U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, chair of a Senate subcommittee on aviation safety, said it’s too soon to speculate what went wrong in the Washington, D.C., plane and helicopter crash that killed more than 60 people.
The former Army helicopter pilot said she’ll wait to read reports from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Safety Transportation Board before reaching any conclusions about the crash Wednesday night at Reagan National Airport.
“Now is not the time for speculation,” Duckworth said on a call with reporters on Thursday. “We need to get to the facts.”
The second-term Democratic senator was on another call with both federal agencies investigating Thursday morning. She asked for the air traffic control conversations and what kind of collision avoidance equipment the Black Hawk helicopter had.
The federal investigation may address two questions in particular, Duckworth said.
“Did one of the aircraft stray away, latitude, sideways in the airspace from the route that they were supposed to be on?” she said. “Was the Black Hawk higher than the 200 feet hard deck?”
The airplane coming from Wichita, Kansas, had been cleared to land. The helicopter had been instructed to pass behind it, Duckworth said.
Staffing in the air traffic control tower was “not normal” when the plane and helicopter collided, according to an FAA report obtained by the Associated Press.
Even after a hiring surge last year, there still weren't enough air traffic controllers to satisfy staffing plans drawn up by the FAA and the union that represents controllers. A series of near collisions, when two planes nearly hit, had also grabbed the attention of safety and aviation officials.
To prevent future crashes, Duckworth said lawmakers could consider legislation to make the busy airspace above the nation’s capital as safe as possible.
“What we will probably end up looking at as lawmakers is to see if there is an issue in terms of necessary equipment,” Duckworth said. “Whatever upgrades we need to continue to provide to do with the air traffic control system and making sure that, in particular, air traffic controllers … we have enough of them. That they have…everything that they need to do their jobs.”
