The US government has acknowledged that the actions of an air traffic controller and an army helicopter pilot played a role in the tragic Washington DC plane crash that killed 67 people in January.
A group of elite figure skaters, parents and coaches attending the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, on January 29 were among those who lost their lives when an American Airlines flight collided with a Black Hawk helicopter.
There were no survivors of the collision, which sent both the commercial plane and the military helicopter crashing into the cold Potomac River. It was the deadliest plane crash on American soil in more than two decades.
The official response to the initial lawsuit filed by one of the victims’ families stated that the government was partially liable for the crash because air traffic controllers had violated scene separation procedures that night. Also, the filing said, the Army helicopter pilots’ failure to maintain vigilance to see and avoid the airline jet makes the government liable.
But the filing suggested that others, including jet and airline pilots, may have played a role. The lawsuit also blamed American Airlines and its regional partner, PSA Airlines, for their role in the crash, but those airlines have petitioned for dismissal.
And the government denied that any air traffic controllers or officials of the Federal Aviation Administration or the military were negligent.
The US government has acknowledged that the actions of an air traffic controller and an Army helicopter pilot played a role in January’s tragic Washington DC plane crash.
The 67 killed included skater Spencer Lane (left) and members of the figure skating group, including coaches Vadim Naumov (right) and Evgeniya Shishkova (second from right).
At least 28 bodies were pulled from the icy waters of the Potomac River after it collided with an American Airlines regional jet as the helicopter was landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport in northern Virginia, across the river from Washington, DC, officials said. The plane was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members and the helicopter was carrying three soldiers.
Robert Clifford, one of the lawyers for the family of victim Casey Crafton, said that the government accepted ‘the military’s responsibility for the unnecessary loss of life’ and the FAA’s failure to follow air traffic control procedures, while ‘rightly’ acknowledging others – American Airlines and PSA Airlines – also contributed to the deaths.
“The families of the victims are deeply saddened and deeply saddened by this tragic loss of life,” he said.
“The United States acknowledges that it had a duty of care to Plaintiff, which it breached, causing the tragic accident,” government lawyers said in the filing.
An American spokesperson declined to comment on the filing, but in the airline’s motion to dismiss, American said the plaintiffs’ appropriate legal recourse is not against American. It is against the United States government. Therefore, the court should dismiss the American from this case. The airline said that since the crash it has focused on assisting the families of the victims.
The lawsuit accused the airlines of not doing enough to reduce the risk of flying so close to helicopters around Washington, DC, and of not giving their pilots adequate training to handle it.
The National Transportation Safety Board will release its report on the cause of the crash early next year, but investigators have already highlighted several contributing factors, including the helicopter flying 78 feet higher (24 m) than the 200-foot (61-meter) limit, which allows only a very small clearance between planes landing on Reagan’s secondary runway and helicopters passing below. Additionally, the NTSB said, the FAA failed to recognize hazards around the busy airport despite 85 near misses in the three years before the accident.
The tragedy occurred when an American Airlines plane collided mid-air with a Black Hawk helicopter on January 29.
Rescue boats search for survivors in the waters of the Potomac River after a deadly plane crash
The government acknowledged in its filing that the United States had ‘been informed of certain incidents between its Army-operated Black Hawk helicopters and aircraft traffic passing through helicopter routes 1 and 4 around Washington.’
Before the collision, the controller asked the helicopter pilots twice if they could see the jet, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their eyes to maintain distance. FAA officials admitted at an NTSB investigative hearing that the Reagan’s controllers had become overly reliant on the use of visual separation. The agency has ended this practice.
Witnesses told the NTSB that they had serious questions about how well the helicopter crew, wearing night vision goggles, could see the plane and whether the pilots were looking in the right place.
Investigators have said that the helicopter pilots may not have realized how high they were because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 m) lower than the altitude recorded by the flight data recorder.
The crash victims included a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches, who had recently arrived to compete in a competition in Wichita, Kansas, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area.
Aviation litigation expert witness, retired pilot Richard J. Levy said it was unusual for the government to accept some responsibility less than a year after the accident, especially given the amount of money that may have been involved in the case.
“If the controller or the military had any doubts about what they did, they would not have done it,” Levy said.
