Experienced pilots were on routine flight before DC crash, army says

The US Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet over Washington on Wednesday evening was manned by an experienced three-person crew conducting a routine training flight over familiar territory, a service official told reporters Thursday.

The instructor pilot conducting the evaluation, and who had command of the aircraft, had about 1 000 hours of flying time, said Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for the Army’s aviation directorate. He added that’s a significant amount given the helicopters generally fly for about two hours at a time.

The co-pilot undergoing assessment was also experienced with 500 flying hours, he said. The pilot was a man and the co-pilot, according to a second defense official, was a woman. Even the crew chief in the back was “very familiar with the area, very familiar with the routing structure,” Koziol said.

“They have flown these routes” before, he said.

Investigators from the Pentagon and the National Transportation Safety Board are probing the cause of the crash, which killed all 67 people aboard both aircraft. Investigators aim to get recordings of the radio and crew communications, as well as engine, rotor speed and altitude data if the helicopter’s “black box” recorder is recovered and functioning, Koziol said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier in the day at the White House that there appears to have been “some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DoD and Army level,” and that the Army Criminal Investigation Division “is on the ground investigating.”

The flight crew members, who have not been identified publicly pending next-of-kin notifications, were a captain, a staff sergeant and a chief warrant officer 2, Hegseth said.

The crew was part of the Army’s 12th Aviation Battalion, whose mission includes supporting the Pentagon in the event of a crisis by providing safe transport for senior government officials. Hegseth said the training flight was related to “a continuity of government mission,” referring to procedures to keep government running in the event of catastrophe.

That mission and associated training occur at all hours and under a variety of conditions, Koziol said.

“The military does dangerous things, it does routine things on the regular basis,” Hegseth said. “Tragically, last night, a mistake was made.”

Army officials declined to address comments earlier Thursday from President Donald Trump and Hegseth implying that diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were to blame for the incident.

Asked whether male and female soldiers face different standards to become pilots, Koziol likened flying a helicopter to driving a car and said there should be no difference.

Koziol added that the crew would have had a flight plan and been in contact with air traffic control given the heavy aviation traffic and restricted airspace in the region.

The UH-60 crew would have also had night-vision goggles on board and likely used them during the flight, but that wasn’t a requirement, he said. While the goggles can limit peripheral vision, soldiers are trained to mitigate that, Koziol said.

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