A top Republican who was a former helicopter flight surgeon detailed what the pilots of the Army Black Hawk would have likely seen immediately before the fatal plane crash in Washington, D.C.
An American Airlines plane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided as the passenger plane was landing at Reagan National Airport just before 9 pm on Wednesday.
Sixty passengers, four crew and three Army personnel are believed to be dead after the collision 400ft over the Potomac River.
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) revealed that the military helicopter pilots could have been blinded by city lights immediately before the deadly crash.
A former flight surgeon for the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Green, 60, served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was the special operations flight surgeon on the mission that captured Saddam Hussein.
Speaking with Fox News‘ America’s Newsroom on Thursday morning, Green shared that city lights around D.C. and Virginia may have impacted the pilots who were likely using night-vision goggles at the time.
‘There is a lot of lights in that area. It can sometimes make using the night vision goggles difficult,’ Green shared.
The Pentagon confirmed that the pilots were highly trained and would have been using the goggles at the time of the fatal crash.
At the time and altitude, the lights from the city could have impacted the equipment, he added.
‘You are sort of on a threshold when you make that decision about the amount of ambient light from the ground, in the air. That’s something we’ll have to make a determination on.’
However, there are many plausible factors that could have played into the crash, the Tennessee Republican shared.
‘It is usually multiple different errors that occur that all sort of line up to allow for something like this to happen,’ Green told the hosts.
‘And whether or not these guys chose to use their night vision goggles,’ is still an open question, he added.
The area where the U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter was flying is a common route for helicopters traveling in the D.C. area.
A similar route is used by the president’s chopper Marine One.
Transport Secretary Sean Duffy claims a horror mid-air plane crash over Washington DC was ‘preventable’, while American Airlines appeared to blame the pilots of a military helicopter that strayed into its path.
Green noted that as a training flight ‘there was probably an instructor pilot, a very senior pilot, in one of the sides of the cockpit and then another pilot getting checked out on their annual night flight or whatever the particular evaluation was.’
He also added that the flight corridor is home to some of the most flight-tracking equipment in the country.
Given the traffic due to Congress and the White House the area is covered with radars, the lawmaker shared.
‘The ability to deconflict that airspace is probably the best in the country, maybe in the world.’
‘Understanding how they collided is still a big question. That should not have happened and, of course, we have to look into that, technology on the aircraft that was used.’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also delivered an update Thursday morning, sharing more details about the military helicopter involved.
‘At about 8:48 last night, a UH60, assigned to the U.S. Army Aviation Brigade in the military district of Washington, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, collided tragically with a civilian airliner,’ Hegseth said in a statement.
‘The unit involved the Army unit involved with Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir. It was an annual proficiency training flight. And when we look at the crew and we’re not all.’
‘Not all kin have been notified, So we’re going to withhold ranks and names at this point. We do know on our side who was involved. It was a fairly experienced crew, and that was doing a required annual night evaluation. They did have night vision goggles.’
