RICHMOND, Va. — As a flight from Kansas approached Reagan National Airport Wednesday night, air traffic control asked the pilots if they could change course and land on a different runway.
The pilots said yes and changed course.
At the same time, air traffic control checked in with a military helicopter that was crossing through the airspace and asked if they saw the airplane.
The pilot of the helicopter responded that they did have visual separation, meaning he had the airplane in his line of vision and wouldn’t get too close.
As the aircraft continued forward, the air traffic controller checked in once again with the helicopter to confirm they saw the airplane and tell them to pass behind the airplane.
Seconds later, the crash occurred.
Watch: No survivors in deadly mid-air collision, officials say
Ella Atkins, Professor and head of the Kevin T. Crawford Aerospace and Ocean Engineering Department at Virginia Tech, said she believes the pilot of the helicopter must not have actually seen the airplane.
“They were saying up until the final seconds that they had visual separation, and it was not long after that they hit,” Atkins said.
Atkins said a former Ph.D. student of hers who flew helicopters in the military researched how difficult it is for helicopter pilots to identify vertical structures that have very large profiles like this airplane.
“Why is a pilot of a helicopter allowed to say I am going to manually do this?” CBS 6 reporter Melissa Hipolit asked Atkins.
“I think it’s legacy," she replied. "I think this accident may cause the reactive behavior we typically see to push for investigating first, how safe it is to visually separate. I think what they’re going to find is it’s not very safe."
Captain Ross Aimer, the CEO of Aero Consulting, is retired from United Airlines and has 60 years of experience flying planes. He said Reagan National’s airspace is extremely busy with a high number of planes constantly landing and taking off from an airport with short runways that were not designed for modern times.
While that is happening, helicopters are crisscrossing the airspace.
These can be military helicopters like the one involved in the crash, police helicopters, and even news helicopters.
He compared the helicopters to humans on bicycles trying to cross a busy freeway.
“Why hasn’t anything been done about this in the past? Why was this allowed to happen where you have this set up with so many planes and crisscrossing helicopters?” Hipolit asked Captain Aimer.
"We rely on the excellence of the air traffic controls and pilots that commit miracles every day, and we depend on some technology,” Aimer replied. “You ask why we allow that? If we don’t, everything goes to a stop. The only way you could take care of it is to stop all the traffic, which we can’t."
Captain Aimer said he was not surprised to hear about the crash. He said he has been warning about something like this happening for years because the air traffic system is so busy, it’s to the point of breaking.
“You have to follow this river, criss-cross while you are swatting gnats, which are the helicopters. It’s just crazy,” Aimer said about landing at Reagan National.
Atkins said we have the technology to avoid crashes like this, and she hopes this incident will lead to new technology being transitioned into all aircraft, including helicopters.
“I’m talking about potentially having automation that steers your aircraft away from another one even if the pilot is not situationally aware,” Atkins said.
She also said this crash could lead to a change in the use of visual separation, and perhaps it won’t be allowed to be used as frequently.
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