MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
No survivors. That is the word from first responders who spent many hours overnight searching the bitterly cold waters of the Potomac River. Last night, a regional airliner from Wichita, Kansas, was approaching Reagan National Airport when it collided with a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter. D.C. Fire and EMS Chief, John Donnelly.
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JOHN DONNELLY: We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation.
MARTIN: Scores of lives are likely lost. Earlier, I spoke with John Cox. He is an aviation safety consultant and former pilot. With the investigation still underway, I asked for his first impressions.
JOHN COX: When I saw the video, I was surprised that - because it's so routine to have the jets circle to land a runway 33, and for military helicopters to be in proximity with them. It just happens with great frequency, and it has worked so well for so many years. So the investigators are certainly going to want to look at the flight path of both aircraft, but most particularly, they'll focus on the helicopter and the - at the altitude and the flight path, considering the air traffic control told them to pass behind the jet - what happened there. And that's going to be one of the central focus items for the investigators.
MARTIN: I take what you said, that this is something - this is not unusual and that this has generally works well. But for people who have never, perhaps, been to this area and not really - don't really know what it's like, does D.C. airspace differ from most other big cities because commercial air transit coexists with, you know, official government and military aircraft and quite a bit of it?
COX: To a degree. Reagan National Airport is geographically constrained. It's a small - relatively small airport with a lot of traffic going in and out of there. The procedures in and out of there are special. The pilots are trained for it. And most of the pilots that fly in and out of there, fly in there routinely. So they know the routine. The air traffic controllers are some of the best in the world. So they move a lot of traffic. They move it very effectively. So everyone in the D.C. airspace knows the routine and follow it - follow the instructions very carefully. So what went wrong here, that's what we need to know. Those are the questions that the investigators are going to be asking.
MARTIN: Are you aware of any other near-misses like this?
COX: There have been some occasions where there has been a loss of separation between the aircraft. As far as in this exact location, that I don't know. But there have been cases where there have been the airplanes getting closer than they should have with each other, but that's not unique to Reagan National. We're seeing some of that in airspace around the world. So this is something that we're looking toward technology. We're looking toward training to try to alleviate the - any time that the aircraft get closer together than they should.
MARTIN: And while I'm thinking about these near-misses, I'm thinking about two commercial aircraft coming in closer proximity than is safe. But I'm thinking specifically, in this case of a government or a military aircraft coming in close proximity with a commercial plane, is that something that warrants some particular scrutiny?
COX: Certainly. The traffic with the jet and the military aircraft, they're going to be close just because of the geographic proximity. Normally, there's a vertical separation, and that's what the controllers are looking at when they say to the military helicopter, do you see the RJ pass behind them and the helicopter acknowledges it. But this is exactly where the investigators are going to look. Was the helicopter where it was supposed to be, at the altitude it was supposed to be? And did they see or start to maneuver away from the jet? Those are questions that remain unanswered as of this morning.
MARTIN: And before I let you go, forgive me for putting it this way, but given what you know about the state of sort of commercial aviation - the business of it and so forth - and also what you know about D.C. airspace, are you surprised that this happened given the skill level that you've just told us about of all the actors involved here? Are you surprised?
COX: I was very surprised. They're - they move so much traffic so effectively in and out of Reagan National. And the quality of the professional pilots going in and out of there is very high, so it surprised me. It saddened me when I saw the collision - the video of the collision. My thought was that shouldn't have happened. And that - it poses more questions than we have answers for at this point.
MARTIN: Thanks so much for joining us. It is a very sad day. That's John Cox. He's an aviation safety consultant and a former pilot. Thanks so much for your insights.
COX: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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