Blackhawk army helicopter that collided with an American eagle flight on the Potomac River At the end of last month, he flew with a security system off, said Senator Ted Cruz on Thursday to journalists after a closed door conference of the Federal Transport Security Board and the National Transport Administration.
The 67 people on both planes were killed When they collided near the Reagan National Airport near Washington, DC
Cruz, a Texas Republican, presides over the Senate Committee, which has supervision of the airline industry.
He said that senators were told that the helicopter had its dependent automatic surveillance surveillance system (ADS-B). Military aircraft can fly with that system off.
ADS-B provides detailed granular information to track the aircraft locations. The Blackhawk had a transponder, so it would have appeared on the radar and was providing flight data, although the ADS-B is much more precise.
“Unless there was a convincing national security reason to turn it off, that does not seem justified and, in this case, this was a training mission, so there was no national security reason for ADS-B to be off,” Cruz said to journalists.
Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-il), a former army helicopter pilot, also pointed out the questions surrounding the security system.
“What we don’t know … if the helicopter really had its adsp-out activated. It seems that it could not have been activated, but the army was very clear that the equipment was really installed in the aircraft.”
Even so, the president of NTSB, Jennifer Homendy, told journalists that agency’s researchers had not confirmed if the helicopter was equipped with technology.
“We don’t know at this time,” said Homandy before describing the mission of the helicopter team. “This was an annual walk of annual check of combined night vision glasses.”
ADS-B data are one of the fed data flows to air traffic controls together with the central radar and approach radar. It fuses on a single screen on the controllers screens.
Even without ADS-B data, the controller involved had a track in the helicopter that showed it at an altitude of 300 feet. The controller was in contact with the Black Hawk, which indicated that he could see the plane and maintain the separation.
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) questioned last week why FAA has allowed military flights with the ADS-B system off.
The NTSB will seek to determine if the system was present and activated, and if not, why not, and if its use could have helped to avoid the accident, although it seems that there were enough data that the danger of the situation should have been clear, yet.
contributed to this report.
Kris van Cleave
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