CGTN Europe spoke to David Learmount, Flight Global Consulting Editor.
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00:00David, what are your contacts telling you, and what do you think happened?
00:06Well, first of all, let me compliment Jim on his report just there.
00:10He's hit a few really important points.
00:13The lack of capacity, or at least the fact that Washington-Reagan, which is a small downtown airport,
00:20is trying to do too much work, there's too much air traffic around there,
00:24so the risk is high because they're overloading it all the time.
00:28But one thing which has come out of the released information already
00:33is the fact that the air traffic controller who was on duty at the time
00:39was talking to the helicopter pilot and, of course, the pilot of the aircraft that collided with it,
00:46and he was relying upon the helicopter pilot having sighted the aeroplane and to stay clear of it.
00:55The helicopter pilot said he did sight it, but he clearly didn't.
01:01So he must have seen something else, locked his eyes onto the wrong aeroplane,
01:06or locked his eyes onto the massive area of lights of the city on both sides of the river.
01:12So that looks as if it's going to be a contributory factor here.
01:16What will the black boxes tell us?
01:21The black boxes, as the head of the National Transportation Safety Board
01:26has said in her public address, in fact, yesterday evening,
01:31the black boxes will confirm an awful lot of information, she said,
01:36a lot of data we already have coming from radar data and air traffic controllers and video,
01:44loads and loads of data we already had.
01:47The black box recorders will give us precision
01:51and they will give us confirmation of what we think we already know.
01:56Your thoughts on those reports, on near misses and understaffing at air traffic control at this airport?
02:06Well, I've put out a blog on this subject, and the thing I concentrate on is the fact that the American FAA,
02:14which is the government agency which is also responsible for air traffic control,
02:21as well as safety oversight of the whole system,
02:25it's a government-funded body and it isn't being funded enough.
02:29It's got too few air traffic controllers all over the country,
02:32and it's really got its back against the wall.
02:37A load of American studies recently have been pointing out very, very clearly
02:43that the greatest risk to air traffic control safety,
02:47the greatest risk to safety of airlines and the military in the USA right now,
02:53is a collision on an airport or very, very close to it.
02:58So they predicted it, and now we've got it.
03:01David, good to see you. Thank you for that.
03:03David Learmount, the consulting editor at Flight Global.