Army sec nominee questions whether military pilots should do flight training near Washington airport
Army secretary nominee Daniel Driscoll questioned whether Army helicopters should be flying training missions in one of the nation's most congested flight paths after Wednesday's tragic Washington, D.C.-area collision.
"It's an accident that seems to be preventable," Driscoll, an Army veteran, said during a Thursday confirmation hearing at the Armed Services Committee.
"There are appropriate times to take risk and inappropriate times to take risk," he said. "I think we need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be at an airport like Reagan."
Sixty-four people were aboard the American Airlines flight inbound from Wichita, Kan., which collided with an Army Sikorsky H-60 Black Hawk helicopter just before it was set to touch down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Authorities do not believe anyone survived.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed the three soldiers who were aboard the chopper were a "fairly experienced crew" doing a "required annual night evaluation."
"We anticipate that the investigation will quickly be able to determine whether the aircraft was in the quarter at the right altitude at the time of the incident," he said.
In a blunt Truth Social post, President Donald Trump called the crash "a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented."
"The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time," Trump wrote. "It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn't the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn't the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane."
Ronald Reagan Washington National, an airport owned by the federal government, has been the subject of debate for years. It has one of the shortest runways in the industry, yet Congress approved additional flight slots in 2024 as part of its Federal Aviation Administration bill. The flight from Wichita, Kan., had just been added in 2024.
The airport faces complicated aviation logistics near hyperprotected airspace near the Pentagon, White House and Capitol, but lawmakers have pushed to keep it open due to the convenience of its proximity to D.C.
"We're gonna have to work together to make sure that never happens again," Driscoll said in his Thursday confirmation hearing, promising to take a hard look at what training was needed, particularly amid the Army's increased use of its vertical lift aircraft.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked a helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight, according to air traffic control audio. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later, saying "PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ" — apparently telling the chopper to wait for the Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet to pass. There was no reply. Seconds after that, the aircraft collided.
Military helicopters regularly cross over the D.C.-area airport's flight paths to ferry senior government officials over the Potomac River into D.C. No senior officials were on board the downed Black Hawk, according to the Army.
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