pilot license some years ago, I have to comment on the crash involving an Army helicopter and the American Airlines passenger plane. The more information that comes out, the more it is clear the Army helicopter pilot and crew are totally to blame for the 67 souls killed that night.
The helicopter was flying above the allowed height of 200 feet and the pilot was wearing night vision goggles that significantly reduces the field of vision. I don’t know if all of the helicopter crew were wearing such goggles.
The passenger plane was on final approach for a landing at Washington National airport. Its runway was originally to be runway 33, but the air traffic controllers asked the pilot to use runway 1 instead. This meant an adjustment left and then right had to be made by the airliner. Flaps and landing gear were down. The plane was going slow for the landing. No doubt the airline crew was concentrating on the coming landing ahead of them really just seconds away. The plane was on a perfect path to land when it was slammed in its side by the helicopter. The result was explosion and crash into the Potomac River. All aboard both the airliner and helicopter were dead.
We know now that one air traffic controller was doing the job of two. The controller had responsibility for both the helicopter and the airliner. A second controller was allowed to leave the tower early which created the dual job requirement. But the controller did alert the helicopter pilot at least twice about the airliner. The helicopter pilot made no change in course with a catastrophic consequence. We learned, too, that the tower was significantly under staffed with 19 present when full staff is 30. This with an airport that has a number of take offs and/or landings numbering about 800 per day; and with shorter than optimal runway lengths.
On top of that, we learned that military helicopters are all over the place in the same air space at the same time as airliners. Any baboon would be able to tell this was a recipe for disaster. It came. No such mix is safe regardless of weather conditions which reportedly were clear on crash evening.
Lessons: the volume of landings/takeoffs allowed at Washington National should always reflect the number of air traffic controllers on duty. The force was 2/3 rds of what it should have been that night. This should have meant a maximum of 533 take offs/landings that day, not 800. Who knows if this would have made the difference, but spacing of events would have been different.
Allegedly, the Army was and always does practice along the Potomac River for a “continuity of government” exercise. This is practice for an emergency event in Washington DC when critical government officials must be transported out of the area. Understandable, but this cannot be combined with normal airline traffic flow in the same area; period. This reason must have priority over normal airline traffic. The answer; stop airline use of Washington National airport for nearly all passenger flights.
There is a huge airport about 26 miles west of downtown Washington D.C.. It is Washington Dulles International airport. Dulles occupies 13,000 acres or just over 20 square miles of land. It is the fourth largest airport in the USA in terms of land area. The result: it is safe. It does not have cramped space, short runways, and all sorts of military helicopter activity. Already, there are multiple ways to get from Dulles to downtown Washington DC; but more options could be developed.
The worst happened. It seems many have warned of this possibility. No one listened.