DENVER — As an investigation into the deadly midair collision near Washington, D.C. continues, Denver7 sat down with U.S. Representative Gabe Evans, a former Army and National Guard Black Hawk helicopter pilot, for his insight into the potential cause.
64 people onboard American Airlines Flight 5342 and three soldiers onboard the military helicopter were killed when the collision happened just before 9 p.m. ET as the regional jet was on final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Colorado Springs Area
U.S. Figure Skating, based in Colo., mourns members killed in mid-air collision
Evans, who represents Colorado's 8th Congressional District, said it is possible the Black Hawk crew was looking at the wrong passenger jet when it confirmed to air traffic control that it did see the American Airlines passenger jet.
"Your field of vision under night vision goggles is about 1/15th of what it is right now. And you also lose a little bit of depth perception. So, it's entirely possible even though the Black Hawk was talking to air traffic control, what you said, they might have misidentified the accompanying traffic,” said Evans.
National
Investigators have recovered the black box from crashed military helicopter
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Administration (NTSB) announced on Friday it had recovered the helicopter's single-unit black box and removed it to agency headquarters. It will now be analyzed to begin the data recovery process.
NTSB also said it is confident it will be able to extract all the relevant data from the flight and voice recorders that were recovered from American Airlines Flight 5342 on Thursday.
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