Army Black Hawk Was On Training Flight

Squadron primarily used for transporting VIPs around D.C. was apparently familiarizing new pilot with area.

Last night, shortly before 9pm ET, an American Airlines flight carrying 64 people was on its final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it collided with an Army helicopter with three soldiers on board, about 400 feet off the ground, killing everyone on both aircraft.

The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk had departed from Fort Belvoir in Virginia with a flight path that cut directly across the flight path of Reagan National Airport

This final approach is probably the most carefully controlled in the world, as it it lies three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.

According to various media reports, military aircraft frequently train in the congested airspace around D.C. for “familiarization and continuity of government planning.”

Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter, whose callsign was registered as PAT25, if he could see the arriving plane.

'PAT25 do you see a CRJ? PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ,' the air traffic controller said. A few seconds later, a fireball erupted in the night sky above Washington DC as the two aircraft collided.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued the following statement on X:

It seems that Blackhawks from the 12th Aviation Battalion out of Davison Army Airfield are primarily used for shuttling VIPs around the D.C. area. The following appears to be a helicopter from this battalion.

On the face of it, it strikes me as very imprudent to conduct training flights at night that cross the final approach to Reagan D.C. To me, the word “training” suggests a potential for making errors that an instructor is called upon to correct.

It also strikes me as very strange that Army Blackhawk helicopters operating in this airspace at night are not required to operate with bright external lights, especially when crossing the final approach to Reagan D.C.

Finally, though it’s nothing more than a vague intuition, it seems to me that there is something very strange about this disaster and the timing of it. I wonder if, for some reason, risk management of such training activities was impaired.