How air safety failures and last-minute mistakes set American Airlines jet, Black Hawk chopper on deadly DC collision course

WASHINGTON — Major air safety failures and last-minute mistakes caused Thursday night’s midair collision over the Potomac River that left 67 people dead, according to expert observers and officials.

Late Wednesday night, American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, crashed with an Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter just 400 feet above the historic Washington, DC waterway.

The Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet — with 60 passengers and four crew on board — exploded in a fireball and broke into three pieces as it approached Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, igniting the night sky with what resembled “shooting stars” or “white flares” to eyewitnesses on the ground.

It is the deadliest air disaster in the US since 2001, and the first crash of an American airliner in nearly 15 years.

The Post can reveal that grave lapses and miscommunications in one of the most crowded and complex patches of sky in the US are likely to blame.

An air traffic controller was doing the job of two staffers at the time of the crash — following years of staffing shortages and reports of burnout and high stress among the Federal Aviation Administration employees.

According to radio transmissions from Wednesday night, the controller warned the chopper that it was getting too close the CRJ-700 passenger jet, and the experienced helicopter pilot acknowledged.

However, experts believe the helicopter pilot maneuvered to avoid the wrong plane — a jet of the same model that was taking off farther away — and never saw the American Airlines flight until it was too late.

The Black Hawk helicopter, which had a crew of three and had taken off from nearby Langley, Virginia, was apparently flying too high — at about 400 feet — when it collided with American Airlines jet, which was rapidly descending after it was cleared for landing, experts said.

However, because of the close quarters around Reagan National, there is just 50 feet separating the maximum allowable altitude for helicopters and the minimum altitude for planes on that particular landing path — leaving almost no room for error, former DC-based American Airlines pilot John Wright said.

Chilling audio from air traffic control captured the moment the flight safety agency reported the horrifying midair crash.

“Tower, did you see that?” one air traffic controller asked, referring to the moment of impact.

“Crash, crash, crash, this is an alert three,” a dispatcher can be heard saying in the audio.

“Both the helicopter and the plane crashed in the river,” said a third.

The horrific collision was captured by an EarthCam perched atop the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts near the river’s edge, pointing south toward the airport beyond the Lincoln Memorial.

As the investigation continues, and devastated victims’ families mourn the loss of their loved ones, questions are being raised about how the disaster could have happened.

At a White House press briefing Thursday, President Donald Trump said the crash “looks like it should have been prevented” and unleashed a torrent of blame at his Democratic predecessors — whom he claimed lowered standards for air traffic controllers.

“The FAA diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing,” Trump said while acknowledging at one point that he doesn’t know for a fact who exactly was responsible for the tragedy.

Among the passengers were at least 14 members of the US Figure Skating team, husband-and-wife world champion skaters from Russia and a family of four Everly and Alydia Livingston, age 11 and 14, from Washington. They were all returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita over the weekend.

Another was Kiah Duggins, a former Miss Kansas contestant who was looking forward to teaching at Howard University’s law school in the fall, according to her former pageant director Larry Strong.

Officials said there were no survivors, and rescue workers were still pulling bodies out of the frigid waters of the Potomac River on Thursday.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that it was “too early to tell” whether human or mechanical error was at fault for the disaster, but said its preliminary report on the incident will not be completed for 30 days.

There are two flight paths in the area — one for helicopters and another for airplanes — that converge near the Reagan airport, according to an official flight map.

The American Airlines flight had been cleared for landing and had the right-of-way.

Retired Lt. Col Darin Gaub, who flew Black Hawk helicopters like the one involved in the crash, told The Post there were several factors behind explaining the disaster.

“This is a two major issue thing that I’m watching: Was there a failure to adhere to established procedures in the airspace around DC, and was there a failure to effectively communicate in accordance with the standards of [air traffic control],” he said.

“Those, together with some other environmental concerns, just created the perfect storm.”

One complicating factor could be the too-general nature of the air traffic controller’s language to the Black Hawk. In video of the collision taken from the Kennedy Center, a second jet is seen in the sky taking off at the same time as the DC-bound flight was attempting to land.

Instead of providing specific information of where the Wichita airplane was, the controller only asked the military pilot if he saw the “CRJ” — the type of airplane — in the sky, without indicating where it was.

“The language is usually more along the lines of … ‘Black Hawk, hey, do you see the aircraft at your 11 o’clock, five miles out, moving north?’ or something along those lines,”  Gaub said.

But the air traffic controller’s generalized language may have confused the Black Hawk’s pilots, who can typically move out of the way quickly, the retired Blackhawk pilot said.

Follow The Post’s coverage of the American Airlines jet’s collision with a military helicopter in DC

“That may be something that’s going to have to get looked at, because in my experience, those kinds of calls and warnings are made very specifically to clock direction, distance and altitudes and in route of travel,” he said.

“If all [the controllers] say is, ‘Look at the aircraft. Do you see the aircraft to your front?’ [and the helicopter pilot responds,] ‘Yep, I see it,’ and that’s the end of the conversation — and you’re in a dense environment where aircraft are flying all the time — that is not specific enough to ensure the safe operation of aircraft.

But former Air Force pilot and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Calif.) claimed  in a video posted to X on Thursday that “air traffic control did its job” by merely alerting the helicopter of the CRJ’s approach.

“If you listen to the audio, the [commercial jet] was coming in on approach [when air traffic control] called out to [the army helicopter, ‘look for the [jet] on approach — that’s air traffic control’s job,” Kinzinger explained.

Most experts agreed, however, that ultimate responsibility rested with the military pilot.

“Why didn’t he turn? Why didn’t he even slow down?” Gaub said.

“Something caused him not to see that aircraft … so I’d just like to know is there an answer to the question of why they didn’t deviate from their flight course at all — speed or altitude.”