CGTN Europe interviewed Scott Hamilton, an aviation consultant and the Managing Director of Leeham Company
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00:00Now Scott Hamilton is an aviation consultant also the managing director of the Lehman company. He joins us now. Hello Scott
00:08What's your take on what might have happened?
00:11Well this happened at night and
00:14It's very difficult to see other airplanes at night particularly if you have backlit
00:21city lights behind you
00:23so their visibility and and
00:26The weather conditions are going to be part of the NTSB investigation
00:31We don't know
00:33What communication at this point was between the control tower and the CRJ we do know that the helicopter pilots were aware
00:40But we don't know about
00:41Whether or not the CRJ pilots were aware of the helicopter, so that's going to be part of it as well
00:47So a lot still to investigate
00:50Surely though there are radar or other tracking systems and anti-collision systems
00:56That should have averted this
00:59Well in fact the air traffic control
01:03System did communicate to the
01:07The helicopter pilots that there was this CRJ
01:11Nearby and it did say go behind the CRJ now
01:15There's on the commercial airliners. There's something called TCAS
01:20Which is a collision avoidance system? I have no idea whether a Blackhawk helicopter would have a
01:26Similar system. I'm just not a military
01:30Expert on this sort of thing, but again the helicopter pilots were aware of the conflicting traffic
01:38How significant is it that it was a military helicopter involved because in the USA alone last year?
01:45They were four accidents involving military choppers nine fatalities
01:51Yeah, I don't know that being a military helicopter is really all that relevant in in that narrow context
01:58I am surprised that there was a training flight at night in this highly
02:05Congested air traffic space I would have thought that may be a simulator training for nighttime operations would have made more sense
02:11But that'll I think be part of the investigation as well
02:14And what what puzzles you mostly about what has happened, what is the one issue that you're thinking this doesn't add up
02:25You know the whole Washington DC airspace is an incredibly congested area there are several military bases
02:34that have
02:36operating helicopters as well as fixed-wing aircraft
02:40and there's a lot of restricted airspace that
02:43These
02:45Helicopters and the airplanes can't go into so you have a very tightly controlled airspace
02:50Again, why why did this training flight occur at night?
02:55And I think that it is a possibility that the helicopter pilots
03:01Misidentified the airplane they might have seen a different airplane ahead of it and thought that they were safe
03:07But that's everything what the investigation is going to have to look at
03:11Yeah, absolutely, and it is very early days a lot of conjecture at this stage, but nonetheless
03:15Thank you so much for sharing your views with us. That is Scott Hamilton. He's an aviation consultant