ATC Communications Between Jet, Army Black Hawk Face Scrutiny in D.C. Midair

On board the American Eagle Flight 5342 were 60 passengers and four crew en route from Wichita, Kansas, to KDCA. The helicopter, which was based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, had three service members on board and was on a training mission. Officials said no survivors are expected to be found.

Thursday morning authorities continued with a recovery mission in the Potomac River. The wreckage of the jet was found in three pieces on the bottom of the river. The helicopter was found upside down.

One of the factors investigators will likely be looking at is if the crew of the CRJ was aware of the helicopter. Military aircraft often utilize ultra high frequency (UHF) radios while civilian aircraft utilize very high frequency (VHF). The aircraft using disparate frequencies can hear ATC talking to other aircraft but will not hear the pilot's response.

"While the airspace around Reagan National Airport is complex, there are established procedures to separate commercial and military helicopter traffic that share the airspace," the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) said in a statement Thursday.

Bryce Banning, senior National Transportation Safety Board investigator leading the investigation, addressed the complexity in a press conference Thursday. "We've been getting briefed on helicopter procedures. In D.C. it is kind of a unique environment and we have been getting briefed more and more by the FAA," Banning said. "I am not an air traffic control specialist but there are actually helicopter zones if you will, or tracks, and this one was transiting I believe from track one to four as part of their normal procedure."

Helicopters also have their own radio frequency in Washington, according to David Wartofsky, a helicopter pilot and owner/operator of Potomac Airfield (KVKX).

Helicopters operating in the crowded Washington, D.C., airspace have published routes they fly and operate on a radio frequency designated just for helicopter operations, Wartofsky said. If another aircraft—an airliner, for example—is not monitoring that frequency, it would not know it was close to a helicopter, which are usually well below them.

According to Wartofsky, ATC can monitor multiple frequencies and flights while communicating with several pilots, but you often don't hear the "other side" of the conversation. This can give the pilot a false sense of security, thinking they are not in crowded airspace because they don't hear the other pilot's transmissions, he said.

"The helicopter routes are predefined and at a very low altitude—for example, at or below 200 feet above the surface.” Wartofsky said. “That particular route the helicopter was on intersects with the approach to Runway 33. The separate frequency for helicopter operations is a necessity, according to Wartofsky, because helicopter operations are so different from fixed wing. 

A key piece of evidence will likely be a video of the collision caught on the EarthCam camera located near the Kennedy Center. In the video, an aircraft is seen taking off and climbing away from the airport, while the accident CRJ approached the airport. The video shows the helicopter approaching the CRJ from the right before the lights merge and there is a fireball.

"You hear the controller warning the helicopter about the regional jet and telling him to pass behind it," Wartofsky said. "The helicopter pilot acknowledged the visual separation and the instruction to pass behind the regional jet, but he may have been looking at the wrong airplane. How do you tell one regional jet from another? If the Black Hawk pilot didn't know about the other one, he would have not known to ask."

This is a developing story.