Politics

Potomac plane crash: the causes are looking for before the guilty

New details on the accident emerge It happened on January 29th between a regional acrj-700 jet in service with American Airlines and a Sikorsky UH-60lblack Hawk army helicopter in service such as “Pat-25”. First of all that in this story there is already something that we Italians should learn: instead of immediately looking for the faults and responsibilities, ending up giving the policy and conditioning justice, in the USA the causes and motivations are sought first which led to the accident and, if possible, to remedy it so that it can no longer happen. Even if the change of administration to the White House and the great emotional impact caused by the tragic event (67 victims), is accelerating the times in the commission of inquiry formed by the NTSB (Department for Transport Security) which while we write authorized the recovery of the jet fuselage from the Potomac river, declaring the preliminary surveys concluded. But it is known that the USA are the “Aviation Nation” and already in the press conference on Saturday 1st February some innovations had been communicated from reading the flight data recorder and from that of the conversations in the CRJ-700 cabin. It is clear that in the instant of the impact, the altimeter detected a share of 325 feet from the ground (99 meters) and that the system of transmission and receipt of the position and surrounding trafficking (ADS-B) presented the same data on the screen of the controller, with a margin of uncertainty of 25 feet (7.6 m). In the same instant, the helicopter was detected at the height of 200 feet, or the maximum one allowed in the corridor of aerial space defined as “route 1” e Reserved for those trafficking, which however is located above the east shore of the river and not above the water where the collision took place.

Also because the bow and quota data detected by the earth’s radar systems are less reliable of those from the on -board recorders, where it was noted that the recorder of the sounds in the cabin, a second before the devastating impact recorded a “verbal reaction” while the alarm of the “Traffic, Traffic” and a alarm was heard Short command to dart. Regarding the situation in the control tower, the operator in charge of take -offs and landings was only one, but those present at that moment were five employed in various tasks on which they are investigating, in particular on why who was in charge of décolles and landing has The exploration of the helicopter is accepted and authorized even if he did not clear his trajectory, or because he did not give the Black Hawk driver a vector (direction) to the left to remove him from the jet trajectory. Meanwhile, the army has communicated that the pilot in command on the helicopter was Captain Rebecca Lobach (26 years and 450 hours of flight), with on his left a non -commissioned officer expert of thirty -nine years and, behind these, another non -commissioned officer of 28 years.

For them, a possible error of regulating altimeters is to be clarified of about one hundred feet (30 meters), setting the pressure of 29.91 and not 29.81 as required. Finally, on the helicopter, Captain Lobach wore the night viewers and it is known that in areas of intense urbanization they create flashes such as to prevent, and not to favor, the recognition of traffic in flight. “Investigators are working to synchronize the data of the flight data recorder and the voice recorder of the piloting cabin of both planes, also with active radio communications and radar data to obtain a detailed chronology,” said the NTSB In an update published yesterday, February 3, explaining “the Black Hawk flight recorder does not have the temporal reference, so the technicians will have to recreate it manually, which takes time.” In the meantime, both the NTSB agency, and the Navy Supervisor of Salvage (the office that deals with recoveries), have deployed a crane mounted on the Potomac mounted on Chiatta to recover the largest pieces of the wrecks, while the fbi divers are sifting The low seabed of the river in search of smaller debris and then bring everything within one of the hangars present on the Reagan National Airport. of the airplane.