Sen. Tammy Duckworth is calling for patience as the NTSB and FAA investigate the cause of the tragic collision of a Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines flight Wednesday night, but she is also pursuing information about how it occurred.
She told CBS News’ Nikole Killion in an interview Thursday that she’s requested a transcript of the air traffic control instructions and responses from the pilots.
“What I did learn was that air traffic control did contact and speak with the helicopter crew twice, and they acknowledged the instructions twice,” Duckworth said. “I also am asking for the flight path of both aircraft up until the moment of the impact.”
The Illinois Democrat will have more insight than many of her colleagues — she is an Iraq War veteran and was a Black Hawk pilot before an RPG downed her helicopter during an Iraq deployment in 2004, costing Duckworth both of her legs and partial use of her right arm.
Duckworth says she’s certain that the soldiers who were piloting the Black Hawk Wednesday night were well trained because otherwise, “they wouldn’t be out there in this special airspace — the airspace around Washington, D.C.” She noted that they were in the SFRA —the Washington, D.C., metropolitan Special Flight Restricted Area. It’s a circular 30-nautical-mile area around Washington, D.C., which also surrounds the Flight-Restricted Zone, a smaller area encompassing Reagan National Airport.”
“You don’t get to fly in that without additional flight training,” Duckworth said.
The Illinois Democrat described what the crew would have been doing in the cockpit as the Black Hawk flew Wednesday night.
“The crew members would have split up the crew duties. One person would have been flying — actually, physically flying the aircraft, which takes, you know, all of your four limbs to do it,” she told Killion. “You’re controlling the direction of the aircraft with your right hand, the power that’s going into the engines with your left hand, you’re controlling the nose and the tail of the aircraft, with your two feet.” This pilot would have been trying to “stick to the route,” while the other pilot would be talking with air traffic control.
“Everybody’s looking outside the aircraft to try to find that other aircraft that you are near,” Duckworth said. “The crew chief in the back is also doing the same thing. They’re looking out of the aircraft as well, spotting any traffic that’s nearby, conveying that information. So, the crew would be talking to each other while also listening to the air traffic controller.”
At the same time, the crew would also be “listening to the air traffic controller talking to other aircraft, so that you have situational awareness of everything else that’s going on,” she said.
The helicopter would have had a ceiling, what Duckworth referred to as a “hard deck” in the restricted area where the Black Hawk was flying.
“They’re not allowed to go above 200 feet mean sea level,” she said. “So, they were flying pretty low above the Potomac River at the time, while looking up trying to spot out of this very busy night sky the landing airplane.”
Killion asked whether this was the kind of flight that would require night-vision goggles, or NVGs.
“My understanding is that they were not using NVGs,” Duckworth replied. She said that in an area where there are a lot of lights, they’re “not as useful a tool,” and are really more suited to “a combat situation in the dark.” Around the airport, “with that much ambient light, they were on visual flight rules, and they were operating well within the parameters for which they have been trained, and the aircraft was designed to operate in,” Duckworth said.
She said the helicopter would have had its lights on, so the plane would have been able to see it. But airplanes that are coming in for a landing have the right of way.
“They would have been looking towards the runway and landing on the runway,” she said. “That’s the job of the crew within the American Airlines Flight … they were on a short final to land.”
“I’m sure they would have been looking out, but they don’t have the same visibility in that aircraft — looking out those two little windows that they have — as the helicopter would have had, with plexiglass.” She explained that the helicopter crew “would have been basically sitting in a plexiglass bubble in the Black Hawk with plexiglass above your head, underneath your feet and out the two sides.”
“So the helicopter — they would have had a better visual command than the American Airlines Flight, which was landing, looking to the runway,” Duckworth said.
Asked about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s description of the collision as an “elevation” issue, and President Trump’s suggestion that the helicopter could have gone up or down to get out of the way of the plane, Duckworth responded, “We have to let NTSB and FAA do their jobs … Neither the president nor Mr. Hegseth are pilots, as far as I know, and I think that amateur speculation is not what is needed at this point.”
contributed to this report.
