Army Black Hawk crew involved in DC crash made up of ‘top pilots’ with thousands of hours of experience

(WASHINGTON) — The three soldiers of the Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a jetliner on Wednesday night just off of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were all very experienced and not only had thousands of hours of flight time between them but were very familiar with the flight patterns above the Potomac River.

The Army has confirmed that all three soldiers were from Bravo Company, 12th Combat Aviation Battalion, based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about 20 miles south of Washington, D.C. The unit primarily transports senior U.S. military officials around the Washington area and beyond.

Recovery efforts for two of the soldiers in the Black Hawk in the frigid waters of the Potomac River continued Thursday, as did the search for the missing among the 64 aboard American Airlines Flight 5342. Also being sought are the plane’s data and cockpit voice recorder and the helicopter’s integrated data and voice recorder.

The helicopter flight along the Potomac was a routine nighttime qualification flight in which an instructor pilot tests a pilot’s skills at navigating the various routes through the Washington area that are key parts of his or her mission.

“It was a very experienced group,” said Jonathan Koziol, a retired Army chief warrant officer with more than 30 years experience in flying Army helicopters. Koziol has been attached to the Unified Command Post created at Reagan National Airport to coordinate efforts following the deadly collision.

Koziol confirmed to reporters on a conference call that the male instructor pilot had more than 1,000 hours of flight time, the female pilot who was commanding the flight at the time had more than 500 hours of flight time, and the crew chief was also said to have hundreds of hours of flight time.

Koziol said that given the short duration of most helicopter flights, the number of hours they had flown showed how experienced they were.

As part of their annual qualifications, all Army aviators are tested on their skills during daylight and nighttime, as well as instrument flying.

An Army flight safety investigative team from the Army’s Combat Readiness Center at Fort Novosel in Alabama has arrived in Washington to support the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation.

The evaluated pilot was in command of the flight, but if an emergency was to occur, the instructor would have taken control of the helicopter.

“Both pilots had flown this specific route before at night — this wasn’t something new to either one of them,” he said. “These are our top pilots doing this National Capital Region.”

The airspace around the nation’s capital is one of the busiest in the nation, but Koziol described the helicopter flight corridor above the Potomac as “a relatively easy corridor to fly because you’re flying down the center of the river, and it’s very easily identifiable, especially at night” because there aren’t a lot of lights.

Night vision goggles are available for Army aviators during nighttime missions, but they are not always necessary, said Koziol, who noted that he did not know if the pilots were wearing the goggles during Wednesday night’s flight.

“They are helpful at night, obviously, and in an urban environment, they’re still useful,” but he discounted the notion that the Washington’s bright lights may have affected the pilots, saying they were flying over the Potomac River, where “there are no lights, so that wouldn’t impact them.”

“They would have the peripheral vision of the lights on both sides of the shore, which actually helps them align and know which direction they’re going,” he added. “And it would help them see other aircraft.”

Furthermore, Army aviators are required to test their ability to fly “night unaided” without night vision goggles.

Koziol said the pilots’ situational awareness would have been aided by a moving tracking screen in the cockpit pinpointing their exact location, along with visual aids within their lines of sight.

“You have the lights on either side of you and, obviously, the rotating beacon on Reagan National to point out the airfield and all the traffic on it for them to know exactly where they’re at,” he said.

Army statistics show that last year saw the biggest spike in aviation mishaps in more than a decade following years of a downward trend.

There were 15 Class A mishaps in the Army in fiscal year 2024, the highest number since fiscal year 2014, when there were 16 mishaps. Last year’s increase came after a period of time when the number of mishaps had trended downward. For example, there were seven mishaps in fiscal year 2021, four in fiscal year 2022, nine in fiscal year 2023 and then the 15 in fiscal year 2024.

Last April, the Army held what’s called a “stand-up” where it reinforced safety training but continued flight operations — this followed a series of Apache helicopter incidents the previous month.

There had previously been a stand-down of Army aviation that followed the March 2023 collision of two Black Hawk helicopters at Fort Campbell that killed nine soldiers.

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