(31 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Grass Valley, California – 30 January 2025
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Juan Browne, former military pilot and current commercial airline pilot:
“Well, here’s the thing. We’re all humans. And this is, in fact, a training flight. Now, that doesn’t mean that this is a brand-new rookie learning to fly the helicopter. These training flights, especially if you’re in the guard like I was, these can be currency flights. So you have pilots that are current qualified in the airplane that need to remain current in the aircraft. Any number of things to require this training flight to be proficient and mission-ready to fly your aircraft. So you have a monthly and annual routine training flights that you need to fulfill. But that means that, well, maybe maybe one guy is a little bit rusty and maybe maybe he’s off a little bit during this training flight.”
++BLACK FRAME++
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Juan Browne, former military pilot and current commercial airline pilot:
“Because night vision goggles are restrictive as to your ability to see your peripheral vision. So, night vision goggles are kind of like looking through a couple of tubes, though they help enhance the night vision, they also restrict your ability to look far and wide. So, crews when they get in a brightly lit area like this area, Washington, DC, hey oftentimes need to either pick the goggles up, get them off their head or look underneath the goggles or rotate between looking through the N.V.G.’s (night vision goggles) or under the N.V.G.’s, so they can be restrictive as to your ability to see the peripheral vision."
++BLACK FRAME++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Juan Browne, former military pilot and current commercial airline pilot:
“So now you’ve got the two pilots on board the helicopter. If they’re on night vision goggles struggling to see the airliner between the city lights behind them, and if there’s a TCAS (Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System) notification on the screen down below them, one pilot may be down trying to sort out the TCAS alert on the screen, the other pilot may be up looking for the airliner. He may be locating the airliner that’s a mile or two behind him or the airliner that took off in front of him. He may have misidentified the airliner that he’s supposed to remain clear of. That we just don’t know at this point.”
++BLACK FRAME++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Juan Browne, former military pilot and current commercial airline pilot:
“All of this is controlled by DC tower. However, the airliner is on his tower control frequency and the helicopter is on a separate frequency flying the helicopter visual route. That means the tower controller can hear both aircraft, the helicopter and the airliner. However, the airliner cannot hear the helicopter and the helicopter cannot hear the airliner. And that’s a big piece, a big part of the missing part of your situational awareness when you can’t hear the other side of the conversation.”
++BLACK FRAME++
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Juan Browne, former military pilot and current commercial airline pilot:
++BLACK FRAME++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Anacortes, Washington – 30 January 2025
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Darrell Feller, Retired U.S. Army National Guard pilot:
++EDIT ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
Juan Browne, a longtime commercial airline pilot who runs a YouTube channel dedicated to aviation safety, said airspace around the Reagan airport is extremely busy and that helicopters have to navigate “a very tight corridor” through the area.
More than 40 bodies have been recovered.
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