Last night’s collision over the Potomac River between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet inbound to Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA), which left 67 people dead, was a combination of a failure by an over-taxed air traffic controller (ATC) and an error by the US Army helicopter pilot. We learned today that a job normally performed by two ATCs, was being handled by one person:

A preliminary report from the Federal Aviation Administration states that staffing at the Reagan National Airport’s air-traffic control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to the New York Times. The outlet reports that one controller was directing traffic for both helicopters as well as airplanes, work that is usually divided up among more than one person.

This was an accident waiting to happen. The communications with helicopters are on a different channel than those for fixed wing aircraft. Imagine you have two cell phones and are trying to talk to two different people at the same time. . . a recipe for chaos and, in this case, death.

The ATC reportedly told the helicopter pilot to look for the inbound passenger plane. What the hell? The ATC should have noted the helicopter’s altitude and ordered him or her to immediately descend. That did not happen.

But the ATC is not the only one culpable. The pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter was flying at least 200 feet above the standard altitude for a helicopter crossing the Potomac River. US military helicopters are supposed to fly at 200-feet altitude. This helicopter had traveled north from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, which is 15 miles south by air. The crew on board were performing a continuity of government exercise, which is a plan for evacuating members of the Executive branch and Congress in the event of an imminent nuclear war or other emergency. I do not know what the flight plan was, but a newly released video shows the helicopter flying south, apparently returning to base.

The helicopter was flying in a southeastern direction over the Potomac while the American Airline Regional jet, which was also flying in the same direction, was descending in preparation to land at DCA. How or why the helicopter pilot failed to see the commercial jet because it was above and in front of him until the moment of impact. We will have to wait for the black box to learn what the American Airlines pilots saw and said.

Andrei Martyanov and I discussed the crash and Ukraine — a different kind of disaster — with Ania:

BELOW: I also had my first conversation of 2025 with Michael Farris, who hosts Coffee and a Mike (sorry about the pesky ads!)