Broken altimeter — and a pilot with vertigo.
DEI all over the place.
A female pilot who had spent an inordinate amount of time in the White House, who had a paucity of flight hours to be flying in such a dangerous and highly constrained corridor.
There have been issues involving that airspace for decades.
Yet those problems have never been addressed.
Could it be because a lot of pols and bureaucrats like to travel by helicopter and don’t want anything done because it would inconvenience them...?
Additional thoughts —
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” he tells the story of a jetliner that crashed into a mountain. IIRC it was a Korean flight crew. The co-pilot pointed out the low altitude and the danger. The senior pilot didn’t want to hear it. As Gladwell explains, Korea is a hierarchical society. Co-pilots don’t tell pilots what to do. So the co-pilot shut up and they crashed into a mountain. This (thank goodness) led to a cultural change in some countries at least in terms of pilot training (ex. “Listen to your crew”)
DEI has made the US one of those hierarchical societies. Men don’t correct women. Whites don’t correct blacks. Normal people don’t correct homosexuals. There is a hierarchical order, and you need to know your place before you speak to your betters.
The flight instructor in the helicopter should have taken the controls from the DEI woman. But he knew his place and just let her crash two planes.
And night vision goggles.
Completely preventable.
Once again, DEI=DIE.
The Sikorsky Blackhawkk UH-60L version has three altimeters: barometric pressure, radio (radar), and GPS. They did a test of three helos from the Army unit simultaneously flying in formation and the three barometric pressure altimeters did not agree on altitude, but there WAS good agreement on all three radio altimeters. The barometric altimeters all read 80-100 feet BELOW the radio altimeter. The helo was flying at 325 feet whereas the permissible helo ceiling on that route is 200 feet.
The Sikorsky Blackhawkk UH-60M version (the "Mike" version) has improved altimeters. Scott Rosengren of U.S. Army said he would urge that all "Lima" (i.e., L version) be taken out of service and replaced with "Mike" version.
Jeff Ostroff breaks it all down in his excellent video: DC Plane Crash NTSB UPDATE: Shocking New Details, Photos, Video AA 5342