January 30, 2025
That is the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board talking this afternoon about the investigation into what caused an army black hawk helicopter to collide with a commercial passenger jet on approach to land at Reagan National airport in Washington DC last night killing 67 people.
I know for lots of folks who are new to aviation investigations that statement is not what you want to hear. You want answers now. You want to know why it happened now… how it happened now… and some want to start casting blame right now too.
Here’s what I’m going to do. What I always do. Which is follow the facts. You know that I do not share opinions or speculation on this page. Go somewhere else if that’s what you want. But for those of you who don’t understand how these investigations work, and can’t understand why things take so long, I hope that this video can be helpful.
So I’m going to start there. With the investigation now underway into what exactly happened last night and why. The group in charge of that investigation is the NTSB. The national transportation safety board. The NTSB is an independent body within the department of transportation that is in charge of investigating all kinds of aviation, highway, marine, pipeline and railroad incidents. They investigate things like a plane landing on a freeway because of mechanical issues and major incidents like this one in DC– and like others you may be familiar with – that train derailment in Ohio and the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant in California.
Back in 1967 when congress passed a law creating the department of transportation and the NTSB they knew – the NTSB was going to need to be independent because it was going to be the NTSB’s responsibility to investigate incidents that could point out deficiencies within the department of transportations. The leadership of the NTSB is made up of five board members each nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate to serve a five year term. The president designates one of those board members to serve as chairman for a three-year term. The chairman requires separate senate confirmation. The current chairman is the woman you heard from at the beginning of this story. Jennifer Homendy. She was nominated by President Biden to be the chairman and confirmed unanimously by the senate in 2021. She was re-nominated as chairman and unanimously confirmed by the senate in 2024. That means her chairmanship term will expire in 2027. It’s important for you to understand chairman Homendy was originally nominated to sit on the board by president Trump in 2018. She was his pick.
Ok – now to the investigation. I know a lot has been made today about what the president of the United States said when he offered his opinions about what happened and who was to blame before the investigation really even got underway. He talked about the plane and the helicopter being at the same altitude, at one point he blamed the army pilot of the helicopter, within the same breath he suggested the air traffic controllers at Reagan National airport were not smart enough, then blamed DEI policies and President Obama and Biden and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg. Let me be very clear – there is no evidence of any of that and when he was asked what evidence he had to back up his opinions– he said this.
Again – that’s his opinion. There is no evidence to back that up. And when asked about the president’s opinions – and whether any of them played a role in last night’s tragedy the NTSB said this.
The NTSB members confirmed – since they are headquartered in Washington DC just a few miles away from the crash site, they were on scene last night during the initial search and rescue operation. They said they did not begin any of their investigative work until today because they did not want to get in the way of any potential effort to save people. But they were able to interview witnesses. And now that that rescue has turned into a recovery effort, they are able to start pulling wreckage and evidence from the water. All of that will be brought back to their headquarters and will be meticulously put back together so that they can definitively figure out what happened and why. And while it doesn’t come immediately – the NTSB always gets answers.
We will get the preliminary report in 30 says, but we will get the final answers once the final report is released in the next 12 to 24 months.
More from the NTSB here.
More from President Trump’s briefing here.
