Army Helicopter Might Have Missed Critical Instruction Before Midair Crash

National Transportation Safety Board officials said on Friday that they were investigating what appeared to be confused communications inside the cockpit of an Army Black Hawk helicopter moments before colliding with an American Airlines jet last month near Ronald Reagan National Airport.N.T.S.B.investigators are still trying to determine whether and how the miscommunications contributed to the collision that killed all 67 people in both aircraft over the Potomac River on Jan 29.

The American Airlines regional jet was arriving at National Airport from Wichita, Kan.The Black Hawk crew was carrying out a training mission so the pilot could perform a required annual evaluation flight.During a news conference, the investigative board’s chair, Jennifer Homendy, gave two instances of when the air traffic controller had given instructions to the Black Hawk three-person crew on how to weave through the busy National Airport airspace that the crew may not have completely received.The first instance, Ms.

Homendy said, involved the helicopter crew members’ possibly not hearing the air traffic controller inform them that the American Airlines jet was “circling” to switch runways for landing.She said investigators could hear that word when replaying the controllers’ communications but noticed it was missing from the Black Hawk’s cockpit voice recorder.The airplane, American Airlines Flight 5342, was making its final descent after having been transferred from Runway 1, a regular landing strip for commercial regional jets, to Runway 33, a strip used far less often.Later, Ms.

Homendy said, the air traffic controller told the Black Hawk helicopter to pass behind the plane that was seconds away from landing.But based on cockpit voice recorder data from the helicopter a “portion of the transmission that stated ‘pass behind the’ may not have been received by the Black Hawk crew,” Ms.

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