OAN Staff Abril Elfi
4:15 PM – Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Following an investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced that the U.S. Army chopper involved in the deadly mid-air collision in Washington, D.C., in January, was receiving “faulty altitude data,” resulting in the helicopter flying too high.
The helicopter crashed into an American Airlines regional flight landing at Reagan from Wichita, Kansas, on January 29th — while the soldiers were on a training assignment. The tragic crash resulted in the deaths of 64 people on the plane and three in the helicopter.
According to the NTSB, the barometric altimeters had underreported altitude by 80 to 130 feet, meaning the crew likely believed they were flying lower than they really were.
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“We are working diligently to make sure we know what occurred, how it occurred and to prevent it from ever happening again,” NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said, at the opening of the three-day hearing.
The first day of the hearing focused on the military chopper, its altimeter, performance, and navigation systems.
An animated video shown at the hearing illustrated that the Black Hawk flew above the permitted 200-foot altitude for nearly its entire route along the Potomac River.
“There is a possibility that what the crew saw was very different from what the true altitude was,” Homendy said.
However, Army officials confirmed that in the Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter, a 70–100 foot discrepancy between its altimeters is considered within the acceptable tolerance, because pilots are expected to maintain their altitude within ±100 feet of the assigned value.
Officials also maintained that the greater worry was how Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-approved routes surrounding Reagan National Airport had lacked insufficient vertical separation lengths between helicopters and planes during landing.
“In my opinion, the amount of clearance between the helicopter route and potentially the aircraft passing over top of it was concerning,” said Kylene Lewis, an Army helicopter test pilot.
During the hearing, the NTSB also released nearly 10,000 pages of evidence. The evidence included transcripts of the cockpit recordings from both American Airlines aircraft and the Army Black Hawk, and of air traffic control transmissions to all aircraft in the area. Audio excerpts of communications between air traffic controllers during the minutes before the crash, including a request to the American Airlines plane to shift to a different runway, were played at the hearing as well.
The transcript showed that as the pilots approached for landing, they had a visual on runway one when air traffic controllers asked them to take runway 33 instead.
The pilots also discussed the matter between themselves, with one saying: “I really don’t want to but I guess…” later adding, “it’s fine… tell ’em we’re fine, we’ll do three-three, we’ll do it.”
The NTSB will call on additional witnesses, including control‑tower personnel, FAA officials, and Army aviation leadership, in the next two days for the remainder of the three-day hearing.
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