The NTSB has declined to confirm statements by Sen. Ted Cruz that the crew of an Army Blackhawk helicopter had the aircraft's ADS-B Out transmitter "turned off" when it was in a collision with a PSA CRJ700 at Reagan National Airport in late January. The NTSB said in a media update on Saturday that it has recovered all the big pieces of wreckage from both aircraft and "retrieved additional avionics" from the Blackhawk but it's still not discussing the status of the ADS-B components at the time of the crash. "We don’t have any information to share on that at this time," and NTSB spokeswoman told AVweb. "The examination of key components for both aircraft is ongoing. No conclusions have been drawn at this time." Chair Jennifer Homendy said something similar on Friday but that was before the recovery of the wreckage was completed. The spokeswoman said there is no timeline set for discussing that information.
Listen to any preliminary NTSB press briefing and there are loads of questions they don’t answer. Why?
Because they don’t have the facts yet.
The NTSB is silent here for an obvious reason - they haven’t looked at the helicopter wreckage yet.
The helo was just pulled from the water and is still dripping wet. The NTSB likely has the following questions:
Was ADS-B Out installed?
Was it placarded INOP?
Was it turned on?
If turned on, would it have worked?
Was their some failure during flight, such as an A antenna broken prior to the accident?
The NTSB deals in facts. Unlike the general public and other “officials”, they don’t fill in the blanks with pet theories and political prejudices. Until they have thoroughly examined the pieces all they have is speculation. Let’s wait for the NTSB to give us the facts.
The NTSB deals in facts and if they can’t find them all they’ll make them up so in the end they have all the facts. This would be to easy for Elon to figure out. A waste of his time. Send Raf in, he’ll figure it out.
Since there was seemingly no ADSB information broadcasting at least one valid statement is that the Blackhawk helicopter was no broadcasting ADSB.
Now, it could be it was
1 - Not installed
2 - Not turned on
3 - Turned on and not working
4 - Jammed by aliens
But since we cannot know the exact altitude of the helo a moment before it hit a plane at 325 in thre air, I guess we’ll need the NTSB to confirm that the helicopter was at @ 325 ft when it hit the plane.
I’m cool with the NTSB saying no comment till they can examine the helicopter to determine 1 or 2 or 3, but it has been close to eye rolling that there is some “question” (mainly by the media) as to the height of the Blackhawk just before it hit…physics answered that one. it would certainly also determine it was at least 100 ft above it’s proscribed ceiling…but sure, let’s get a possible box to confirm it.
(yres, I’m cynical, because this has gone beyond just an aviation accident).
Could it be that the COG mission was operating under FAR 91.225 (f) (1)? There are plenty of DOD aircraft that fly sensitive missions daily in the DCA area.
I’m sure at least some of them are asking the question naively, but from an investigation point of view, I would want to determine what altitude it was reporting (both to the crew and the transponder output). If the answer to that is other than at the collision altitude, that says something different than if it did report the collision altitude.
My profuse thanks for this educational excursion.
I clearly had nooooo idea! 36 years in aviation and without this explanation, I’d have probably died dumb like a brick.
I know sarcasm and cynisism doesn’t come across in comments, but I wish to make perfectly clear, that NTSB protocol not to speculate or engage in storytelling after accidents was (and always has been) is - and will always be clearly understood.
My hope was that someone would send Musk in to end this longstanding tradition and satisfy the masses unlimited need to know everything yesterday.
Surely, Elon Musk is well qualified and able to fix it, quickly investigate the accident himself and then brief the President on who’s heads need to roll…
What extreme times we live in - when attacking and blaming someone becomes more important, than a minimum of human decency and style.
Just like the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, dealt with facts. If you look at the web page today though you see the note “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”
I am afraid, kind sir, you are coming across as a naive innocent.
I fly that airspace, FRZ and SFRA, out of VKX and you rarely see any military Helos, fast jets, or small aircraft on the screen, and you never see any aircraft from HMX -1.
What you will see are C-130s, C-17s, E-4s, VC-25s (AF-0ne when the boss on board) and a variety of other transport aircraft.
I think after this ADS-B on within any Mode-C vale will be manditory.
When the military is operating in joint use airspace they need to be operating with transponders on, ADSB out on, be on VHF comms, and adhere to Part 91 speed limits below 10,000’. All of this doesn’t guarantee that there won’t be another collision. However it is the accepted standard and gives everyone in the playing field an equal opportunity at safety. The military will fight the ADSB Out because they don’t want you to see their waste. Safety is somewhere around 5th on their priority list.
I’m not sure in this case, but in general it seems modern button-driven avionics controls that have replaced physical toggle switches have made post crash investigations harder. You can’t just look at position switches as much.