Control tower staffing 'not normal' at time of Washington crash: Report
Emergency workers recover debris from the Potomac River in the aftermath of the collision of American Eagle flight 5342 and a Black Hawk helicopter, as seen from Virginia, US, Jan 30, 2025. (Photo: Reuters/Carlos Barria)
NEW YORK: Staffing was thin in the air traffic control tower at Washington's Reagan National airport at the time of the deadly crash between a passenger jet and an army helicopter, US media reported on Thursday (Jan 30).
Staffing was "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic" according to an internal preliminary Federal Aviation Administration safety report quoted by The New York Times.
"The controller who was handling helicopters in the airport's vicinity Wednesday night was also instructing planes that were landing and departing from its runways," the report said.
"Those jobs typically are assigned to two controllers, rather than one."
US investigators said on Thursday it will take time to understand the cause of the collision.
"We conduct an important safety mission where we take a very careful approach," National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy told journalists.
"We look at facts ... and that will take some time."
NTSB board member Todd Inman likewise said there would be no immediate conclusions on the cause of the disaster.
"We don't know what we know just yet. We do not know enough facts to be able to rule in or out human factor, mechanical factors – that is part of the NTSB investigative process," Inman said.
The collision occurred late evening on Wednesday as the airliner came into land after a routine flight from Wichita, Kansas.
Reagan National is a major airport located a short distance from downtown Washington, the White House and the Pentagon.
The airspace is extremely busy, with civilian and military aircraft almost constantly moving in the area.
"I think there are a lot of speculations at this stage, and the investigation hasn't really begun," Hassan Shahidi, chief executive of the independent Flight Safety Foundation, told AFP.
"There are different shifts ... that come in and are put together with the right staff to handle the amount of traffic.
"Sometimes air traffic controllers handle one frequency. Sometimes they handle two frequencies. Sometimes they handle more than two frequencies.
"That is all dependent on the situation, on the traffic level, and the time of day. This was at night, at 9pm, when the traffic is subsiding."
