The military helicopter that collided with a regional stream near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in an accident that killed the 67 people aboard both airplanes was a black HAH-60 hawk, considered the “battle horse” of the aviation of the aviation of the aviation of the aviation of the army.
The helicopter is a “Tactical Utility” aircraft, used for everything, from aerial assault to help operations, in which the army says that it has trusted each important operation throughout the world for more than four decades.
Entted for the first time in the army in 1979, the plane is generally considered safe and has a solid history of reliability and survival in combat and transport missions, said Timothy A. Lorenger, an aviation lawyer and former aircraft mechanics.
Sikorsky, a subsidiary of the Aerospace and Defense Giant Lockheed-Martin, says he has built more than 5,000 of the helicopters for 36 countries.
The army has said that he expects the plane to be a key part of its fleet for the next three decades.
The Black Hawk collided with American Eagle Flight 5342 was from Bravo Company, 12th aviation battalion, outside the Davison Army airfield in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and it was in a training mission, the army said.
Military officers described the three soldiers on the plane as a very experienced team that included an instructor pilot with more than 1,000 flight hours.
The officials said the training mission was an annual routine evaluation of the pilot’s ability to fly at night. The crew was very aware of the route and the rules in the airspace around the airport, officials said.
The cause of the collision is still clear and is being investigated by the National Board of Transportation Security.
Speaking to MSNBC, Lieutenant Retired Colonel from the Army, Darin Gaub, said the collision video seemed to show that the helicopter did not seem Having known that the passenger plane was on his way.
He added that the training mission had less crew chiefs than normal to scan the sky in search of potential hazards. While such missions generally have three, he said, on Wednesday he had one.
“That is a fact,” he said. “It can be related to the future. It may not. But it reduces the crew capacity to identify a plane in flight at night.”
Almost two years ago, two Black Hawk helicopters from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, collided during a training exercise, killing the nine soldiers aboard them.
That clash and a second fatal collision that involved two Apache helicopters in Alaska led the army to base all aviation, except flights in critical missions.
The Army Cabinet Chief James McConville said the support was necessary to ensure that the army was doing everything possible to prevent accidents.
A review of fatal incidents involving Black Hawk helicopters published by Military.com after the collision in Kentucky discovered that 60 people had died in training incidents during the previous decade.
The review concluded that although that number may seem high, the Black Hawks represent the least amount of mortal incidents in relation to the hours flew in the army fleet and are involved in many less fatal incidents than other helicopters, including AH-64 Apache and Chok Chok.
