What we know about Army helicopter, regional plane crash

Defense &
National Security

The Big Story

Investigations underway into military helicopter, plane crash

A UH-60 Black Hawk with three soldiers collided with American Eagle Flight 5342, a jet from Wichita, Kansas, carrying 60 passengers and four crew. Authorities believe there are no survivors of the crash over the Potomac River.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Army battalion involved in the Wednesday night crash would be grounded for 48 hours amid a review from the Army and Pentagon.

Hegseth said they should quickly conclude whether the Black Hawk was flying in the right corridor and altitude.
While he withheld names for the time being, Hegseth said the individuals involved were known and "fairly experienced," adding they were on an annual proficiency training flight and wearing night vision goggles.
"It's a tragedy, a horrible loss of life," said Hegseth, who named the ranks of the soldiers killed in the crash: a captain, staff sergeant and chief warrant officer.

The helicopter was operated by the Army's Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion, out of Davison Army Airfield in Fort Belvoir in Virginia.

The Army, Pentagon, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are all investigating the crash.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said investigators need time to verify information and could have a preliminary report within 30 days.

Maj. Gen. Trevor Bredenkamp, commander of the Joint Task Force in the National Capital Region and U.S. Army Military District of Washington, said in a statement they were also working closely with local authorities.

The military helicopter and American Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet crashed into each other just before 9 p.m. on Wednesday night as the plane was returning to Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va.

The collision was captured on video and shared widely on social media, showing a fiery explosion in the night sky.
Among the presumed dead include figure skaters, coaches and their family members returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita.

President Trump blamed the Biden administration for implementing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the FAA.

But he also faulted the helicopter for not maneuvering out of the way of the airline.
"You could have done a million different maneuvers," he said. "For some reason it just kept going and then made a slight turn at the very end, [which] was, by that time, it was too late."

Hegseth agreed at the White House briefing that "there was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DoD and Army level."

But there is little known about the events leading up to the crash, including the role of air traffic controllers in flagging traffic. The New York Times reported the controller on duty the night of the crash was handling the job of two people.

Brian Alexander, an aviation attorney at Kreindler & Kreindler and former military helicopter pilot, said in an email statement that “our whole air traffic control system has been blinking red, screaming at us that we've got it overloaded."

"The intense inadequacy of the staffing and the overwork of the controllers is palpable," he wrote.

A former Black Hawk helicopter crew chief described planes as difficult to see at night, while helicopter crews are often extremely busy and D.C. traffic can be noisy.

Martin Gottholm, a retired Black Hawk instructor, told ABC News that helicopters on the D.C. route are supposed to be 200 feet below plane traffic.
"Altitude deconfliction was the only safety, and it appears that one or more of the crews deviated from that altitude," he said.

Black Hawks, manufactured by Sikorsky, are the primary medium-lift and air assault helicopters for the Army, and debuted in 1979, with around 4,000 of them deployed across the world.

While there have been Black Hawk crashes in the past, including a collision between two of them in 2023, crash rates for the helicopters are relatively low compared to similar aircraft.

The military frequently conducts training flights around the nation's capitol, but Daniel Driscoll, Trump's nominee for secretary of the Army, said he was open to more scrutiny on training missions.

"We might need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk, and it may not be near an airport like Reagan," he told a Senate committee for his confirmation hearing Wednesday.

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