The Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast was off in the chopper, Sen. Ted Cruz said.
A key safety system was off in the U.S. Army helicopter that collided with a plane near Washington in January, a senator said on Feb. 6.
The Black Hawk helicopter had turned off its automatic dependent surveillance broadcast (ADS-B), an advanced surveillance technology to track aircraft location, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters after a briefing with officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“This was a training mission, so there was no compelling national security reason for ADS-B to be turned off,” said Cruz, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee.
ADS-B systems in general require federal aviation authorization, although authorization is needed to conduct more advanced operations using the systems, according to the FAA. ADS-B systems are permitted but not required for military aircraft.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, recently questioned why the FAA since 2018 has allowed military flights to fly with their installed ADS-B equipment off. The FAA declined to comment.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters on Thursday that the helicopter had been recovered from the Potomac River and that it would likely be several days before the NTSB could confirm that the helicopter’s ADS-B was off during the crash.
The helicopter on Jan. 29 collided with an American Airlines Plane that was set to land at Ronald Reagan National Airport near the nation’s capital. All 67 people on board the two aircraft perished.
Officials have said previously that they’re still investigating how the collision happened. They have said that the helicopter was flying at 300 feet, or 100 feet higher than the maximum altitude for helicopters in the area.
Helicopter flights are common in the area. There were some 88,000 helicopter flights within 30 miles of the airport from 2017 to 2019, including about 33,000 military flights, the Government Accountability Office said in a 2021 report.
The FAA restricted helicopter flights around the airport following the collision, as the NTSB conducts its crash investigation. The FAA said on Thursday that it has started reviewing other airports nearby that have “high volumes of mixed helicopter and airplane traffic.”
