The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the collision between American Eagle Flight 5342 and a military Black Hawk helicopter which occurred on Jan 29, 2025.
Sources for resolution: NTSB Aviation Accident Reports (https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/Investigations.aspx)
Intentional acts such as terrorism, suicide, or other forms will not be considered "errors" for the purpose of resolution.
Note that this is for the PRIMARY cause of the collision. To trade on ANY cause the NTSB considers to have contributed to the collision, I have established a second market to trade here.
1,000
3.00https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90Xw3tQC0I
I'm not sure exactly how to map it onto this market, but from what I gather the heli requested visual as a method of crossing air traffic, which was granted by ATC. Then, about 18 seconds before impact, ATC gets a Conflict Alert and makes sure the heli has a visual, and the heli calmly affirms and repeats it's request for approval. It seems likely that the heli had a visual on AAL3130 which was directly ahead, and not JIA5342 which was approaching from the helicopter's left. Seeing as this is part of (arguably, very unsafe) procedure, I think it gets chalked up to pilot error. But for sure there are other indirect causes like the extremely lax safety measures when flying through crowded airspace at night at landing/approach altitude.
The question will be resolved via the NTSB final report, but it does sound to me like a combo of miscommunication and a decision to not transmit the position of the black hawk via the existing anticonfliction systems that would otherwise have warned of the collision.
@KamyaOjore Yes definitely a combination of factors including
- Staffing shortages
- Procedural decisions (early combination of heli and jetliner duties)
- Communication challenges between multiple systems
- Physical deviations from approved routes (heli flying too high)
- Night operations/Night goggle over reliance
- Last-minute flight path/landing changes
Looks like this was AI-generated as a multiple independent choice rather than as a mutually exclusive question. I don't see a way to change that, understandably.
Wup.
As written I don't see a way for it to resolve with anything other than one "yes" result but if anyone has an alternative interpretation when the final NTSB report releases (or times out) and they believe that more than one option should be resolved as "yes" then I'm open to discussion.
On the plus side, there's opportunity here for someone to do some manual or automated arbitrage, I suppose.