Air traffic controller ‘allowed to leave work early' shortly before crash
An air traffic controller was allowed to leave their post early on the night a helicopter collided with a passenger jet above Washington DC, a report has claimed.
The claim has put intense scrutiny on staffing levels at Ronald Reagan National Airport, where an American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, struck a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter at around 8.47pm local time on Wednesday.
Both aircraft plunged into the Potomac River, killing all 67 passengers and crew.
At the time of the collision, one controller was managing traffic for both helicopters and planes, a job normally handled by two people from 10am until 9.30pm, according to The New York Times.
The duties are typically combined at 9.30pm as traffic subsides into the night, but on Wednesday evening a supervisor reportedly clocked off early.
The NTSB, the government agency that investigates accidents in the US, has said it is too early to draw conclusions about the cause of the crash.
But the Federal Aviation Administration found that staffing levels in the air traffic control tower at the airport were 'not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic'.
A report from The Washington Post gave further details and said that two air traffic controllers were handling the jobs of four at the time of the crash.
Doubling up these roles can create 'challenges' because they use different radio frequencies.
The dangers of the crowded airspace above Washington were starkly illustrated by federal incident reports from the area which showed a similar near miss happened 24 hours before the crash on Wednesday.
On that occasion, another passenger jet coming in to land at Reagan Airport told air traffic control it had to abort because of a risk of colliding with a helicopter.
A week before the tragedy, on Jan 23, a flight from Charlotte, North Carolina had to do the same because of another helicopter.
Richard Hart, a passenger on one of the planes that had to abort its landing, told The Washington Post: 'They had to circle back around because there was a helicopter in the flight path.
'At the time I found it odd…Now I find it disturbingly tragic.'
During a White House press conference, Donald Trump, the US president, blamed DEI policies for the accident and suggested that incompetent air traffic controllers may also have been to blame.
It has also been reported that the army helicopter, carrying three 'fairly experienced' soldiers wearing night vision goggles, may have been flying higher than its approved path.
Mary Schiavo, an aviation analyst, told CNN that the helicopter pilot may have confused the lights of a different plane with the aircraft it collided with.
She said: 'We do see other lights in the area, particularly one bright light from another aircraft.
'The air traffic control tower asked the helicopter, 'Do you have the plane in sight?
'The first time I looked at that video I focused on the moving light, not the stationary light, which actually wasn't stationary. It's just a matter of vantage point. There's a concern that the helicopter pilot may have focused on the brighter, moving light and mistaken it for the plane he was supposed to track.'
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