Military aircraft collisions raise questions about training and equipment, expert says
U.S. military helicopter crashes like the one that took down a commercial American Airlines flight over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night are very rare, but there has been an uptick in these incidents in recent years, according to military statistics and an aviation expert.
A total of 64 people, including passengers and flight crew members, were aboard AA Flight 5342 from Wichita to Reagan National Airport (DCA). Three soldiers were conducting a training operation on the Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
“It’s concerning, certainly, the number of incidents that there have been,” Timothy Loranger, an aviation attorney at Wisner Baum and a Marine Corps veteran, told Fox News Digital. “But if you compare it to the thousands and thousands of hours of flights that occur without any incident … that’s all very good.”
The collision has sparked questions about how such a devastating accident could happen in one of the most tightly controlled airspaces in the country and the world. The last significant fatal commercial crash happened in 2009, when a Continental Airlines flight crashed into a house in Buffalo, New York, killing 49 people.
“Is there something that we can point to? Training? Is the budget of the military sufficient to make sure that pilots and the crew have enough training and experience in order to fly those aircraft?” Loranger said. “Those are the kinds of questions that have to be asked. If it’s a problem with the aircraft itself, a mechanical issue, what is that? Is it a design issue? Is it a manufacturing issue? Is it a maintenance issue?”
Military helicopter crashes, while uncommon, have been occurring more frequently over the last year, according to Army data.
Source: Fox News