WASHINGTON, D.C. – A former investigator with the NTSB said officials will be looking several factors as part of their investigation into the mid-air collision between a commercial plane and military helicopter near Washington, D.C. Wednesday night.
“Investigate, find out what happened, understand why it happened and paramount is to prevent reoccurrences,” said Dr. Alan Diehl, a former NTSB investigator. Dr. Diehl has also worked with the FAA and Air Force to help make recommendations for airline safety. He describes the process of what investigators are doing as they look at the collision between the American Airlines plane and a military Blackhawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA).
“They’re also going to correlate the radar data with the flight data and the video data so they really know they have a good understanding about what happened and then start addressing why it happened,” said Dr. Diehl. “But what they’ll want to do is called an optometric study. At the NTSB, they have an out of cockpit views of virtually every aircraft and they go through second by second what the pilot in the left seat, the pilot in the right seat could’ve seen now that they know the geometry of the flight: was there any structure- sometimes we find a target they think they see is actually hidden behind a pillar if you will like a doorpost or a piece of metal in the center of the windshields. Rachel, all of that stuff has to be correlated and they may as well be- and again I’m speculating here, they were looking at another airline that was behind the American airliner and the American airliner may have been hidden behind a door post in that Blackhawk. Again this is the kind of thing the NTSB has to document.”
On Thursday, the NTSB announced they recovered the Blackbox from the American Airlines plane. Dr. Diehl said one of the most critical pieces they will look at is the Blackbox from the helicopter, particularly the voice recording.
“You’ve got three sets of eyes, they’re all on the interphone talking to each other, that will be very critical to see if anyone aboard that crew thought things were not going right,” said Dr. Diehl. “I often say of the Blackboxes: the data recorder tells you what happened, the voice recorder usually tells you why it happens.”
Dr. Diehl also adds there will be several other factors investigators will look into: performing autopsies on the pilots, looking at the night vision goggles for the helicopter crew, air traffic control, mechanical components and much more.
