According to a new report, the captain of the Black Hawk aircraft that collided with an American Airlines aircraft in Washington, D.C., in January, the captain ignored guidance from air traffic controllers to modify direction just before the fatal collision.
Capt. Rachel Lobach, the captain of the Black Hawk that caused the lethal incident in January that claimed the lives of 67 people, was going through her annual flight evaluation at the time of the collision. The report noted that Lobach’s flight professor at the time of the affair was Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves.
Air traffic controllers warned the Black Hawk helicopter that a customer plane was close, according to The New York Times. The Black Hawk helicopter requested permission to fly by “visual separation,” which allows airplane to fly based on separate studies rather than following heat customers control’s guidelines, while Lobach and Eaves acknowledged the information.
The Black Hawk was only 15 hours away from striking a cross-country flight. Captain Lobach was finally turned the attention of Warrant Officer Eaves. He claimed in the statement that he thought air traffic control wanted them to make a left turn toward the south river bank. ” Turning left would have made more room between the plane and Flight 5342, which was heading for Runway 33 at a height of about 300 feet. She continued to go “left.”
Lobach worked in the Army from July 2019 to January 2025, according to a media release from the U.S. Army, and he had flown more than 450 days before the fatal incident in January. Additionally, the Army confirmed that Lobach worked for the former president’s leadership as a sociable secretary for the White House.
The Black Hawk captain apparently omitted the instructions of air traffic controllers, according to The New York Post, and the helicopter’s systems, which would have enabled air traffic controllers to observe the Black Hawk’s movements, was disabled while the army was conducting training.
Brig. According to The New York Post, Gen. Matthew Braman, chairman of aircraft for the Army, several factors contributed to the dangerous collision between the Black Hawk helicopter and the customer plane.
In a statement obtained by The New York Post, Braman said,” I think what we’ll get in the end is that there were a lot of things that, had any one of them changed, it could have very also changed the outcome of that evening.”
