Former Black Hawk pilot says helicopter needed more crew, better directions
By Patrick Reilly
https://nypost.com/2025/01/29/us-news/washington-dc-plane-crash-live-updates/
Former Black Hawk pilot Elizabeth McCormick said the US Army chopper may have been left blinded while flying with three crew members instead of four.
“[Black Hawk pilots] only have visibility from the front 180 degrees. Your crew chiefs clear the back,” McCormack told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “If you only have one crew chief, how much can you clear? I think that was a major issue.”
“Three is a minimum crew for a Black Hawk helicopter,” she continued. “In my opinion, when you’re going into visual flight mode in a crowded airspace like this, it should be a minimum of four.”
She also said the crew may have misidentified the incoming American Airlines flight based on the air traffic controller’s vague warning.
Instead of providing specific information on where the Wichita airplane was, the controller only asked the military pilot if he saw the “CRJ” — the type of airplane — in the sky, without indicating precisely where it was.
“There were two aircraft in their field of view and only one was really obvious to them” — which McCormack believes was an aircraft taking off, seen in the footage before the crash.
The aircraft controller should have asked the chopper pilots, “Do you have the aircraft at 5 o’clock,” McCormack explained.
Bunch of BS, the helo didn’t back into the jet, it hit it in the starboard front quarter.