“They didn’t ask for it,” said Katie Murphy, safety culture program manager at the FAA. “They asked for ‘hotspots.’”
Frustrated, Homendy read a detailed report from a working group identifying the problems around Reagan National Airport and asking for action, while apparently using the wrong terms.
“Are we really going to say, ‘Whelp, they didn’t do enough?’” Homendy asked. “I don’t get it. Every sign was there that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that… but you guys are pointing out, ‘Well, our bureaucratic process, somebody should have brought it up at some other symposium.’ Are you kidding me? Sixty-seven people are dead.”
The helicopter route has since been closed, but NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said she doesn’t believe “anyone did the math until the NTSB did the math” to determine how close planes and helicopters were getting until after the crash.
There are technical aspects, like how the Black Hawks report incorrect altitudes while flying fast over the river, but this strikes me as the largest cause: nobody valued the controllers pleas sufficiently to do proper management of heli routes around the airspace.
And by nobody, that’s probably the FAA who had the responsibility of doing it.
Yep, this sounds like the main issue.
There are technical aspects, like how the Black Hawks report incorrect altitudes while flying fast over the river, but this strikes me as the largest cause: nobody valued the controllers pleas sufficiently to do proper management of heli routes around the airspace.
And by nobody, that’s probably the FAA who had the responsibility of doing it.
What could possibly go wrong, after all? They surely were making a big todo over nothing.