The U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines passenger jet above Reagan National Airport in Washington on Wednesday night was piloted by experienced aviators that typically fly VIP missions in busy air space, according to a retired Army chief warrant officer with over 30 years of flying experience, who serves in the Headquarters Department of the Army Aviation Directorate at the Pentagon.
The two aircraft crashed in a clear night sky right as the American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, with 64 people aboard, was approaching the runway flying over the Potomac River. The Black Hawk was on a training flight from Davison Army Airfield at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, carrying three service members.
The fuselage of the aircraft broke apart in three places and was discovered inverted in waist-deep water. The helicopter wreckage was found nearby. There were no survivors found. The recovery effort is ongoing.
Until the “black box” aboard both aircraft are recovered from the icy waters of the Potomac, the biggest questions about what happened remain unanswered.
“We really need to wait and allow the accident investigation to complete,” Jonathan Koziol told reporters Thursday over the phone from a hangar at Reagan Airport where he was helping to provide expertise as investigators begin their work. “Both aircraft will have recorders on board that will give us all of that information once we recover it, to give us the real truth on what those aircraft were doing. Up until now would just be speculation adding to the confusion.”
Koziol described the crew members, whose identities have yet to be released, as “very experienced.”
“The instructor pilot was flying the aircraft with a fellow pilot in command, so both of those crew members can manage that aircraft by themselves. It was an annual evaluation that is conducted by every Army aviator that they fly day and night,” he said, “Even the crew chief in the back has been in the unit for a very long time, very familiar with the area, very familiar with the routing structure. So we don’t see that at all as being any impact on what happened.”
Koziol confirmed that the instructor pilot in command of the aircraft had logged 1,000 flight hours and the other pilot had 500 hours under his belt.
“That’s normal,” he said.
During a press briefing Thursday, President Donald Trump, without evidence, blamed air traffic controllers, as well as the helicopter pilot and Democratic policies at federal agencies for Wednesday night’s collision.
The investigation into the crash is ongoing, and the cause of the collision is unknown.
The UH-60 flight from Belvoir appeared uneventful until what seemed like the last moment.
While Koziol had not seen the Army’s standard mission risk assessment for the specific flight, he said all factors would point to a low-risk classification for the trip.
The Black Hawk’s crew from the 12th Aviation Battalion stationed at Belvoir was conducting a routine aviator evaluation to ensure a pilot’s ability to maneuver throughout the airspace around the National Capital Region, or NCR, is sufficient to command the aircraft without an instructor for any other mission sets, Koziol explained.
With such a catastrophic event, conversations in the aftermath have led to questions about why the Army needs to conduct training events in congested airspace like the one around Reagan.
The battalion has a special mission in the NCR. One part of that is its VIP flight operations for senior U.S. leaders. Another is to support the Defense Department “if something really bad happens in this area,” Koziol said.
“We need to move our senior leaders so they need to be able to understand the environment, the air traffic, the route, to ensure the safe travel of our senior leaders throughout our government. That’s part of their training here and they’re really good at it.”
Additionally, the flight along the Potomac is “a relatively easy corridor to fly because you’re flying downcenter of the river and it’s very easily identifiable, especially at night,” Koziol said. Pilots fly the specific route on which the Black Hawk was flying on an almost daily basis.
The aircraft was also equipped with moving maps “so they would know exactly on the map and visually understand where they are with relation to the route,” he added.
There are also strict parameters on altitude the pilots would have been very familiar with and accustomed to adhering, Koziol shared. Aviators know not to climb higher than 200 feet above the ground on that route.
Koziol said it was not clear at what elevation the aircraft was flying; that’s something the black box will confirm.
While it has been reported the pilots had night vision goggles, it has not been determined if the pilot or crew were using them. According to Koziol, on a night flight down the Potomac, a pilot could comfortably fly unaided by goggles.
The Black Hawk also could not have operated in the NCR without a flight plan and contact with Air Traffic Control. ATC provides each aircraft with a specific, four-digit “squawk code” assigned to it, so ATC can control individual positions in and around the airspace and ensure aircraft also don’t fly in sensitive areas where they are not allowed, Koziol explained.
The collision — the worst U.S. aviation disaster since 2001 — follows a spate of Army aviation mishaps over the last several years that have resulted in Army leadership’s stand-down effort in 2023 to address the problem and a standup effort in 2024 to put a renewed emphasis on the culture of rigorous training and safety.
Last year was the most mishap-heavy year in Army aviation history since 2007, and 2023 was one the deadliest years for Army aviators since the Army withdrew from Iraq in 2011. For instance, in 2023, two Black Hawks collided midair in Kentucky, killing nine crew on board.
The Army, following its stand-down and review, determined its pilots and aviation warrant officers are significantly less experienced than they were during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
As a result, inexperienced crews were “out-driving their headlights, out-training the experience that was in their force at whatever level,” then-commander of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence, Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, told Defense News on a 2024 trip to Fort Novosel, Alabama, home of Army aviation training.
How last night’s collision might fit into the greater mishap trends of Army aviation remains to be determined.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
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